Portals vs flags is a good lens for breaking down fun-banter twitter vs beef-only missionary derp twitter. I’m 100% portal and most of my futile conflicts are due to mistakenly engaging a flag-twitter person with portal twitter rules of engagement.https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/06/25/portals-and-flags/ …
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Flag twitter is about holding on to dying ways of being in a spirit of grim courage under mortal existential threat. Apres nous le deluge. Portal twitter is about experimentally flexing clumsy new modes of being in a spirit of play. Le deluge be damned.
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To flag twitter, portal twitter seems like a nihilistic threat, fiddling while Rome burns, throwing open the doors to the barbarians. To portal twitter, the self-important sermonizing of flag twitter seems like a deadly cancer, preventing the new world from being born.
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Portal twitter us about approaching the edge of the void, working up the courage to plunge in, making nervous jokes and memes on the edge. Portal twitter knows what’s at stake and that the only way out is through.
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Flag Twitter believes if you retreat energetically enough, by ignoring the pupal weirdness loudly enough with amplified sermonizing, the void will close, and an old kind of normalcy will return.
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Reduced to practice, portal twitter is basically “generate VUCA to eat VUCA”. A discourse that itself delights in volatility (inconsistency), uncertainty (improvisation), complexity (wordplay, nuance), ambiguity (irony etc). Ashby’s law of requisite variety, memes edition.
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Good, evil, or neutral, portal twitter is always chaotic. Good, evil, or neutral, flag twitter is always lawful. (neutral evil, neutral good, and true neutral are brands and orgs playing twitter badly)
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MtG experts could probably work out the interaction dynamics better than me. I don’t have time for game theory
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But the BIG takeaway. Portal twitter and flag twitter don’t mix. Even if they’re nominally on the same side by the same definition of “good”. Their beliefs about how to break out are just too divergent. It’s easier to spar with “evil” along your own axis (chaotic or lawful).
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Tldr: Look at someone’s reply threads. If it looks like a town hall Q&A where they hold court with “my gavel, my norms” posture, it is flag twitter. If it’s at least 50% shitposting and banter in reply threads, it is portal twitter. Engage with caution.
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Poll: If you read this far, what kind of twitter are you part of
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End of conversation
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