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 Jun 7
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      We live in a time with a growing phenomenological, object-level (or as I prefer to call it, log-level) bias. Patience for abstractions of any sort is at its lowest in my living memory. If you argue at an “ism” level, you are presumed stupid until proven worth listening to.

      10 replies 38 retweets 229 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      If you traffic in ideas, you’d do well to compile them down to the lowest level you can manage. The ideal form of intellectual output is a sort of mindful witnessing of the zeitgeist where your abstractions are implied by the phenomenological boundaries you draw, not definitions

      1 reply 8 retweets 104 likes
      Show this thread
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Memes are one bit of evidence for this trend. Memes don’t just go to the log-level themselves, they witness the game of abstractions itself from the underbelly perspective, bracketing and framing them with sensory-phenomenological templates.

      12:38 PM - 7 Jun 2020
      • 5 Retweets
      • 41 Likes
      • Olaf Yatharth Britt Your #1 Fan 🤩 Chelsea Palmer wonders shall never cease Bernard PropOrNot ID Service 🇺🇸 ḿ̷̦̣̲̓̎x̸̻͙̠͂̀̈͌̾̚x̸͂̀w̷̛̮̓͐͂̇̊̕̕x̸̯͓̺̦̦̜̠̋͆̈̂̀͘ͅ
      1 reply 5 retweets 41 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          When you cast a high-falutin’ abstract debate into say the American Chopper, expanding brain, or distracted boyfriend templates, you’re asserting the supremacy of phenomenology over abstractions. The concrete frame subverts the abstract content to varying degrees.

          1 reply 5 retweets 50 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Memeing *is* how you do philosophy and polisci now. If you don’t get why or how, you’re destined for dismissal and marginalization. To those who take your abstract frames seriously you may be a genius. To those who meme-pwn you, you’re a lolcow. Guess which perception wins?

          4 replies 17 retweets 101 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Memeing is more powerful than mockery. Where mockery merely imitates and exaggerates the contradictions and incoherencies in your abstraction from the POV of a competing abstraction, a meme juxtaposes your abstraction against a phenomenological ground.

          1 reply 7 retweets 69 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          To be mocked is to merely be drawn into a beef with a competing ideology that is itself vulnerable to mocking. But to be memed is to have your abstraction sucked into the gravity well of nihilism that is the phenomenological ground. Memes pull head-in-cloud ideas down into mud.

          1 reply 4 retweets 62 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Memes are not nihilistic. They merely hold up a mirror to the latent nihilism in any abstraction that aspires to be an operating system. Memes are the Ghost of Abstraction Future in a An Abstraction Carol. The future farce in the current tragedy.

          1 reply 5 retweets 57 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          The best memes don’t destroy ideas. They show you how ideas are doomed to destroy themselves. Also — and this is more personal taste than an objective part of meme aesthetics — the best memes simply subvert without judgment. They don’t explicitly ridicule the fallen.

          1 reply 10 retweets 70 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          There’s almost a Two Cultures divide (cf the C. P. Snow one) growing between people who get this at gut level and people who don’t. Memes are at the heart of the new science, unironic trafficking in abstractions is the new humanities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures …

          3 replies 2 retweets 40 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          Bolder statement cf morning thread: Despite the ism in it, capitalism is not an ideology but a meme about ideologies. Including ideologies that presume to theorize it. It turns abstractions from sources ranging from Karl Marx to Ayn Rand into... schwag. https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1269657013010575361?s=21 …https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1269657013010575361 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Kinda curious how “capitalism” as an ideal only exists in the heads of people opposed to it. The term points to a series of historic pseudo-equilibrium conditions that are unified only by being paths of least coordination resistance through their eras.
          Show this thread
          1 reply 1 retweet 28 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Memes are to narrative markets what dollar prices are to financial markets. They impose a relative transactional value on ideas. A publisher puts both Ayn Rand and Karl Marx into book and tee-shirt form-factors pricing them at $15 or whatever. Memes do the same.

          1 reply 4 retweets 40 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Think about it: everything cast into the distracted boyfriend meme template has a certain narrative price tag and implicit valuation on it (marking its worth relative to other ideas, and its current position on its inevitable journey to farce status).

          1 reply 0 retweets 24 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Take the same au courant abstraction like say “defund the police” and apply the following meme templates to it: Distracted boyfriend American chopper Butterfly man Expanding brain Doge Harambe Money printer go brrr The one that sticks the best is the “price” of the idea

          1 reply 6 retweets 39 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 7
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Hell you could arrange memes on a nihilism spectrum from doge to harambe perhaps and apply them to lots of ideas and literally price them by likes/ratios and create an actual prediction market based on memes, a formal version of what we do on Twitter anarchically

          4 replies 3 retweets 49 likes
          Show this thread
        14. 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