Category: Media

Great list of high signal qualities in founder types (unexpected opinions; niche content recommendations)

Source: https://twitter.com/george__mack/status/1726164596019359840

Some favorites:

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4. You can never guess their opinions – The boxer that writes poetry. The advertiser obsessed with the history of war. The beauty queen who reads Nietzsche. If their beliefs don’t line up with their stereotypes, they’ve exercised agency.

6. They send you niche content – Low agency people look at the social engagement of content before deeming its quality. High agency people just look at the content. They spot upcoming trends very early.

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Squads as a social primitive: “The founding of a new group DM is year zero.”

Read it here: https://otherinter.net/research/squad-wealth/

Some favorite excerpts:

* Whether housemates or friends sharing a Discord group, squads allow social currency and financial capital to inter-convert, creating opportunities and group resiliency that would have been impossible to achieve alone.

* Group collaboration is now the strong default, putting squads at the center of social, cultural, and economic life. To paraphrase K-HOLE: today people are born as individuals, and have to find their squad.

* Younger generations are already imbued with extremely powerful squad energy, equipped with formative experiences in Minecraft, DOTA 2, and Fortnite parties.

* A greater network may surround the squad, making it appear big and fuzzy from the outside. But for the core crew, an invisible circle binds and protects a space of group identity.

* Squad space is where market-moving trades are planned, conspiracies are conceived, and memes are spawned. Members of the squad may live in different geographies—but within this space, everyone is on SQUAD TIME. The founding of a new group DM is year zero.

* The squad doesn’t need its own micro-currency—images, art, music, takes, shitposts, and, indeed, roasts are the native medium of exchange. […]. Instead, playful exchanges produce trust, reciprocity, and VIBES—the ineffable group energy that squads value most

* The group is the basic user class for the tools we need today as a society, yet few pieces of software allow the squad as a whole to produce cooperatively and generate wealth together. To fully realize SQUAD CULTURE this must change

* SQUAD WEALTH is a rate of 5 memes per day, it’s the e-girls vacation, the TikToker hype house, the empty church your crew rented upstate. SQUAD WEALTH is when the Discord is popping off and it brings you more joy than a 70-hour-week hustle ever could

* Squads = autonomy + community + equity
*

Oldie and goodie: “there is real joy and meaning to be found outside the secular system of wealth, status and eternal youth”

An article I re-read time to time, Chris Michel’s The Puzzle (which I’m adding to my personal bible). Some excerpts below:

I’ve spent sweltering afternoons in monasteries, sheltered in the high Himalayas, zodiacked around Antarctic Icebergs, cruised at the edge of Space, wandered among remote South Pacific tribes, ridden through endless tea plantations, worked the fishing lines in Indonesia, and cried at more than one sunrise. I’ve seen and experienced more than I deserve, hoping that somewhere along the way, I’d find myself. What self-respecting explorer communes with Buddhist Monks at the foot of Everest and doesn’t have a spiritual awakening? In the movies: none.

I know that there is real joy and meaning to be found outside the secular system of wealth, status and eternal youth. It’s not our fault; it’s our programming. But the answers can’t be found in accumulating more. You knew that already.

Go read it!

I think about this a lot (geeks v mops v sociopaths)

A really good article about subcultures and how they evolve, and why they (often) get ruined as new people join: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

Some excerpts below:

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Before there is a subculture, there is a scene. A scene is a small group of creators who invent an exciting New Thing—a musical genre, a religious sect, a film animation technique, a political theory. Riffing off each other, they produce examples and variants, and share them for mutual enjoyment, generating positive energy.

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Mops also dilute the culture. The New Thing, although attractive, is more intense and weird and complicated than mops would prefer. Their favorite songs are the ones that are least the New Thing, and more like other, popular things. Some creators oblige with less radical, friendlier, simpler creations.

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The sociopaths quickly become best friends with selected creators. They dress just like the creators—only better. They talk just like the creators—only smoother. They may even do some creating—competently, if not creatively. Geeks may not be completely fooled, but they also are clueless about what the sociopaths are up to.