I wonder why many feel the urge to define a posture and motive in the Discourse. My one big meta thought is that it’s better to be in the discourse than out of it. Beyond that I have no strong views on how/why to be here or what to do here now that I’m committed to being here.
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My Discourse = 30% twitter, 40% newsletters/ blog, 30% everything else (Discord, Slack, Facebook).
This presence mix is like a housing decision. As in “Ok I’m going to live in this city/neighborhood/apt. I’m going to do this mix of things possible here.” No big theory around it
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Physically there’s reasons you have to live *somewhere*
There’s no such thing as going offline from meatspace. There’s nowhere more theoretically basic to go.
I feel the same about online. You have to be online *somewhere* it’s becoming part of the definition of being alive.
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It’s a bit like language. Isn’t it interesting that everybody is at least monolingual?
Only babies and severely mentally disabled people are unlingual. Living entirely outside of language. Linguistically, your head has to live *somewhere*.
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Lingual, like citizenship of at least one country, is an ex officio feature of being human.
“Native tongue” is an interesting phrase.
Physically, I emigrated to the US from India at age 22. Linguistically I emigrated from Hindi+Kannada to English somewhere between ages 3-8.
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While I can still triple boot and think with native fluency in all three, English is my default now since I spend almost all my time in my English head, and have the biggest vocabulary in it. The other two are usable, but atrophied. Feels like booting into a 1980s DOS shell.
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Being online will one day have at least the richness of being “lingual”
Being offline beyond a point will be a weird condition like floating in outer space or living on a boat in international waters. Or being like a pre-lingual baby that has no “native tongue” yet.
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It already feels that way. When I talk to Very Offline people (that should be the labeled exceptional state, with Very Online being the unlabeled default), either elderly like my parents, or young waldenponders, it’s like they’re missing a dimension of aliveness.
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Another example is money and being in/out of currency based commerce world. Trying to live off the money grid entirely feels like missing a basic dimension of aliveness rooted in buying and selling.
Goes without saying I also enjoy being Very Currencified and buying/selling.
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I think I’d hate being in a non-monetary world where all commerce was based on communitarian sharing or something. Ugh.
Shut up and take my money. And buy my shit for money too.
I don’t need us to always also be friends or in each other’s Dunbar sets.
Commerce is great.
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I think optimal online-ness should ebb and flow between the extremes. Analogous to deep work / deep rest.
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Sure, like linguality needs it’s own cycle of literal sleep/wakefulness with perhaps some inner-silence meditative periods of unlinguality thrown in.

