Skip to content
By using Twitter’s services you agree to our Cookies Use. We and our partners operate globally and use cookies, including for analytics, personalisation, and ads.
  • Home Home Home, current page.
  • About

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Language: English
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • Bahasa Melayu
    • Català
    • Čeština
    • Dansk
    • Deutsch
    • English UK
    • Español
    • Filipino
    • Français
    • Hrvatski
    • Italiano
    • Magyar
    • Nederlands
    • Norsk
    • Polski
    • Português
    • Română
    • Slovenčina
    • Suomi
    • Svenska
    • Tiếng Việt
    • Türkçe
    • Ελληνικά
    • Български език
    • Русский
    • Српски
    • Українська мова
    • עִבְרִית
    • العربية
    • فارسی
    • मराठी
    • हिन्दी
    • বাংলা
    • ગુજરાતી
    • தமிழ்
    • ಕನ್ನಡ
    • ภาษาไทย
    • 한국어
    • 日本語
    • 简体中文
    • 繁體中文
  • Have an account? Log in
    Have an account?
    · Forgot password?

    New to Twitter?
    Sign up
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

Tweets

  • © 2020 Twitter
  • About
  • Help Center
  • Terms
  • Privacy policy
  • Imprint
  • Cookies
  • Ads info
Dismiss
Previous
Next

Go to a person's profile

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @

Promote this Tweet

Block

  • Tweet with a location

    You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

    Your lists

    Create a new list


    Under 100 characters, optional

    Privacy

    Copy link to Tweet

    Embed this Tweet

    Embed this Video

    Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Hmm, there was a problem reaching the server.

    By embedding Twitter content in your website or app, you are agreeing to the Twitter Developer Agreement and Developer Policy.

    Preview

    Why you're seeing this ad

    Log in to Twitter

    · Forgot password?
    Don't have an account? Sign up »

    Sign up for Twitter

    Not on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.

    Sign up
    Have an account? Log in »

    Two-way (sending and receiving) short codes:

    Country Code For customers of
    United States 40404 (any)
    Canada 21212 (any)
    United Kingdom 86444 Vodafone, Orange, 3, O2
    Brazil 40404 Nextel, TIM
    Haiti 40404 Digicel, Voila
    Ireland 51210 Vodafone, O2
    India 53000 Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Reliance
    Indonesia 89887 AXIS, 3, Telkomsel, Indosat, XL Axiata
    Italy 4880804 Wind
    3424486444 Vodafone
    » See SMS short codes for other countries

    Confirmation

     

    Welcome home!

    This timeline is where you’ll spend most of your time, getting instant updates about what matters to you.

    Tweets not working for you?

    Hover over the profile pic and click the Following button to unfollow any account.

    Say a lot with a little

    When you see a Tweet you love, tap the heart — it lets the person who wrote it know you shared the love.

    Spread the word

    The fastest way to share someone else’s Tweet with your followers is with a Retweet. Tap the icon to send it instantly.

    Join the conversation

    Add your thoughts about any Tweet with a Reply. Find a topic you’re passionate about, and jump right in.

    Learn the latest

    Get instant insight into what people are talking about now.

    Get more of what you love

    Follow more accounts to get instant updates about topics you care about.

    Find what's happening

    See the latest conversations about any topic instantly.

    Never miss a Moment

    Catch up instantly on the best stories happening as they unfold.

    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Attempts to humanize Trump supporters with sympathetic portrayals (sad story of farmer etc etc) remind me of the description of the planet Krikkit in HHGTTG. https://sites.google.com/site/h2g2theguide/Index/k/krikkit …pic.twitter.com/EnRKjzXSiP

      8 replies 17 retweets 152 likes
      Show this thread
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      There will be some charming, schmalzy story about a lifelong farmer in rural Nebraska and his he feels betrayed and how he felt heard by Trump etc. And in several hundred or even thousands of words there will never be an acknowledgment of the (popular) majority of the country.

      3:56 PM - 2 Nov 2020
      • 1 Retweet
      • 39 Likes
      • _ INTERGALACTIC RAILROAD 🟢 .petros The 1865 Commission stupid twitt account DR. evil donuts under the tree, PhD Drake E. (he/him) COVID deaths lag case counts by 3-4 weeks quite baffled
      1 reply 1 retweet 39 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          This particular aggrieved minority is somehow worthy of radical humanization in American media, achieved via literal erasure of the presence of other people in this country/world in the telling of their story as some sort of national synecdoche. Hallmark channelification 🙄.

          2 replies 1 retweet 50 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          While I’m annoyed by the clumsiness of the narrative wokewashing practiced by Hollywood, with its crippling focus on representation, it does underline the dangers of telling the story of any group as though it were the only group in the country/world.

          1 reply 0 retweets 33 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          “Erasure” as meant by the woke crowd generally refers to explicit obscuring of important roles played in stories by specific people who aren’t chosen for spotlight focus. Like say the black women in Hidden Figures, but this is a slightly different beast.

          1 reply 0 retweets 17 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          This kind of hillbilly-elegy sentimentality that washes out everything that’s “not Krikkit” from a story is a different genre of bullshit. The experience of a farmer in Nebraska cannot be meaningfully interpreted if you pretend the banker or cab-driver in New York doesn’t exist

          1 reply 0 retweets 26 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          It’s fine in fiction. Friends, Seinfeld pretended New York was the whole world and the suburbs and rural America were occasionally played for laughs. There’s a whole bunch of Red America shows that return the favor (Hallmark channel is full of them, plus stuff like Hart of Dixie)

          1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          But telling nonfiction “human interest” stories this way is bad. Yes, insular people everywhere are always going to tell their stories as though they are the only stories ones (or only truly, ineffably human ones). You do not have to pander to that conceit.

          1 reply 3 retweets 31 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          I squarely blame the media for this. This isn’t even hard writing. It’s not investigative journalism. It’s barely a notch above service journalism like travel or restaurant reviews. It’s utterly lazy to default to simple human interest point-of-view-character throughline stories.

          1 reply 0 retweets 28 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          You’re not writing a sitcom or telenovela. You’re not profiling the story of a Truman show type person living in an actual simulated reality bubble. These are functional adults who are aware of the rest of the world and choose to pretend it doesn’t matter.

          2 replies 2 retweets 33 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          If Mr. Nebraska Farmer acts like Chinese people are a faceless Yellow Peril Borg, call him on it. If he acts like a California vegan hippie commune is somehow worth less than his trad Norman Rockwell painting family, challenge that.

          1 reply 2 retweets 39 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          When the prejudices go the other way — a city elite person acting contemptuous of an exurban, small town or rural type — they get called on it, shamed for it, and a parade of politicians rushes to denounce them and extoll the virtues of Real Americans™

          3 replies 0 retweets 27 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          In a way it’s a deep kind of patronization to not hold these self-proclaimed Real Americans™ equally accountable for their prejudice-soaked self-narrativizing the same way demonized urban elites are. They’re not children even if they want to be treated as such.

          2 replies 2 retweets 29 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          On the flip side, actual under-represented minorities have to get less lazy too in telling their stories too, when given the chance. Self-essentializing intersectional tropes are part of the problem, not the solution. You’re a human being, not a baseball card. Act like it.

          2 replies 0 retweets 29 likes
          Show this thread
        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          When afforded an opportunity to tell your story, tell a universally interesting human story first. Worry about “representing” who you are second. Don’t let the nice-to-have representation and identity affirmation hijack your story and make it tedious. You’re better than Ayn Rand.

          1 reply 2 retweets 25 likes
          Show this thread
        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          On a related note, it’s telling that watching foreign TV/movies is coded as “elite” in the US, with an exception made for telemundo. Yes, the art-house stuff is affected and elitist, but you now have streaming availability of mediocre-middlebrow TV/movies from around the world.

          3 replies 1 retweet 23 likes
          Show this thread
        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          If you want to see people very different from you as human, there’s literally nothing stopping you these days. No access problems. Solid subtitled samples of middlebrow equivalents of your local fare from around the world are available on Netflix. It’s not elitism, it’s curiosity

          1 reply 3 retweets 26 likes
          Show this thread
        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted

          Haha ofc Sarah’s doing a proper teardown of the article in subtweeting https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1323297129830469638 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          This Tweet is unavailable.
          1 reply 0 retweets 19 likes
          Show this thread
        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Just to be clear this is not a problem unique to the US. But the peculiar mix of unusual narrative homogeneity for a country this big and diverse is weird (328m, of which 236m is white. The 92m non-white fraction of this country is bigger than most countries).

          5 replies 2 retweets 18 likes
          Show this thread
        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          It’s one thing for say South Korea (51m, 99% ethnically Korean, largest minority, Chinese, at 20k) to tell that kind of homogeneous story about itself (it kinda does). It’s quite another for the US (6.5x in size, 30x the diversity) to do so.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
          Show this thread
        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          It’s particularly weird for me. Growing up in India, the population was 600-900m when I was growing up (1974-92). Only 2x-3x the size. But literally ~30 mutually unintelligible linguistic regions. They didn’t even all tell the Mahabharata story the same or explain Diwali the same

          1 reply 0 retweets 14 likes
          Show this thread
        21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Comparing American Christmas to Indian Diwali is revealing. The former is some sort of homogenized Boomer-childhood monoculture compared to Christmas around the world. Diwali *within* India has an off-by-one regional date variation and at least 2 unrelated mythologies.

          1 reply 0 retweets 22 likes
          Show this thread
        22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          India is probably too much of a cultural chaos for its own good, just as Korea is probably way too monocultural, but the US probably needs to 10x the narrative chaos. There’s too little story for this much country.

          1 reply 1 retweet 35 likes
          Show this thread
        23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Telling only 1 kind of story as the Real American Story™ should count as a weapon of mass destruction in a country this big, and diverse. And not a young country either. 528 years of post-Columbian history is plenty. This country is too old to tell itself kindergarten stories.

          3 replies 5 retweets 40 likes
          Show this thread
        24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Things that happened after 1492: - Galileo, Shakespeare born 1564, 72y later - Napoleon’s brother Joseph *retired* to New Jersey - The French Revolution was *after* American one Enough with the “young country” excuse. More a country living in its parents basement at age 40

          3 replies 5 retweets 42 likes
          Show this thread
        25. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 2
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Though Hollywood’s attempts to increase the narrative bandwidth are often cringe, at least they’re trying. Real America™ actively resists any sort of variation on the official story. A communist party propaganda wing could only dream of engineering this kind of mind-closure.

          0 replies 0 retweets 15 likes
          Show this thread
        26. End of conversation

      Loading seems to be taking a while.

      Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.

        Promoted Tweet

        false

        • © 2020 Twitter
        • About
        • Help Center
        • Terms
        • Privacy policy
        • Imprint
        • Cookies
        • Ads info