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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 Sep 30
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      If you don’t like what they say outside of the context where they’re seen as speaking for you, you can actually simply distance yourself without any loss. If your CEO declares that vanilla is the official icecream flavor of Acme, inc. but you prefer strawberry, you can... say so.

      1 reply 0 retweets 18 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 30
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      If your support for a leader is a tough compromise and some sort of “least worst” choice, guess what? You’re compromised. Don’t whine about the choices being limited or that the other choices were worse. We can read your values in the compromises you chose.

      1 reply 0 retweets 27 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 30
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      I’m starting to think it isn’t just unprincipled speakers and writers who debase language. It’s cowardly listeners and readers who beg for such abuse so they can find room in ambiguity to justify their compromised positions to themselves as actually fine.

      2 replies 4 retweets 47 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 30
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      It’s not lack of verbal talent that stops a lot of people from speaking for themselves. It’s fear of revealing their own failings to themselves. So long as you hide in the benefit-of-doubt band around a leader’s words, with others, you can feel at least not-alone in your views.

      1 reply 1 retweet 30 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 30
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      This is why I flipped the bozobit on Peter Thiel the moment he made that “take Trump seriously but not literally” comment. It was perfectly clear what values he was signaling with that choice to read what he wanted into Trump’s rhetoric.

      3 replies 0 retweets 38 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 30
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      In 2016 you were going to be compromised no matter who you voted for. If you voted for Hillary as I did, you were signing up to be viewed as a status-quo preserving cronyist hypocrite supporting machine politics and militarism for 4 years. I’ve been fine with that perception.

      2 replies 1 retweet 22 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 30
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      But somehow Trumpies don’t seem to want to own their compromises. Congrats, you’re not seen as a hypocrite. You’re seen as a racist. You don’t like that label? You want to “problematize” it like the postmodernists you hate? Tough. You coulda chosen “hypocrite.” But you didn’t.

      1 reply 2 retweets 29 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 30
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      We all pay a price for our compromises. I’m civil and friendly to those in my circle I know supported Trump, but they’ll never again have my trust, and I’ll never knowingly work with them again. Not that it’s a staggering loss to anyone to have me cut them off.

      2 replies 1 retweet 24 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 30
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      And I’m fine being cut off in turn for being openly pro-Hillary in 2016 or pro-Biden in 2020 (in both cases, I’ve mainly been bozobitted by Bernie supporters). Easy enough for me, since I have no significant power and so can’t lose any power through being unambiguous.

      2 replies 0 retweets 16 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 30
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      Point is, other people’s words, unlike bullets, only have as much power over you as you allow them to. A bullet can kill you dead whether you’re courageous or cowardly. Others’ words... not so much. Unless they’re “avada kedavra”.

      1 reply 3 retweets 20 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 30
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      This holds true for institutional words too, cf. the kerfuffle over Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s words. A corporation is not a employee-statement-issuing body. It’s a highly asymmetric structure designed to make some people —execs and board members — count more than others.

      4:27 PM - 30 Sep 2020
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      • Gordon Brander LUKE AYMON Jeff Sun upbeat confidence Saritha Priya Involuntary Man's Laughter Alec Resnick 伟大的舵手 Ahmed 𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚘𝚣𝚘 🟡
      1 reply 0 retweets 20 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 30
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          When a company speaks through it’s PR apparatus, it’s mainly the execs and board members speaking. Employees can choose to walk away, customers can stop using the product, the company can accept the cost of missing out on some talent, shareholders can dump shares.

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 30
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          If you want to debase words so they become commodious enough to fit your views without you having to pay a real cost like quitting a job, don’t complain if they stop being useful for pointing to things of meaning things. That’s what debasement means.

          1 reply 3 retweets 18 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 30
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          Words that mean everything to everybody eventually mean nothing to anybody. And words that speak meaninglessly for power don’t share that power among all being spoken for. They erode that power in proportion to the abuse.

          2 replies 3 retweets 13 likes
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        5. End of conversation

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