If something is worth doing for free, it’s worth doing nerd-out obsessively-compulsively for free. “Free” implies the purest kind of surplus leisure energy. It should be unshackled from ordinary ROI thinking. You’ve *already* accepted zero returns. So why hold back?
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This is why most examples are from things like fan theories or hobby projects. Domains where talent is not expected, ROI-logic is suspended by default, and the work is its own reward. Labor of love stuff, but love is the wrong word.
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Psychologically what’s going on is that you’ve triggered a network effect in your head that generates seemingly limitless reserves of attention and engagement with the subject. That’s nerd-OCD. You become a perpetual motion machine of sorts.
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The Greeks called it “nerdos” and feared it. It’s where we get the word “nerd.”
They feared it because they knew it was more powerful than “thymos” and will-to-power
That’s why they tried to ban it. Nerdos was viewed as devil energy in the Middle Ages.Show this thread -
That’s why we have sayings like “the devil hides in the details” or “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” Religious fear of ocd-nerd energy that trashes ROI formulas, the concept of money, and the supposed value of striving for recognition in thymos contests.
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