There’s a style of writing content-ing that makes me grumpy. It’s all over social media, but worst on LinkedIn.

Algo simping.

Posts that communicate almost nothing, but are carefully crafted around the arbitrary rules of the all-powerful algorithm.

They are not made because the writer has something to say, but because they crave engagement. Engagement for its own sake is like the Ouroboros consuming its own tail. Feeding attention to attention-seekers to get more attention to feed attention-seekers so you can get more attention.

If you have something to say, say it. “Write the truest sentence you know” as Hemingway (I think) put it. And say it in the truest way you can.

Studying the intricacies of the algorithm so you can feed it sacrifices and hope it is pleased feels vacant and servile.

Virality is fun, engagement is fun, playing with the rules of the game is fun, dancing with your audience is fun, but only when you have an idea you want to share. Only when you have something to say.

Sharing for the sake of sharing to get attention for the sake of attention is a sickness. It’s devolving humanity into dopamine receptor powered automatons, salivating at the ring of the algorithm created by some half-hearted engineer buried in the guts of some confused tech giant.

What substrate do you want to build the bones of your ideas on, and what to give them flesh? Social media is a fine platform for this. But when you stop building on top of it and instead feed your empty words into its gaping maw for nothing but a heart emoji, something has been lost.

Don’t simp the algo. Say something.

There seems to be a tradeoff between artistic brilliance and sanity.

I wonder if some of the great artists of the past who worked under patrons and achieved madness-inducing brilliance did so precisely because of the patronage system. When you are sheltered from contact with customers and markets for daily sustenance, you are afforded the space to go insane and also maybe make some crazy good art.

The idea of such a tradeoff makes me uncomfortable, and I hope it’s true that people can achieve peak brilliance while maintaining total sanity. But the evidence doesn’t look too good.

In a wealthy society, the number of people who don’t have to be connected to market exchanges for their daily bread is large. The scope for artistic and intellectual exploration is high. As such, the odds of becoming crazy are high.

I don’t know if people ever have a true meet the devil at the crossroads moment of choosing, where the option to stay good and grounded is offered against becoming great and mad, but if they do, I wonder what percentage of people would choose which. And I wonder later if they’d change that decision.

It’s not uncommon to encounter brilliant types who seem tortured with regret and a constant wish to be less volatile. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a grounded person who wishes they’d traded some sanity for brilliance.

Yet the world would be a lot less interesting if no one ever made that choice. So here’s to the crazy ones I guess. Your willingness to trade sanity for brilliance might not make your life better, but it definitely makes ours more interesting.

Nobody talks about covetousness these days. I suspect it’s the source of a lot of depression and frustration.

What gets labelled FOMO is often covetousness. Scrolling a feed of people telling you how your work should be, your food should be, your money should be, your spouse should be – this can be interesting or helpful, but it can grow into covetousness.

Covetousness isn’t primarily damaging because it causes negative feelings towards those who have what you don’t. It’s damaging primarily because it causes negative feelings towards what you do have.

If only my (X) could be more like theirs.

This can be a starting point for positive change. But it more easily morphs into covetousness that leads to despair.

Don’t pay attention to what others have or claim to have. Unless it makes you genuinely happy for them (a superpower worth cultivating), it is likely to make you less happy with what you have.

After a long steady cultural trend toward pretending monsters don’t exist, or if they do they’re just like us and it’s totally cool to be a monster, resistance is forming.

There is a new appreciation for the old fables and fairy tales about monstrous creatures and the dangers they pose to society.

This is a necessary re-centering, but it’s also coming on a bit fast and furious and carries with it the seeds of evil deeds.

Witch hunts, inquisitions, and even genocide are the unbridled versions of monster-awareness. From these, no one is safe. Even the least monstrous can be otherized into monsters in the minds of those mad with monster-hunting mania.

The solution is not to call the ugly beautiful, act as if dark forests pose no danger, or pretend the fringe is the center. The solution is to be firmly and clearly aware of the danger of monsters out there and aware of the monstrous forms lurking in your own heart.

The monster in you thirsts for blood and violence. It takes delight in harsh and brutal punishment. It begins with just enough to make you think it’s justice, but its appetite for vengeance only grows and the objects of its rage expand until no one is safe.

The monster in you uses the hunt for external monsters as its bait, to lure you into a never-ending hate-filled hunt for weirdos, which quickly becomes anyone not just like you.

After seeing several light-hearted Tweets about how monstrous various people were, and how the old days of facing off against monsters might be needed, I felt something sinister slowly at work. The good thread in here – re-recognition of the real danger of monsters – was interwoven with a monster in disguise. Like Dracula donned the cloak of the townspeople and led the charge against what they thought was him but was really one of his vitcims.

I summed up my sentiment in a Tweet:

Recognizing monsters are real: good. Reduces chances of being eaten by one.

Starting a pitchfork mob to hunt them: bad. Increases chances of becoming one.

— Isaac M. Morehouse (@isaacmorehouse) November 15, 2022

This is a trend very much worth keeping an eye on. I have to temper myself often when my hackles get raised over encounters (almost never firsthand, but mediated through biased filters via screens) with monsters.

I do not deny the threat of monsters. But I am attempting to start by recognizing the biggest threat is within. Tame that one, avoid the rest, redeem when possible, only fight when absolutely necessary.

Yesterday, I read this fascinating newsletter on Anticipatory Gardening. It got me thinking about the possible need for a digital priestly class.

“Priestly class” used mostly as a slur. But priests exist for some good reasons.

One of those is to turn accumulated information and wisdom via trial and error, revelation, innovation, and contemplation into something easy to pass on and not easy to lose or forget. This is done through ritual, garments, traditions, building, books, processes.

A priestly class can become gatekeepers, hiding knowledge from the world, but at their best, they are preservers, keeping knowledge alive even in trying times.

The digital age did a lot to remove the gatekeepers. But while none of us were noticing, it also removed the preservers.

Things are being scrubbed and forgotten. Previously discovered truths have to re-found or re-invented. Entire troves of data become inaccessible with new hardware. Ways of being and thinking are inconceivable as we are conditioned to believe life has always been like this.

Our confidence in digitization causes us to neglect other forms of preservation. We don’t need that anymore, I’m sure it’s online by now. Google has added all the books in the world to some library somewhere, right? The Wayback Machine ensures everything’s been cataloged, right? Sadly, no.

Making info easy to add and spread can also mean it’s easy to edit and destroy. Many of these archival tools have already been pruned and changed. All are selective in what they preserve.

A digital priestly class is needed to preserve and pass on all of this information before it gets compressed and condensed into algorithmically determined summaries and we forget all the richness behind it. (Google’s utopian vision is, I’m not kidding, a world where every search yields a single, perfect result. Paging Doctor Hayek!) We will become dumber if we turn over humanity’s accumulated wisdom to the bots and algos that manage info online.

Digital preservers need to emerge to protect and maintain the weird history being written on the web, as well as everything moved onto it from before. The digital equivalent of norms and rituals and sacred cathedrals and libraries and monasteries may be required to serve this purpose.

I have no idea what that might look like, or how closely it will map to the trappings of knowledge-preservation in the past. I do know that it must be voluntary and independent from any government. Otherwise, the gatekeeper function will rear its head and dominate the role, and we’ll be right back where we were pre-printing press and pre-digital.

Another crypto scam is imploding. None of this is hard to see coming if you refuse to believe something is valuable without demanding to see utility.

When the value derives entirely from the belief that other people will believe that other people will believe that other people will believe it’s valuable, you’re in trouble.

You can win if you time it right, but you never sleep well and you never know if you’re timing it right.

A few years ago, I thought 90% of crypto was fake, useless scams. Today, I think it’s probably more like 98%. The percent of crypto projects that have any real utility has pretty much declined every year since Bitcoin was released. Maybe it increased for the first few years, but since at least 2015, it has been plummeting rapidly.

There are a few things that blockchain tech can do that offer the promise of real utility. Solving the Byzantine General’s problem with economic incentives in a digital environment is pretty amazing, at least in theory.

In practice, it opens up new surface area for digital innovation. Nanopayments. Timestamps and proof of history. Global, instant, nearly free transactions. Data and units of exchange combined. Split payments. Liquidity for things like revenue streams and fractional ownership. And on the fringes, some additional tools for the constant cat and mouse game of evading government censorship and regulations (though most crypto makes government’s job easier and tyranny far stronger, a few ever shifting edge cases will always exist, and such gray/black market outlets are on the whole a good thing).

But almost no one is working on any of these things. The few that are have almost no traction.

Pretty much all of crypto is – and has been at least since BTC crippled itself with tiny blocks to purposely curb its utility – useless ponzi garbage and government/organized crime grift, surveillance, and psyops.

The saddest part is how many full-throated libertarian types have empowered tyrants and corrupt legacy banksters while believing they are resisting them.

Again, it may seem confusing and hard to discern what’s what, but if you simply and relentlessly ask “What’s the utility”, all of this is and has been obvious to see for some time.

The stock market can be (and is) manipulated and corrupt, but shares of a company at least have a causal connection with utility. You can see where they get worth beyond just the belief that others may value it. The companies make and sell things that create value for people, and get revenue in return.

When the only value is the belief that it will someday create value for someone, but no one has even attempted to propose how, you’re in trouble.

You may buy shares in a company without a product, but only if you have seen some kind of vision or roadmap that plausibly lays out how your money will result in a product that creates value. None of that is present in almost any crypto project.

Again, there is real value in the underlying problems that Bitcoin solved in 2009. But almost no one is attempting to tap into any of it.

Look for utility. Would you use the thing for something, or could you find someone to sell it to who would? Otherwise, you’re mostly just contributing to a big egregore that wants to eat you.

This isn’t a perfect rule in a world of limited info and subjective economic value, but it’s a great heuristic to reduce downside risk massively, and keep your sanity intact.

Open road with fam

Time stands still, the natives cry

“Are we there yet?” No

One of the worst things about vacation is that it disrupts routine. It’s also one of the best things.

Not only because sometimes I need a disruption, but because I need to long for my routine. I need to feel the pain of its absence so I can get excited for it to start it up again.

A good vacation ends with a desperate desire to get back to normal.

You’re never too old and it’s never too boring to make it fun.

Every voluntary activity can be made fun.

That is an extremely high standard no one can actually achieve (and most wouldn’t want to), but there is no law of the universe stopping it from happening.

Once you realize that, the onus is on you to figure out how to make it fun. That challenge alone is the beginning of the fun.

Fun is not a moral good in itself, but if you can make life fun – especially the drudgery – it’s pretty dang hard to do a bad job at moral goods. Fun has a way of chinking the armor of bad habits.

No matter how many times it happens, I’m still blindsided by the revelation that some bad attitudes are cured by food.

My kids will shock me with brusk behavior from left field, and I’ll be flummoxed. My wife will say, “They haven’t had anything to eat in a while.” I poo poo this as an excuse. She gives them something to eat. The mood disappears.

It’s easy in developed countries where you spend most of your time higher up Maslow’s hierarchy to forget that humans are still physical beings with primitive needs.

I try to remind myself of this when I encounter someone acting like a jerk. Maybe they just need a piece of cheese.

The best kind of marketing is just value creation.

It could be a free product tier. It could be entertaining or enlightening content. It could be a language and community.

When done right, no sale is needed. Those you create value for will choose your product when the problem it solves arises.

They may still want to customize and negotiate, but they don’t need convincing because you’ve already built trust.

Going deeper on this today at this event!

https://www.airmeet.com/e/14478260-1e6e-11ed-975d-3d62b27ee4b7

If you’re prepared to put in work long after you thought you’d be done, it’s never too late.

It’s only too late if you’ve already accepted that you can’t put in any more work.

It’s ok to decide this, but if you do, know that it’s a choice. You’re not a victim of circumstance.

Buyers don’t want to buy via cold emails and demos.

They want to buy via discovery from their circles of trust.

This whole week, we’re exploring what this means for the future of B2B software.

Over 100 speakers. Totally free. Check it out.

plxsummit.com

Can create value

Or can make you gouge your eyes out

If a chore not art

Humans discover technology before they are ready to handle it.

It begins to destroy them.

They learn through pain and grace how better to work with it.

It becomes the vehicle of deliverance from the very evils it first empowered.