- Post the question on manifold markets: "Does Defender have a uniquely diverse group of followers?"
- where I claim that I have intentionally crafted one of the most diverse communities on twitter, in terms of having people who follow me who are right wing, left wing, arab, jewish, scientists, anti-science people, pro gov, anti gov, etc.
- how do we test this theory? I want support/collaboration on this. Can't do it alone. Making it a market is a fun meta-move, where someone can say "that's bullshit" and prove me wrong (by finding someone with a more diverse following than me, and that is a success! That's what I'm looking for! A cultural study with empirical proof!)
- Would be cool to extract the bio's and a few tweets from my followers & semantically categorize. OR can just...send out a google form??? And cross-check the results?
This sounds super fun and great way to bring people together too! I'd love to be a collaborator/contributor. I'm a third culture kid (adult) that has lived in multiple cities + travelled to a few countries lmk how i could be of service here
My first successful narrative spear was on Dec 13, 2023. I tweeted about "what if we exported our own twitter archives, shared it with each other, built an open API". It didn't take off. So I made a little prototype myself. And *then* someone saw it, bought a domain, launched it, collected twitter archives from 70 people so far, 2 million tweets in a public dataset. And they're still actively developing it.
I wanted an open twitter API because I wanted to study culture. And now I have it. I didn't have to do it myself, or even market it myself. And now I can use it and build on it.
i'm curious about the name choice? is the analogy that a spear can be thrown far beyond an individual's unassisted range? flung into the future for someone else (maybe even future-you) to pick up and throw further?
does that mean the spear's target is the problem that you're trying to solve? then if the first throw misses the mark, maybe it still provides valuable info for adjusting future trajectories??
sorry to overthink this lmao, i just LOVE elaborating on analogies to try and find their limits lol. would love to hear how you're thinking abt it?
yes to all the above!! The only thing I don't like about spear is it's...like violent? But "throwing a screwdriver" doesn't make sense 😅
- a critical part is that you "toss it". it is NOT in your hands when it's up in the air.
- I think about it making "a long arc" in society. Maybe "message in a bottle" is a better frame? Like, I was imagining the spear being pushed by many hands in the air. But if it's a message in a bottle, someone finds it, tosses it in the right direction (based on their own personal judgement), and it keeps going. More like a baton race I guess
- yeah if the spear "hits the target" that means it did exactly the thing you expected. It got people to do the thing, got your project funded, solved the problem. The META of it is that, if you throw a successful spear, that itself makes people trust you/you trust yourself, you throw another spear. Bigger, more ambitious. Or just find other problems to solve and keep going.
- and YES if you miss, you really SHOULD tell us what you were trying to aim for, and we can post mortem it and get valuable insight to try together! peer review! open source! All of us throwing spears, many will miss, but as a community we'll win
I love this, so much so I'm going to use this as the foundation stone for my own essay. But, my first literary conundrum - what do you call people who are good at forging narrative spears? Weaponwordsmiths, Word-weaponsmiths, or something even better?
Also, the synchronicities will continue until morale improves:
my god it's literally the same paragraph!! This is how we know it's real, and necessary, and also that it's a current bottleneck of society. More and more people keep coming to the same conclusion.
> With this all, I’m reminded that “moonshots” can be more than just products; they can be narratives too. Well-crafted narratives have served as catalysts for many of the engineering feats we marvel at today. And the humanities’ influence on invention is sold far too short—if world-building is a duty and we recognize its two axes: engineering their visions of the future, and artists who define these visions.
The next narrative spear I wanna try is:
- Post the question on manifold markets: "Does Defender have a uniquely diverse group of followers?"
- where I claim that I have intentionally crafted one of the most diverse communities on twitter, in terms of having people who follow me who are right wing, left wing, arab, jewish, scientists, anti-science people, pro gov, anti gov, etc.
- how do we test this theory? I want support/collaboration on this. Can't do it alone. Making it a market is a fun meta-move, where someone can say "that's bullshit" and prove me wrong (by finding someone with a more diverse following than me, and that is a success! That's what I'm looking for! A cultural study with empirical proof!)
- Would be cool to extract the bio's and a few tweets from my followers & semantically categorize. OR can just...send out a google form??? And cross-check the results?
This sounds super fun and great way to bring people together too! I'd love to be a collaborator/contributor. I'm a third culture kid (adult) that has lived in multiple cities + travelled to a few countries lmk how i could be of service here
My first successful narrative spear was on Dec 13, 2023. I tweeted about "what if we exported our own twitter archives, shared it with each other, built an open API". It didn't take off. So I made a little prototype myself. And *then* someone saw it, bought a domain, launched it, collected twitter archives from 70 people so far, 2 million tweets in a public dataset. And they're still actively developing it.
I wanted an open twitter API because I wanted to study culture. And now I have it. I didn't have to do it myself, or even market it myself. And now I can use it and build on it.
love this formulation!
i'm curious about the name choice? is the analogy that a spear can be thrown far beyond an individual's unassisted range? flung into the future for someone else (maybe even future-you) to pick up and throw further?
does that mean the spear's target is the problem that you're trying to solve? then if the first throw misses the mark, maybe it still provides valuable info for adjusting future trajectories??
sorry to overthink this lmao, i just LOVE elaborating on analogies to try and find their limits lol. would love to hear how you're thinking abt it?
yes to all the above!! The only thing I don't like about spear is it's...like violent? But "throwing a screwdriver" doesn't make sense 😅
- a critical part is that you "toss it". it is NOT in your hands when it's up in the air.
- I think about it making "a long arc" in society. Maybe "message in a bottle" is a better frame? Like, I was imagining the spear being pushed by many hands in the air. But if it's a message in a bottle, someone finds it, tosses it in the right direction (based on their own personal judgement), and it keeps going. More like a baton race I guess
- yeah if the spear "hits the target" that means it did exactly the thing you expected. It got people to do the thing, got your project funded, solved the problem. The META of it is that, if you throw a successful spear, that itself makes people trust you/you trust yourself, you throw another spear. Bigger, more ambitious. Or just find other problems to solve and keep going.
- and YES if you miss, you really SHOULD tell us what you were trying to aim for, and we can post mortem it and get valuable insight to try together! peer review! open source! All of us throwing spears, many will miss, but as a community we'll win
I love this, so much so I'm going to use this as the foundation stone for my own essay. But, my first literary conundrum - what do you call people who are good at forging narrative spears? Weaponwordsmiths, Word-weaponsmiths, or something even better?
Also, the synchronicities will continue until morale improves:
https://open.substack.com/pub/reboothq/p/macrodoses-4?r=f8e4g&selection=37fc3621-eb9b-46ee-ba84-3c893aedc334&utm_campaign=post-share-selection&utm_medium=web
my god it's literally the same paragraph!! This is how we know it's real, and necessary, and also that it's a current bottleneck of society. More and more people keep coming to the same conclusion.
> With this all, I’m reminded that “moonshots” can be more than just products; they can be narratives too. Well-crafted narratives have served as catalysts for many of the engineering feats we marvel at today. And the humanities’ influence on invention is sold far too short—if world-building is a duty and we recognize its two axes: engineering their visions of the future, and artists who define these visions.
not really a narrative spear but the concept of a "designated driver" was an intentionally cultivated meme that had a positive effect on society: https://x.com/AbstractFairy/status/1853820355481047111