Skip to content
By using Twitter’s services you agree to our Cookies Use. We and our partners operate globally and use cookies, including for analytics, personalisation, and ads.
  • Home Home Home, current page.
  • About

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Language: English
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • Bahasa Melayu
    • Català
    • Čeština
    • Dansk
    • Deutsch
    • English UK
    • Español
    • Filipino
    • Français
    • Hrvatski
    • Italiano
    • Magyar
    • Nederlands
    • Norsk
    • Polski
    • Português
    • Română
    • Slovenčina
    • Suomi
    • Svenska
    • Tiếng Việt
    • Türkçe
    • Ελληνικά
    • Български език
    • Русский
    • Српски
    • Українська мова
    • עִבְרִית
    • العربية
    • فارسی
    • मराठी
    • हिन्दी
    • বাংলা
    • ગુજરાતી
    • தமிழ்
    • ಕನ್ನಡ
    • ภาษาไทย
    • 한국어
    • 日本語
    • 简体中文
    • 繁體中文
  • Have an account? Log in
    Have an account?
    · Forgot password?

    New to Twitter?
    Sign up
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

Tweets

  • © 2020 Twitter
  • About
  • Help Center
  • Terms
  • Privacy policy
  • Imprint
  • Cookies
  • Ads info
Dismiss
Previous
Next

Go to a person's profile

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @

Promote this Tweet

Block

  • Tweet with a location

    You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

    Your lists

    Create a new list


    Under 100 characters, optional

    Privacy

    Copy link to Tweet

    Embed this Tweet

    Embed this Video

    Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Hmm, there was a problem reaching the server.

    By embedding Twitter content in your website or app, you are agreeing to the Twitter Developer Agreement and Developer Policy.

    Preview

    Why you're seeing this ad

    Log in to Twitter

    · Forgot password?
    Don't have an account? Sign up »

    Sign up for Twitter

    Not on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.

    Sign up
    Have an account? Log in »

    Two-way (sending and receiving) short codes:

    Country Code For customers of
    United States 40404 (any)
    Canada 21212 (any)
    United Kingdom 86444 Vodafone, Orange, 3, O2
    Brazil 40404 Nextel, TIM
    Haiti 40404 Digicel, Voila
    Ireland 51210 Vodafone, O2
    India 53000 Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Reliance
    Indonesia 89887 AXIS, 3, Telkomsel, Indosat, XL Axiata
    Italy 4880804 Wind
    3424486444 Vodafone
    » See SMS short codes for other countries

    Confirmation

     

    Welcome home!

    This timeline is where you’ll spend most of your time, getting instant updates about what matters to you.

    Tweets not working for you?

    Hover over the profile pic and click the Following button to unfollow any account.

    Say a lot with a little

    When you see a Tweet you love, tap the heart — it lets the person who wrote it know you shared the love.

    Spread the word

    The fastest way to share someone else’s Tweet with your followers is with a Retweet. Tap the icon to send it instantly.

    Join the conversation

    Add your thoughts about any Tweet with a Reply. Find a topic you’re passionate about, and jump right in.

    Learn the latest

    Get instant insight into what people are talking about now.

    Get more of what you love

    Follow more accounts to get instant updates about topics you care about.

    Find what's happening

    See the latest conversations about any topic instantly.

    Never miss a Moment

    Catch up instantly on the best stories happening as they unfold.

    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 16
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      No matter what the challenge or environment, I've found that basically the only way to tackle it in a generative way is to come at it with an attitude of abundance. There must be some X factor you're willing to simply waste in responding to the challenge.

      5 replies 38 retweets 223 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 16
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Time is the most powerful X factor to be able to waste, followed by money. But many other factors can be be X, depending on the situation. Marketing reach is a surprisingly good one. If you treat it as a scarce resource, it will act scarce. Shitposting creates reach abundance.

      2 replies 2 retweets 56 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 16
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Waste time Waste money Waste reach Waste compute cycles Waste paper Waste space (hard unless you have a mansion) Waste literal energy

      2 replies 2 retweets 40 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 16
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      One of the hardest things about covid is that it's become far harder to find X factors to waste.

      2 replies 0 retweets 16 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 16
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      I have long suspected a deep physics to the capacity to waste. Waste is some resource going brrr. The reason the meme works as a joke is that money printer going brrr is not actually waste. You're rapidly locking up the economic future with inflation and debt.

      1 reply 1 retweet 31 likes
      Show this thread
    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 16
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      But there really are things that go brrr and create the very abundance assumed in their unleashing. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. Network effects are generally things of this sort. When you see a network effect, ask, what is being wasted generatively here?

      5 replies 0 retweets 32 likes
      Show this thread
    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Work shaped by abundance usually looks mediocre, rough-edged, and unfinished. Work shaped by scarcity looks excellent, polished, and finished. The presence of profligacy in the making of a thing throws it off balance aesthetically but removes fragility.

      2 replies 6 retweets 28 likes
      Show this thread
    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      When some input factor X is being wasted the optimization of the whole becomes impossible. When diminishing marginal returns to more X are ignored, it is the underlying idea of value that breaks, not the drive of X to new regimes through passages of over-development to absurdity.

      1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
      Show this thread
    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Work shaped by abundance can only be beautiful in partial aspects. It resists notions of beauty applied to the gestalt because it is defined as much by the unseen potentiality being wasted as by its present embodied form.

      1 reply 2 retweets 8 likes
      Show this thread
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Scarcity is usually understood as limits on the availability of a specific thing, but is better understood as the absence of some vector of abundance. It doesn’t matter what you have less of than you’d like, so long as you have an effectively infinite supply of one thing.

      3:48 PM - 17 May 2020
      • 1 Retweet
      • 13 Likes
      • Agota Dubi Johannes Meixner still lookin for dat 12 ft skeleton hookup Jason Tarre Gregory Hansell Rahul Ramchandani Michael Chapiro marakulus Zach Kowalik
      1 reply 1 retweet 13 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          There is something deeply transformative about being able to tap into a potentiality that replenishes itself faster than you can expend it, no matter how hard you try. When you’re going brrr on X, everything not-X is distorted into insignificance, including specific scarcities.

          1 reply 1 retweet 21 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          It’s not that scarcities stop hurting. It’s just that “I don’t have enough money” looks very different when (say) poetry or code is just brrrring out of you than if nothing is going brrrr for you. It doesn’t even have to be good. Just come from some illegible place of abundance.

          1 reply 2 retweets 23 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Scarcity as in insufficiency of a thing is just ordinary hunger. It can be satiated. Scarcity as in absence of abundance is existential hunger. It often becomes displaced into an insatiable hunger for certain things — money and status being the big ones. But that doesn’t work.

          1 reply 2 retweets 16 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          If money or recognition is an ordinary hunger for you, at some point you’ll have enough to be bored by it and move on. But if it’s an existential hunger you’ll go insane chasing it. Because the void you’re trying to fill can only be filled by something going brrr inside you.

          1 reply 2 retweets 19 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Existential hunger is a debilitating thing because it comes from a place of deep fear. Going brrr isn’t too hard. It’s too easy. But most are afraid to do it because it means accepting being truly alive in a way that implicitly acknowledges inevitability of death in the future.

          3 replies 4 retweets 25 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Going brrr is just shitposting as a way of life. You just lower some standard around something you enjoy to the point that some invisible restraint inside snaps and you go brrr. It really isn’t hard. At all. The only limit on it is physical energy and the need to eat/sleep.

          1 reply 2 retweets 20 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Interestingly often the restraint/standard has to do with a typical existential-hunger displacement focus like money or status. “This is beneath me” “I am worth too much to give this away from free” “I can’t post writing that is this embarrassingly bad relative to Hemingway”

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          People trying to fill a void created by an absence of brrr via insatiable displacement are trying to fill a bottomless well by pouring fuel on an unrelated fire over there. It’s a mismatch they can’t see at some deep level. And it makes them miserable, resentful, and exhausting.

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          I’m not helpful or nurturing type, but I can help/nurture people through almost any problem if I care enough about them. Not this one though. I have uniformly failed to help people lacking brrr in their lives, lacking an inner abundance. It’s like they’re in a place I can’t reach

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          If you’ve figured out your inner brrr, I can probably help you with almost any other problem at least a little bit, no matter how hard. But if you lack the brrr, no matter how much you have going for you in every other way — talent, resources, whatever — I can’t help you.

          2 replies 0 retweets 12 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          It’s not just me. I think people lacking a brrrr are kinda beyond all help from others and are the loneliest people in the world. Because brrrr is how we appear in the world as individuals and connect with others. Without brrr you can’t be seen, no matter how hard you try.

          1 reply 0 retweets 15 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          I have seen one thing kinda-sorta work though. If you build walls around yourself, like tribal ingroup ot whatever, you can get a sort of ersatz brrrr going. It’s like locking out the infinite expanse of the universe so you inhabit only a finite subset unlocks inner infinitude.

          2 replies 0 retweets 8 likes
          Show this thread
        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          That wall though has to be kinda absolute, conceptually and in practice, like an event horizon. You really do have to irreversibly shout out all but a whitelisted part of reality. If it breaks in, you must resist and turn it back like it’s the forces of hell.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
          Show this thread
        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Haven’t yet worked out the mechanism. And anyway it doesn’t work well. It keeps breaking down. The walled-in pseudo-brrr is not robust. So the bad9c problem remains unsolved. This is more palliative than solution. But it’s better than displacement into inexhaustible hungers.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
          Show this thread
        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr May 17
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          This whole phenomenon makes me sad. Wish there was a way to reliably teach the discovery of inner abundance. I don’t think there is. It’s a lemon market of pretenders.

          4 replies 2 retweets 15 likes
          Show this thread
        17. End of conversation

      Loading seems to be taking a while.

      Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.

        Promoted Tweet

        false

        • © 2020 Twitter
        • About
        • Help Center
        • Terms
        • Privacy policy
        • Imprint
        • Cookies
        • Ads info