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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

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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 Aug 2
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      It’s that last point that requires turning hypocrisy into a virtue. If you’re going to pretend the theater is real, you’re going to have to do a lot of pragmatic shit on the DL to keep up the pretense. If the backstage isn’t acknowledged as real, you have to be hypocritical.

      1 reply 1 retweet 12 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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      Aside: this is one reason a long-running theme of my writing since the 2009 Gervais Principle is simply pointing out “err... this is theater.” And Anglo-native people are surprised every time and act like a veil has been lifted and red pill enlightenment achieved.

      2 replies 5 retweets 25 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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      This is anecdotal, but non-Anglo people tend to be generally less surprised by my “X is theater” shtick. Because their suspension of theater awareness is less complete.

      1 reply 0 retweets 16 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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      Another way to think of it. If you strip away the front end theater elements of Anglo life, there is no there there culturally to backstage life. Just an industrial backend with functional activities. This is not true of most cultures.

      2 replies 1 retweet 25 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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      In most cultures it makes sense to say “real life happens at home” (== “life as visibly performed is theater and everybody gets that”). It doesn’t in the US. The tiniest aspects of domestic life turn into theater fodder.

      1 reply 2 retweets 22 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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      Like take cuisine. In the US “home made” versions of classic dishes (chili, barbecue, apple pie) are first-class members of public identity theater. If you have a great chili recipe you’ll likely enter contests or otherwise become known for it.

      2 replies 1 retweet 10 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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      In India, sure every family tends to have a recipe for say sambar or garam masala and part of invisible life is passing these around etc backstage. There is a clear distinction between “restaurant” versions of recipes and home-made ones. And the latter are not “on stage” as much.

      1 reply 1 retweet 14 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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      Okay, but long-winded point of this. Covid is a weirdly hard challenge for such kayfabe cultures because the logic of tackling them lies backstage and doesn’t lend itself to on-stage performance scripting. I mean the best Trump could Do was weakly aim for “masks are patriotic”

      2 replies 1 retweet 13 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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      OTOH you can’t tackle them backstage either because a) you won’t admit there IS a backstage b) the backstage is a barren cultural desert, with everything making it lovable culturally strip-mined for theatrical use

      1 reply 1 retweet 14 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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      And here’s the funny thing. The US tends to solve it’s “backstage” problems that require human culture by filling roles with non-anglo immigrants. But the moment these immigrants get acculturated they want to get on-stage too. Because they recognize that’s where the power is.

      2 replies 2 retweets 17 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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      So the “Victorian” mindset of pretending the theater is the whole thing is contagious. It’s a virus in its own right. A pretty powerful one. For a century the Anglo-middle-class victorian-roots virus spread across the world, creating hypocritical kayfabe middle classes everywhere

      2:46 PM - 2 Aug 2020
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      • Country Bear👍🇬🇧 Curried Apotheosis Stotting Ungulate Alvin Leong Kerry Olaf Alexander Xenopoulos rudy cloudman Michael Buckley🇨🇦
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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          But nowhere did it get as strong as in its native lands, and nowhere did it exterminate the backstage as a cultural zone as completely as in the US/UK. And nowhere else did the theatrical frontfalse consciousness become the *only* available consciousness to inhabit.

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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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          Now let’s ask: does Stephenson’s original extrapolation still work? I think it doesn’t. Covid is the first of many systemic backstage challenges to come, and they’ll only get trickier. The frontstage/backstage cultural architecture with front denying the back is untenable.

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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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          The backstage is where many complex coordination problems in a high-tech civilizational stack emerge. The pretense that they can all be solved with a theater of individualist freedom cornering all political power, with all else labeled Actual Communism and Gulags is doomed.

          2 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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          The backstage is a complex, varied space. It is not a space where nature takes kindly to attempts to solve The Mask Question via a calculus of theatrical freedom calculations. It punishes attempts to do so with 10s of 1000s dead.

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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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          If you can’t feel human unless you’re in the spotlight of the Great Neo-Victorian Dream Type 32a, being acknowledged and validated as exactly the kind of Free Cog in the System you think you are, the future will be a very uncomfortable place for you.

          1 reply 2 retweets 18 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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          To the extent that we’re all Victorian now, especially in the middle classes around the world, it’s going to be a challenge for all of us, adapting to a world where front-stage public theaters is no longer the essence of civilization.

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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          The idea that we all belong in a universal “story of humanity” is peculiarly Victorian I think. I see few signs of it in other times/places. The closest is evangelical religions, which act like everyone will eventually either be part of their one true faith or condemned to hell.

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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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          Addendum: I think a big part of the Great Theatricalization of Victorian-descended middle-class societies is that they started seeing their lives reflected in TV and movies. For most of the world, movies and TV, even local rather than global-Hollywood, is Not About Us.

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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 2
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          Which incidentally gets at why representation in movies/tv (the mirror of the theatrical society) is such a flashpoint. You’re not a real free human until you’re represented on screen as a fictional free human, and you can’t access political power until you are.

          2 replies 1 retweet 24 likes
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        11. End of conversation

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