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 28
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Despite the fact that rewards of the system working are very unevenly distributed, ironically, every class winning or losing in terms of rewards seems super attached to the identities that keep the system the same. They want more rewards, but don’t want to change their identities

      1 reply 0 retweets 17 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 28
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      To bring it back around to investing, there is investing in *yourself* to consider. Self-Investors (1) invest in their own growth, destroying last identities to forge new ones. Self-Investors (2) double down harder and harder on who they think they are.

      1 reply 3 retweets 33 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 28
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      There’s also Self-Investors 1.5. People who “grow” in a limited way reducible to class mobility. Start rich, fall into poverty and go commie. Start poor, get rich, and go capitalist. They say you’re the mean of your 5 best friends. These class-movers just change their 5. 🙄

      2 replies 0 retweets 17 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 28
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      In Great Tuth terms, these 1.5ers never achieve any sort of integration between opposed great truths. They just go from one great truth to its negation, by cherrypicking a different subset of confirmatory evidence from their experiences.

      1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 28
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      There’s a behavior I call default-stereotype switching. Going socialist to capitalist? Switch poor-default from the suffering, exploited people you know to the resentful lazy ones. Going the other way? Switch rich-default from generous entrepreneur to Wall Street scammer.

      1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
      Show this thread
    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 28
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      So long as you don’t pop out of the class-mobility identity ladder entirely, and drop class-based defaults of admiration and contempt for individuals, you’re part of the problem. Which is fine. It’s not a shaming. It means you’ll be manipulated as interchangeable passives.

      1 reply 1 retweet 16 likes
      Show this thread
    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 28
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Not a coincidence: every single time anyone has strongly criticized me for my values, politics, or aesthetics (usually lack thereof), when I look, there’s a strong, hardened class identity behind it (this is not true of competence/skill/ignorance criticisms, which I appreciate)

      1 reply 1 retweet 18 likes
      Show this thread
    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 28
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      I’m pretty bourgeois. Petit, not haute. It’s traditionallly been the least admired class, inviting the most contempt. The identitarian poor see it as a snobbish climber class. The identitarian rich see it as a gauche not-even-new-money class. It is the most fluid-identity class.

      1 reply 1 retweet 23 likes
      Show this thread
    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 28
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      The upside of being in maximal contempt zone is that it is the zone where it is most difficult to harden an identity. There are no bourgeois manifestos or middle-class ideological tracts *for the bourgeois*, despite this being the class that writes these things for other classes

      2 replies 0 retweets 25 likes
      Show this thread
    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 28
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Writing *about* the petit bourgeois is almost universally unsympathetic. Much of it by members of the class themselves, via ritual self-flagellation. This is the world of Babbitts and Karens. They are portrayed as standing for nothing except their own comfort and convenience.

      2 replies 0 retweets 11 likes
      Show this thread
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 28
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      But middle-class societies tend also to be the ones in which human nature evolves fastest, through identity creative-destruction, as tidal forces of contempt from above and below tear apart and reconstitute the class, every generation. They also staff the investor (1) world.

      12:37 PM - 28 Jun 2020
      • 10 Likes
      • juvyloli vitalPixel Heet Malde Dorian Taylor Cursion Jordan Torbiak Maven Alex Bowles Vrushali Desai
      1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 28
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Rich and poor usually don’t change and don’t want to change. They have stable identities they aspire to, conform to, and then cling to with hardened determination. The petit bourgeois middle class doesn’t have this psychological luxury. It evolves as a series of tropes and memes.

          1 reply 0 retweets 15 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 28
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          I don’t mind this. I’m fine with my life story being a series of bad memes that don’t cohere. Wojack today, Karen tomorrow. Neither world-denting Straussian-Girardian hero n or working class hero. Maybe I’ll title my autobiography “Glub and brrr: the story of a series of memes”

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 28
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Positive archetypes are for people who live on maps. Investor (2) types, whether they invest with money or hardened self-congratulatory class identities that make growth an imperative for everybody but themselves. The price of living on the territory is being reduced to a meme.

          1 reply 1 retweet 6 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 28
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          I’ll stop here though I could go on. If you’re interested in this line of thought, I’m mainly developing it in my Great Weirding essay series on @breaking_smart This thread is kinda my starter assumptions for that, though I’ve never laid it out like thishttps://breakingsmart.com/en/the-great-weirding/ …

          1 reply 1 retweet 16 likes
          Show this thread
        6. 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