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

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 4 Oct 2019
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      Institutions are biography compressors. When somebody asks for my story in a context where I have to actually answer non-flippantly, every non-institutional year of my life adds about a minute to my story, but every institutional year can be efficiently explained in 10 seconds.

      3 replies 7 retweets 84 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 4 Oct 2019
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      Titles are the ultimate compressors. "Professor" or "VP of Sales" communicates entire volumes. Super shorthand. To communicate free-agent life content equivalent to "I am a professor at X university" (3 seconds) would take me like 3 minutes.

      2 replies 1 retweet 20 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 4 Oct 2019
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      "Professor" communicates a whole pattern. It says you have a certain pie chart of activities. It says you publish in certain ways, and supervise other people in certain ways. I do very similar things but I have to explain all of it because most people don't know any of it.

      1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 4 Oct 2019
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      The weakness of young self-descriptors like "blogger" is that they are not tight. They refer to about 100x broader scope of life patterns than say "professor"

      1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 4 Oct 2019
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      I need a compact way to introduce myself. When I introduce myself as "blogger and consultant" and people later find out everything hiding under there, they sometimes react like I've been misleading or putting a false humility posture. No, I just don't have a compression.

      4:09 PM - 4 Oct 2019
      • 19 Likes
      • Abe Stanway Rahul Ramchandani Pavel Velkovsky Jake Gotts Pepe Stay-at-home Husbawagand (Not a Province) Nadia ian hines June “Wakalix”, [null]
      10 replies 0 retweets 19 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Mike Elias  💡 📈‏ @harmonylion1 4 Oct 2019
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          Replying to @vgr

          Pitch yourself like a movie "Consultant meets Batman" (or whatever)

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 4 Oct 2019
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          Replying to @harmonylion1

          sub Joker (heath ledger)

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        4. 1 more reply
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        2. Nick Pinkston  🌐‏ @NickPinkston 4 Oct 2019
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          Replying to @vgr

          I think about you as "Philosopher for Fun and Profit"

          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 4 Oct 2019
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          Replying to @NickPinkston

          If I introduced myself that way to new people I’d seem like an asshole. Which is not entirely wrong.

          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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        2. Ben Hunt‏Verified account @EpsilonTheory 5 Oct 2019
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          Replying to @vgr

          What “profession” do you list on your tax returns? I end up with “financial advisor”, which is right in a meta way, but so wrong in the descriptive use for which it was directly intended by the US gov’t. And that makes me happy.

          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
        3. Ben Hunt‏Verified account @EpsilonTheory 5 Oct 2019
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          Replying to @EpsilonTheory @vgr

          But @vgr is so right about this. Saying “I am large; I contain multitudes” to people when they ask what I do ... just doesn’t cut it. Neither does “writer” or its diminutive, “blogger”.

          0 replies 1 retweet 5 likes
        4. End of conversation
        1. William Eden‏ @WilliamAEden 4 Oct 2019
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          Replying to @vgr

          That’s why I wrote in my bio “lossy compression not recommended” :) Even more true for your case!

          0 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
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        1. ⌘‏ @PeterorjustP 4 Oct 2019
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          Replying to @vgr

          Why not use the "Uber for X" model and say you write Stratechery (or something similar they would know) for management consulting and magical thinking?

          0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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        1. anna clemencia guerrero‏ @onuhgrrarrow 4 Oct 2019
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          Replying to @vgr

          doesn't seem like traditional compression (physician, lawyer, professor, grad student, soldier) gives an accurate pie chart of activities to relative laypeople either, tho. interesting that ppl assume you've been misleading them

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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        1. Fitted‏ @NumPlum 4 Oct 2019
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          Replying to @vgr

          Seer & Consultant of the Great Weirding

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