Under high-VUCA,* portal discourses try to give you an experimental toolkit to process what’s going on Flag discourses try to drown out the VUCA via positive-feedback amplification of a single familiar, reassuring signal. * Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity
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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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