Conversation

When attention is very scarce, and you have some discretionary ability to boost signals, any act of public curiosity becomes a political act. Whatever the content of your opinion on X, simply being publicly curious about X (minimum=liking a tweet) sends a message.
5
79
I suspect one reason drew fire for broaching sex redistribution is simply because as a signal booster he diverted scarce public attention to that topic. The actual opinion matters less than the act of putting that topic in the public short-term magic 7±2 meme buffer
3
27
Boosting the topic says “the needs/motives/desires of this group X are worth more attention than those of every other group I’m not signal-boosting.” I suspect it would be useful for public figures to preface displays of public curiosity with justification of importance.
2
10
Unlike private curiosity, public curiosity of thought leaders deploys more than their own attention. It’s a public attention allocation decision. When you tweet or RT something, you’re deploying num_followers*clickbaitness*avg_time attention, Like national park hygiene norms.
2
25
Replying to
The “fiat news” concept from is useful here. It’s a billion channel universe and you have some ability to mint fiat news whether you are aware of it or not, so be mindful what you boost.
1
17
I have always tended to self-censor public curiosity to things I think will harmoniously interest others in that space. This is from before I had any sort of platform. I suspect this is a basic personality trait. I just don’t like making a scene. I take all conflict offline.
17
Replying to and
Agree! Best Twitter users have signal and meta-signal. Meta-signal attracts signal: if user (like before he went dark) regularly RTs quality, people try to put signal in front of them in hope for a boost. Can be a virtuous cycle for enhancing booster's meta-signal.
1