Thanks. Interesting essay. As someone who knows Defender but none of the other people and places, that comes from a peculiarity of mine. I love to read: Substack, Medium, Quora (in the past), and the major news outlets: nytimes, new yorker, the atlantic.
But I hate, hate, hate video and audio blogs. I find I get impatient when listening - hurry up already! Maybe I should be playing it at double speed, but the other thing I love is to skip back a couple of paragraphs or hit Ctrl-F which just doesn't work well in sight or sound.
I watch the occasional YouTube video, but only in three cases: Sabine Hossenfelder (because she is 8 minutes max), Rick Beato (his enthusiasm is infectious) and various Unitarian Universalist materials (but I prefer the transcript.
So videos are out. They will never reach me.
Also, "social media", such as FaceBook, Twitter, and increasingly, LinkedIn are out too. I pretty well automatically discount anything under 200 words. If you have cut it down to that size, then, well, you have a meme, but you don't have any information. Memes are signifiers that point to the information. They are not food for thought - they are only the wrapper.
As an aside, TPOT (though I'm off of x now) is really one of the coolest Internet cultures around. Hyper elite in a way that is scary. I feel like I was constantly hearing ideas and knowing things before mainstream.
I never thought of it as being an illegible community, but when I think of how you need to understand rats to get postrats, and the way ppl think and communicate in TPOT I'd say it's a strangely illegible group, where the bar of entry doesn't demand a certain culture beyond basic western stuff. Which is wierd.
I love witnessing this work in action.
Go team!
Thanks. Interesting essay. As someone who knows Defender but none of the other people and places, that comes from a peculiarity of mine. I love to read: Substack, Medium, Quora (in the past), and the major news outlets: nytimes, new yorker, the atlantic.
But I hate, hate, hate video and audio blogs. I find I get impatient when listening - hurry up already! Maybe I should be playing it at double speed, but the other thing I love is to skip back a couple of paragraphs or hit Ctrl-F which just doesn't work well in sight or sound.
I watch the occasional YouTube video, but only in three cases: Sabine Hossenfelder (because she is 8 minutes max), Rick Beato (his enthusiasm is infectious) and various Unitarian Universalist materials (but I prefer the transcript.
So videos are out. They will never reach me.
Also, "social media", such as FaceBook, Twitter, and increasingly, LinkedIn are out too. I pretty well automatically discount anything under 200 words. If you have cut it down to that size, then, well, you have a meme, but you don't have any information. Memes are signifiers that point to the information. They are not food for thought - they are only the wrapper.
wc message:
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As an aside, TPOT (though I'm off of x now) is really one of the coolest Internet cultures around. Hyper elite in a way that is scary. I feel like I was constantly hearing ideas and knowing things before mainstream.
I never thought of it as being an illegible community, but when I think of how you need to understand rats to get postrats, and the way ppl think and communicate in TPOT I'd say it's a strangely illegible group, where the bar of entry doesn't demand a certain culture beyond basic western stuff. Which is wierd.
This is super cool. Timeline is missing the part where someone proposed this experiment tho!
Is there a public invite link to the discord? Very interested in joining!
can find it at the bottom of this page! https://www.community-archive.org/
Very cool, ty!!