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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 30
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      I'm on the fence on this one. Recycling doesn't work now, but *could* be made to work, and it's good to have those behaviors installed -- so long as people are actively working on the problem. If they're not (currently they're not), why bother with "aspirational recycling"?

      4 replies 5 retweets 89 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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      But overall, I don't think recycling is a grift. At best it is collective wishful thinking. And it could still kinda work out.

      1 reply 2 retweets 82 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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      But the important point is that when you switch the justification from "it works" to "it installs values/creates awareness" you're suddenly changing the economic and effort logic. Actual solutions are worth much more than "creating awareness" about a problem.

      1 reply 21 retweets 131 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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      If you've installed a lucrative and profitable habit that an org is used to doing, stopping it is both hard and counterproductive to the grifting motive. Why not charge "solution" rates for "awareness" palliatives if the suckers will continue to pay?

      1 reply 6 retweets 76 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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      By contrast, scams, frauds, long cons... when they are exposed, they become untenable. Buying back into the narrative on alternative premises is impossible. The lie is just too big and blatant.

      1 reply 2 retweets 61 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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      Almost all business consulting offerings structured as domain-independent process training and workshops are almost-grifts. Almost because they cut to the chase and pitch "awareness" and "values" level value propositions from the start, never even pretending to solve the problem.

      1 reply 9 retweets 105 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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      Another clear "tell" of a grift: there are no learnable skills that are unique to the grift itself. For example: lean six sigma is a grift because the skilled content is just standard textbook statistics, industrial engineering etc. The meta-stuff is all theatrical bullshit.

      2 replies 27 retweets 176 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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      Another clear tell: the grift feeds on what I call "learning curve arbitrage" -- it relies on a steady supply of n00bs who don't yet know enough to know what doesn't work, and can be conned into idealistic and energetic belief and performance of theater.

      5 replies 8 retweets 133 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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      If you as grifter, can find a particularly idealistic, sincere, energetic, and charismatic young ingenue (not necessarily female) to use as figurehead (*cough* Greta *cough* Joan of Arc *cough*) a LOT of grifter reputations can be laundered by BIRGing a genuine idealist.

      1 reply 6 retweets 80 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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      The presence of such ingenues within a movement is a very clear tell. Snowden, Damore, Greta, etc. etc. It's almost a sign of arrival for a larger grift, at cottage-industry scale (the unicorn scale for grift startups) when they find themselves a charismatic innocent to work with

      2 replies 2 retweets 66 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

      Btw, this thread on grifting is complementary to my thread on bullshit jobs and where they come from. Grifting creates bullshit jobs if they succeed in installing themselves. Eliminating bullshit jobs is the defense against grifting attacks.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1277760202951897089 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      Culture war wrangling has unfortunately become a key element in my consulting. It is now the 4th, and youngest manifestation of bullshit jobs. Bullshit jobs evolve in one of 4 ways: automation, outsourcing, trumpification, and now: wokification. Only the first 2 are survivable
      Show this thread
      1:09 PM - 30 Jun 2020
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      • Nicest Snog Miracle Lurker محمد عاقب NothingBetter antimule Abstract Fairy Dr Dr Bitcoin Al Bundy DefinitelyNotSweetDee Business Industry Expert
      2 replies 12 retweets 87 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          I will admit I have a soft spot for grifters who aren't too damaging. The optimal amount of grift in a system is not zero. Grifters do serve one valuable function: draining away clueless idealist energy down distraction bunny trails.

          1 reply 3 retweets 120 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          Damnit, I had a couple of great turns of phrase I was thinking of for additional points, but then got distracted by something and forgot them. Now unless I remember them, you'll all have to do without them.

          2 replies 2 retweets 41 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          AH YES I recall one of the phrases. Problem aestheticization. Instead of solving a problem, you make it look prettier. Many grifts are based on problem aestheticization. It's literally palliative to sensory trauma. It's like painting a house but billing the cost of the house.

          1 reply 12 retweets 120 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          Problem aestheticization is a great way to construct a grift because it at once presents a cheap thing to sell, and a clear audience that will buy. There are 2 kinds of people concerned by a problem. People concerned about consequences. People concerned about ugliness.

          1 reply 15 retweets 72 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          The thing is, people concerned about the consequences of a problem going unsolved tend to investigate and think through boring, wonky, solution options. You do NOT want these people if you're a grifter. You want those emotionally traumatized by the *symptoms* of the problem.

          1 reply 16 retweets 76 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          If you're a woke grifter working in the racism market, you do NOT want to focus on say incarceration rates because that problem is literally locked away out of sight. There is no opportunity to aestheticize the problem. You want to focus on say casting decisions in hollywood.

          4 replies 10 retweets 120 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          Aestheticization of a problem immediately soothes the emotional trauma of those who can't deal with ugliness. But will they buy the bullshit non-solution? Yep. They are also the most likely to be values-based idealists who will stan causes with beautiful performative actions.

          2 replies 7 retweets 53 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          Aestheticization, performance, theater, emotional trauma, values, signaling. These are all aspects of the UX design of life. The producers of grift are ideological UX designers. The consumers of grift are people acutely sensitive to the sensory presentation of problems.

          1 reply 9 retweets 74 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          Ultimately what you're selling as a grifter is a self-image as an integrated, good person who has agency and exercises it wisely and morally. The buyers are precisely people who both lack that self-image and not inclined to poke beneath surface appearances.

          1 reply 9 retweets 84 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          Note: this is not exclusively restricted to sensory beauty. Certain kinds of abstract beauty work too. You can aestheticize a problem with beautiful spherical cow economics, and paper over the problem with lovely infographics and chartporn. That's aestheticizing a problem too.

          2 replies 4 retweets 57 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          Wonky investigation of the good sort is invariably very, very ugly. The data is a mess. The graphs are underwhelming, there is a messy mix of anecdote and tenuous trends. There is need for a good deal of repeated digging and refinement and ugly data dumpster diving.

          1 reply 8 retweets 60 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          Covid is a GREAT example of problem that presents opportunities for both kinds of grifting. Sensory-aesthetic grifting: dumb-ass designs restaurants with beautiful perspex partitions, mask chic. Abstract grifting: endless pretty chart porn of case counts.

          1 reply 4 retweets 57 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          I'll end with a small mea culpa. Yeah, a lot of what I do is also a bit of a grift. I aestheticize problems by finding pretty turns of phrase around which to build satisfying appreciative discourses. But in my defense, I'm ironic about it, and don't make much money off it.

          10 replies 3 retweets 95 likes
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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jun 30
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          Bonus: South Park S11E7 Night of the Living Homeless has a great joke about problem aestheticization. Can't find a clip, but here's the script fragment. "We could give the homeless all designer sleeping bags and makeovers. At least that way they'd be pleasant to look at."pic.twitter.com/uugmtYXG38

          8 replies 3 retweets 69 likes
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        16. End of conversation

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