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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 31 May 2019
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

      Political ideologies don’t even meaningfully exist if they aren’t big ideas. The only candidate big idea coming out of the culture war is “beefing is good”, ie the warring itself as ideology. As a sort of cleansing and necessary lemon-cayenne enema to the body politic.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1134684007399010304 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      A “big” idea is one that: - has megafauna charisma - represents discontinuous leap wrt its history - arrives as Big Bang in <5y, not trickle - redraws boundaries among old ideas - creates new institutional landscape in <10y - creates new internal language within that landscape
      3 replies 9 retweets 63 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 31 May 2019
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      A culture-war-industrial complex has emerged rapidly in the last 5 years. It emerged to sustain the culture war, but now the culture war exists to sustain it. It produces no big ideas or cultural or political capital other than the warring itself.

      10:39 PM - 31 May 2019
      • 18 Retweets
      • 58 Likes
      • Rahul Ramchandani ʜɪᴠᴇᴍɪɴᴅ_013 Ben Basche Prometheus Unbound Olaf Chris machinemob Priya Rational Bot
      1 reply 18 retweets 58 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 31 May 2019
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          It’s a terrible big idea btw. “Beefing is good” weakens the body politic so other forces can kill it. It dies not cure it. Kinda like perestroika/glasnost were meant to cure the USSR but just precipitated its collapse. Which could happen here.

          1 reply 6 retweets 24 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 31 May 2019
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          One reason this beefing-is-good big idea thrives is that people confuse their little ideas for big ones and are willing to fight for them. It’s like 50 fighting kittens equals 1 lion. Each kitten sincerely thinks it can win and become a lion. No, a kitten is not a startup lion.

          1 reply 2 retweets 27 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 31 May 2019
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          Every side thinks they can win the war, and get big in the peace after. But keeping the war going is the only big win around. If the war ends, you inherit some rubble. Not a gloriously restored public, reverent awakened masses lionizing you as liberators, and a golden age.

          1 reply 4 retweets 29 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 31 May 2019
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          Your highly hyphenated and prefixed ideology sprawled across 5 blogs, 2 meetups, a manifesto, and a redpilling subreddit really isn’t really going to be next “Marxism” or “Neoliberalism”. Believing that can happen is like believing a chat app can grow into pre-cable TV network

          1 reply 4 retweets 22 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 31 May 2019
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          I mean seriously, can you even imagine what 100 million Americans “believing” in any of these kitten ideologies fighting culture wars looks like in 2019? For eg. There’s this anti-David-Frenchism thing doing the rounds in trad-cath corner. Is _that_ the Next Big Unicorn? 🙄

          2 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 31 May 2019
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          The age of big ideologies that hope to rule the world is over. You make bones today merely by running a subreddit and a few meetups. “Arrival” is having one of your Great Battles dominate social media for a day. That’s it. That’s all these manifesto-derping wannabes fight for.

          3 replies 5 retweets 38 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 31 May 2019
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          The biggest ideological successes of our time are... Bannon and Moore? That’s as good as it gets. That’s your prize for briefly getting big enough to take a break from warring. You get to try and sneak a few policies past a mad emperor, to be undone by the next gang of kittens.

          5 replies 1 retweet 20 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 31 May 2019
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          This is not your revolutionary war. It’s the end-of-history war among rotting dinosaur carcasses between mad max tribes. Terminus Hobbes. At best we can hope to starve the war machine of meaning by reading it as spectacle rather than consequential political struggle.

          1 reply 2 retweets 35 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 31 May 2019
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          You can’t really hide from it or ignore it. There’s too much societal energy invested in it (that’s the point of a war, to burn societal energy through futility). But by seeing it differently, you can fall out of love with the big idea of warring and look for better life loves

          4 replies 3 retweets 29 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jun 2019
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          I just used the phrase “a crowd rubbernecking at itself” If it’s also angry, that’s the culture war. Like hate-watching people...people hate-watching?https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1134924490197143552?s=20 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Replying to @MispelledToyota
          Not if you mutter it under your breath while going around some crowd rubbernecking at itself
          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jun 2019
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          It also occurred to me that driving was the original social medium. A networked public space created by technology for impoverished interactions among reductive personas. Honk = like, communicate through cut-offs, merges, tailgating, giving the finger.

          1 reply 0 retweets 18 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jun 2019
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          The difference is, when you drive for fun, you pick pleasant, scenic, easy-driving routes. You don’t head for the snarly gridlock of honks and flip-offs for “fun”. You only do it if you have to get somewhere. The culture war is a bit like going for a “fun” drive in a traffic jam.

          2 replies 1 retweet 12 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jun 2019
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          Tldr of my GUT of the culture war: it’s an end-of-history Hobbesian conflict, 100% governed by the beef-only sheep-logic of “last men”, whose idea of fun is going for a drive in a traffic jam because car-makers and oil companies have convinced them history depends on it.

          3 replies 4 retweets 28 likes
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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 1 Jun 2019
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          The sheep-logic reference if you can’t parse that.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1134921580927115264?s=21 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          If you’re careless Twitter can turn into 100% sheep-logic headspace. “Sheeple” is a good insult because a mind consumed by other-regarding cognitions is subhuman. Use Twitter as interest graph not social. Ideas front-and-center, people in peripheral vision https://www.epsilontheory.com/sheep-logic/  pic.twitter.com/08gssckIjN
          2 replies 0 retweets 4 likes
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        16. End of conversation

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