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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

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 26
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted (((David Shor)))

      Any job you could lose over a tweet like this is probably not worth having. I’d expect more critical context in an essay-length review of the paper but this is fine for a tweet.https://twitter.com/davidshor/status/1265998625836019712 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      (((David Shor))) @davidshor
      Post-MLK-assasination race riots reduced Democratic vote share in surrounding counties by 2%, which was enough to tip the 1968 election to Nixon. Non-violent protests *increase* Dem vote, mainly by encouraging warm elite discourse and media coverage. http://www.omarwasow.com/Protests_on_Voting.pdf …. pic.twitter.com/VRUwnRFuVW
      7 replies 9 retweets 102 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 26
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted (((David Shor)))

      This is Shor’s apology tweet, but he lost the job anyway. If you look at the replies to both tweets, what people think is necessary context amounts to an impossible tweet. Forget 280, even 2800 characters would be a tight squeeze for an average writer. https://twitter.com/davidshor/status/1266448606321664004?s=21 …https://twitter.com/davidshor/status/1266448606321664004 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      (((David Shor))) @davidshor
      While I strongly admire @owasow ‘s work, it’s clear that I have not been, due to both my background and words, an effective messenger of his findings about the power of non-violent protest. I regret starting this conversation and will be much more careful moving forward. https://twitter.com/davidshor/status/1265998625836019712 …
      2 replies 2 retweets 25 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 26
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      I’m starting to converge on an odd diagnosis of Woke’s basic problem: trying to solve with language problems that are fundamentally not about language. Reality has an enormous amount of detail. There will also be vastly more tgatvremain unsaid than can be said about anything.

      7 replies 8 retweets 84 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 26
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      The challenge of using words well is to direct the benefit of doubt around what remains unsaid in ways that keep the conversation going. But this makes demands on the listener as much as the speaker. I’d like to see people get called out and canceled for “bad listening.”

      1 reply 8 retweets 71 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 26
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      If you want to distort the shape of the space of the unsaid around what’s said to hurt the speaker, it is *always* possible to do so. There’s always a hostile context you could assume. That somebody might do that is a risk you always take on in speaking at all.

      2 replies 5 retweets 56 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 26
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      But it takes a bad listener to materialize that risk. Here, I don’t actually blame the person who called Shor out, or the employer for firing him. They’ve made their choices. I’m saying the caller-outer is not worth accommodating in good faith and the job not worth having.

      2 replies 1 retweet 32 likes
      Show this thread
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 26
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      I’ve been saying this in private for a couple of years now — any institution vulnerable to Woke takeover should probably be abandoned to it. Salvage is not possible. Build alternatives anew. Bad Listener destruction is a power-trip drug that resists de-addiction.

      8:53 AM - 26 Jun 2020
      • 7 Retweets
      • 46 Likes
      • sanjaya Just a pan full of sausages Your #1 Fan 🤩 Fullbitchscholar Varun Adibhatla Kyle Anirudha Rajat stupid twitt account
      4 replies 7 retweets 46 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 26
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          It got a lot worse for Shor, btw, beyond just losing his job. But I continue to maintain: anything you lose over something like this was never worth having in the first place.https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/white-fragility-racism-racism-progressive-progressphiles-david-shor.html …

          2 replies 2 retweets 22 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 26
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          Funny thing, many people I've been saying this to in private were resisting the conclusion in 2017-18 but now agree with me. They held out hope for a long time that we could save good institutions. I have been arguing that the vulnerability is a sign of non-fixability.

          5 replies 2 retweets 29 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 26
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          A thing that's changed since 2017 is that a gap has opened up between "criticizing Woke" and "automatically presumed to be something worse." It is now becoming possible to criticize Woke publicly without being put into one a box like "classical liberal" or "crypto fascist" Yay

          4 replies 1 retweet 38 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 26
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Spike Protean

          This frustration is understandable (though I think refuge in mockery is an admission of failure of sorts). When you must speak, but you also must only speak in approved extraordinarily skilled ways, the demand is that you learn an esoteric language.https://twitter.com/stedmanhalliday/status/1276563289900584960 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Spike Protean @stedmanhalliday
          Replying to @vgr
          bUt SiLeNcE iS vIoLeNcE tHo.
          3 replies 2 retweets 17 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 26
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          Woke, like constitutional originalism, is essentially a scholastic religion rooted in the idea that some must become saints in order that others may be free. That, coupled with recognition that the average person is not in fact capable of saintliness, leads to textual fetishism.

          3 replies 3 retweets 33 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 26
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          To connect the dots explicitly, textualism is the Straussian belief that it is possible to be a "textbook saint" by studying some sainted text or set of discourses so closely that you can become capable of thinking exclusively in its language. You program yourself into sainthood.

          3 replies 1 retweet 19 likes
          Show this thread
        8. End of conversation
        1. Jason‏ @peregrine Jun 26
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          Replying to @vgr

          Recent refrain is always "but what if the person looses their FAANG job over sharing some SSC stuff???" The answer is the job sucked, find a new one. Especially for white collar and research, its a big world.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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        1. New conversation
        2. mrgunn‏ @mrgunn Jun 26
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          Replying to @vgr

          I think that gives this whole moment in history too much credit. If it's mostly just Marxists doing what they've always done for the reasons they always do it, there can't be that many of them.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 26
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          Replying to @mrgunn

          Not just Marxists... it's a structural vulnerability in a social media age that's open to anyone who learns to exploit it... they're just the first who've learned to use it well.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
        4. Show replies
        1. New conversation
        2. Varun Adibhatla‏ @vr00n Jun 27
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          Replying to @vgr

          Varun Adibhatla Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          My takeaway from this / Appropriating evidence is a mechanism that detains attention.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1064263511671365632?s=20 …

          Varun Adibhatla added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          If you really think your right to free speech/expression has been curtailed rather than expanded i last 20y, then ask yourself: what listeners were you holding captive who have now simply chosen not to listen to you, and what mechanisms were you using to detain their attention?
          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. Varun Adibhatla‏ @vr00n Jun 27
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          Replying to @vr00n @vgr

          Aware that I'm trying to detain your attention right now by appropriating your own speech. Listen to me dammit ! 😝

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        4. Show replies

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