Tag: Community

Categories
Startups

Day 814 and Odd Hours

I’m a little bit of a work fetishist. I’m into shit like routines and the Protestant work ethic and I avidly participated in hustle culture. But I regret to inform you that most of it is a lie.

So much of your professional life ends up getting wasted to slavish gestures to productivity porn. It’s just not how real life works. But it sure looks sexy when you lay it out like an Instagram reel.

But maybe it’s not always just for show. Maybe there is something you don’t understand about how things do or don’t work. So you accept some social norms to fit in with others and you find their advice on shit like sleep more and get high quality protein is sort of first principles.

You have the basics of being a responsible adult and learning from others while you do it. We have a grand shared culture and some of it is useful and some of it is superstition and sometimes it’s not clear which is which. But shared meaning is how humans organize. Maybe there is value to meetings.

Point my dear whacky zoomer autists is you need to be able to be a functioning member of civilization despite what Covid may have revealed. You have to accommodate other people’s lives even if you don’t like everything. Welcome to the herd.

And honestly you should have to learn to fit in a bit of life that overlaps with real humans. Even though we have total access to our most niche nerd fandoms online, we deal with normies in real life.

But I’ve also come to realize that performance is a game. And you can train yourself to go from zero to halfway decent if you just make an effort. But the real art of it all the tip and tricks and how-to guides comes down to just doing the work and figuring it out. The intangibles make you an expert. That’s the stuff you spend a life refining and it doesn’t ever take a break. It’s why all the super successful people are also kind of fuck ups.

Sometimes the weird is genuine as they have rethought a an assumption about the world and intend to make their vision known in the world. And that’s not done on bankers hours.

I work on Sunday when something happens and the momentum shifts and you know that adding your gravity to the matter could make a difference. And so you go the extra mile for someone else because it’s about us trusting each other to work with reality but also see each other as we are. And most of us are weird and it’s fine and you’ve got to work the way to makes your weird shine.

If you are good at your niche and you apply your knowledge and tell it straight then sometimes you do some magic and it moves your universe. So yeah sometimes you’ve got to keep weird hours to hold space for the possibility.

Categories
Politics

Day 811 and Hierarchy

I came across an interesting bit of reading on the relative stability of hierarchies of violence today. It’s a tidbit on a Substack so epistemic status is that I learned something and I’m thinking a lot about trust as we live through various crisis points in real time on networked media.

The article that starts with prison gangs and the weight of violent action on bosses and gets deep on hierarchical stability and selection pressures. I really do recommend the reading as it gets into Scottish kings, American federal bureaucracy, and military service academies.

I’m working on improving my theory of organizational structure because somehow I am one of the louder “thinks in public” about corporate governance and decentralized autonomous organization. It’s a bit of an accident as I am just very interested in how collectives organize resources at different scales.

Some of investing thesis surrounds a nexus of how we organize decentralized power when centralized powers wish us your in-group to be illegal or killed. It’s a salient question for all of us in an age of institutional failure and I’m keen to learn more about what works in the most adverse situations.

Skarbek might call this market competition for governance, an Italian futurist might say “War is the hygiene of the world”, a musician might say a rolling stone gathers no moss, a survivalist that the quickest stream is the freshest…But the phenomenon remains. the devil reigns in hell… because where else are you going to go

I’m a doomer but only because I’m keen to head off going to hell. I’d like to avoid us having to return to a Hobbesian war of all against all just because we’ve gotten a little tired of liberalism because it allows for out-groups to live and let live. So putting it out there that functional systems can be stable and maybe stability isn’t our only goal.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 806 and Inputs

I’ve had a very intense month. In the past thirty days I feel like I’ve lived an entire lifetime of emotions.

I had some exciting but modestly controversial press in Vanity Fair about how chaotic the future looks in America. That brought a lot of attention and new LPs in chaotic.capital who want to invest in solutions for living in a rapidly changing future shocked world.

Then we were off to Mexico to celebrate my father’s 80th birthday and I had to grapple with complicated emotions on being present for family and the aspirations I have for a life that doesn’t align with disability.

Within a few days of getting back I had my sense making capacity crash override my brain into a snowblind. I thought I was going a little crazy but no it was because a bank collapsed. Then I heard some dog whistles about euthanizing people like me.

And finally I realized there is no point in doing my own writing in the wake of ChatGPT4 and decided that I’d do it anyways because organic human brewed content from Montana is fun to make.

It’s been an astonishing amount of inputs into my system and I am leaving out a lot of personal life details that I’ll leave folks to guess at. As exhausting as all of the above sounds it only represents a fraction of the work and emotional energy I brought to bear on expanding myself to meet this moment.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 805 and Legibility

Being inscrutable is a tactical asset in our extremely online age. As more informational influence campaigns are waged, it becomes easier to invade your headspace if you are too predictable.

I’m not saying that being predictable isn’t worthwhile. If you have a firm foundation of philosophy or religion that dictates a stance sometimes you just have to own it. I’m a libertarian and I often walk the line of what I consider to be foundational beliefs in the value of other people’s freedom in relation to mine.

But I also live in reality where the grey of living in a civilization is a lot less clear. Anyone who doesn’t admit to this fundamental tension is untrustworthy as far as I’m concerned.

This of course makes me legible. It is one of the buzzwords in my favorite online spaces. It is the art of how we make ourselves legible to others such that we can see and be seen. I rather like this philosophy overall.

But I am also quite sure that if you give someone an opening to fuck with you they probably will. It’s definitely a risk to be seen. It makes you a target. But it’s also how you become a beacon. So it’s an over under decision on how much you care about other people attacking you is up to you. But if you open about experimenting with life and how little you know it almost always turns out alright.

There is a theory of public relations, much popularized by Steve Bannon and legal discovery, called flood the zone with shit. And sometimes not giving your enemies a sense of who you is because you are always in process of becoming more and bigger and inscrutable and then suddenly you are in the Heart of Darkness.

It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention

Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness

So everyone be optimistic and find your people but remember everyone is going to be playing the same game. So I’d definitely recommend you don’t cheat and play the long game.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 759 and All Dressed

Social media has given us so many ways to become fans. We have ever more content thanks the streaming wars. Give content a chance to live everywhere online and it will develop a fanbase beyond its intended audience. The internet gives small shows outsized impact.

I’m a fan of a Canadian comedy called a Letterkenny. It’s about a small town in Canada. It’s got people and their problems. It’s a very funny character study and has fundamentally warm and loving humor. I’ve watched every episode and the spin-off. I’ve taken a lot of solace in the very human nature of the show, particularly during the pandemic years when everyone felt far away from each other.

There is a phenomenon that is particularly prominent online called parasocial relationships. Someone creates art or a personality and it develops a fandom. Over time, the fans, through repeated exposure to a character or show, believe they know them like a friend. It is fun to be in the fandom. Enjoying art is a universal experience. I am a stan for Letterkenny. I’m in a parasocial relationship with the Letterkenny crew and it’s universe.

How deep is it? Well my husband and I recently ordered some Canadian chip flavor called all dressed featured on an episode of Letterkenny. The chip is, as the name suggests, every single type of flavor. It is salt and vinegar, bbq, ketchup (weird but crucial), and sour cream & onion. And it is absolutely delicious. As a Twitter friend said to me, it is the Dr Pepper of chips. It’s not for everyone but it’s spectacular.

All dressed ruffle potato chips

Because it is Sunday, I am taking a medically necessary amount of THC. I’ve had a gummy. And I thought this was a perfect moment to try the Letterkenny chip.

And it was indeed glorious. All dresseds is a chip made for the munchies. It’s got bite and taste and texture and it all rolls up into an experience. It’s a chip worthy of the extra attention of weed focus.

And because I am extremely online I shared my appreciation for it on Twitter.

Now on Letterkenny there is a clique called the Skids. They are the weird kids. They are the hipster ones. They are the nerds. They are small town weed dealers. Asking me to pick a favorite on Letterkenny is like asking me to pick a favorite child. One of the Skids is Roald. He is a loyal friend but his own man. He definitely likes weed. I love Roaldie.

And I’m delighted to learn through my all dressed munchies Tweet, that the actor who plays him, Evan Stern, is following me. He likes the tweet. What a perfect way to enjoy a very specific kind of fandom. A parasocial relationship’s individual manifestation through social media. Now that I’ve made a big deal out of all this I should probably say hi to Evan. It’s going to be weird no matter what but it brought me a lot of joy. It’s good to be a fan.

Categories
Aesthetics Travel

Day 743 and Wandering

I took some time to go wandering today. I’ve been in Prague for six days but it’s been such a mess I haven’t actually felt like I’ve been in the city.

I like to get to know cities by walking. If I’ve only been in a cab or an Uber I don’t have a sense of place. I need to walk to feel like I’ve landed in a place. While I love a good resort destination now and again, I find it hard to feel grounded without being able to roam.

I wonder if being raised in a small town affected this at all. I wasn’t really a suburban kid. We had suburbs in my town but you still went to a downtown core where kids would walk from the library to the high school to the pedestrian mall. Walking was entertainment for my teenage years.

Now as an adult I find nothing more liberating than just walking for as long as you can. Being wedded to a destination or a GPS mapped route feels too much like having to do something or be somewhere. But wandering around with no place to be tastes like freedom. You are still in charge of your own life if you can go for a long walk with no purpose.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 738 and Little Things

I’ve come to appreciate the little luxuries in life in the aftermath of the pandemic. The Great Weirdening was in full bloom just as the world shut down into a global viral pandemic. The things I took for granted from 2015 are now treasured joys to be relished privately and also on social media. Dooming for the clout.

We are all performing elaborate acts about how we are flourishing, but in reality we’ve all had a number of rebirths and realizations. A lot of people suddenly stopped giving as many fucks and the downstream effects have been a calamity.

Everyone knows this has happened but pet theories as to why and it’s implications are rampant. We’ve fractured into conspiracies depending on what media ecosystem we spend the most time in. I know a lot of extremely online shit because I spend time on Twitter. We all have different scapegoats.

This is also all colliding with the great Jankening. All those people giving fewer fucks. Well, it shows up in what we make. And a lot of products and services got worse. Sometimes subtly. It tugs at your mind that so many little things don’t work like they used to work.

I am happy to fight for what’s mine. But I am fighting harder to get the experience I want. So I notice it when something goes right. When a meal is a bit better than you expected. And quality of service was better than it has a right to be. When maybe something is a throwback to a simpler time. When shit worked. I cherish the things that are genuinely good. I don’t want to lose them.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 717 and Walled Garden

The walled garden debate is back in Silicon Valley. What is a walled garden you ask? It’s a closed ecosystem in which your entry, exit and experience in the garden are controlled by a central entity. While modern social media has very centralized ownership structures, we’ve basically aligned on allowing sharing of content and interactions across and between platforms. We’ve homestead the modern social internet by tilling our profiles and tending our communities.

But people are straining at the compromises we’ve made over the years. Elon Musk is attempting a rather heavy handed walled garden strategy on Twitter by banning linking and promotion of competing websites.

It’s unclear if it will last at the moment as within hours Elon apologized for making a massive change without a vote. Whatever that means. It’s been six hours of chaos as people reactively extremely negative to being told you cannot link to your Instagram or Facebook accounts. A few dickriders attempted to defend it by saying it was freeloading but it isn’t really tragedy of the commons that Twitter can’t make money off my hard work.

I’m old enough to remember the sheer indignation of Linux dorks had for the all encompassing closed systems that is Apple. Jailbreaking was a pastime for a whole generation of nerds. Sure the money folks kept trying to contain their ecosystems giving us nonsense like America Online, but information wanted to be free right? Well Stewart Brand fans know that isn’t the whole quote

Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine—too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, ‘intellectual property’, the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.

Stewart Brand Whole Earth Catalog

Whatever is going on inside Twitter and Elon Musk’s mind is unclear. But the basic tension of the internet has not changed. We built tools to network together whole worlds and that has been fucking with ideas of ownership and who gets paid since day one. Capitalism usually finds a way to ride on top of these issues of ownership and value but the technological progress came out space old norms quite quickly.

And we are in a moment where skepticism of these norms is being challenged. Why shouldn’t we get to chose how we engage with our own property online? Maybe we don’t own the land but we definitely homestead our little plots of internet land.

Because the nature of the internet is wild and untamed. It takes work to make it usable. And most of us don’t mind paying a fee to keep the grass trimmed. A few of us might even prefer a country club experience. But the trouble with any commons starts when enclosure starts.

And Elon seems to be going for something that’s more heavy handed HOA than parcel of land outside of county lines. And like your average president of the homeowners association, he seems to be taking concerns and criticisms quite personally.

Categories
Culture

Day 700 and Focus

I’m noticing a latent fear in the startup management classes. How do we know if people are focused? Maybe it started with work from home skepticism. But now it’s become an all encompassing yet amorphous fear that nobody is focused anymore. And I have a theory.

It’s all projection. The fear is coming from inside the house. The world is so chaotic everyone is struggling to stay focused. This includes your manager. This includes your manager’s manager. Even your CEO is struggling to shake off the clinging entropy that emerges from constant crisis. And because shit rolls downhill everyone is now flailing around attempting to show they are doing their jobs even as they know they are failing. Even though it remains unsaid because it’s impolite to tell your boss he can’t focus.

The constant chaos that is tugging on our collective capacity to focus is quickly eroding our entire social contract. Not because no one does their jobs anymore. But because we want to be set up to succeed. Because “doing your job” is a point of pride for most people. We like to reliable even if we know there are limits to what we can deliver. So collectively we are hyper vigilant for fraud even as we lack all accountability to each other because we’ve got to protect ourselves first. Self care right?

I don’t see how we get out of this state of fight or flight without a significant changes to culture. Surveillance capitalism isn’t very effective at driving value. It is very good at exacting any drops of it from people attempting to maintain their own dignity. See for instance the railroad workers who have no flexibility in their scheduling. Now with added Congressional oversight!

Categories
Culture

Day 698 and Looking Ahead

I’ve got the sense that people are writing off big chunks of time. The long now has so thoroughly burned out everyone that who cares about achieving anything in the medium term right? December is a wash. Heck I’m talking to folks who have wrote off all of 2023 and even into 2024. The now and the long term are all that matters.

And I’m actually quite amenable to this viewpoint. I’ve still got to get things done before the end of the year. I’ve got fundraising to do and deals to close. I’m excited for how 2023 will go as a down market is a builder’s market. But I understand the frustration with trying to plan ahead when everything feels like it is crumbling. The medium term feels like a sand trap sucking in your attention and emotional energy.

It takes a guts to walk through a dark valley of despair. And we’ve got a lot to feel despairing about at the moment. But just because it is all doom and gloom doesn’t mean we’ve got no reason for optimism. People are resourceful and humans as a species are shockingly good at problem solving.

So I guess what I’m saying is I’m feeling good about looking ahead. Maybe it all takes longer than I’d like. But maybe it stops me from engaging in brute force efforts that are going to burn me out. We all just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other.