{"id":12765,"date":"2018-09-02T22:06:06","date_gmt":"2018-09-02T14:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=12765"},"modified":"2018-09-02T22:06:06","modified_gmt":"2018-09-02T14:06:06","slug":"helm-of-the-arse-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2018\/09\/02\/helm-of-the-arse-gods\/","title":{"rendered":"Helm Of The Arse Gods"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Oddball confession: one of my first life-shaping experiences on the Internet was lying on a video game forum (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Darkstone:_Evil_Reigns\">Darkstone<\/a>, Delphine Software). Somebody joked that they got \u201cHelm of the Arse Gods\u201d, and I lied and said I got it too. I was like&#8230; 8. Everyone cringed and laughed at me<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Something about that experience made me determined to be \u201cgood at Interneting\u201d. I went on to participate in all sorts of forums, studying the social dynamics and conflicts. learning how points are scored. I got a deep pleasure from being a \u201crespected user\u201d on a bunch of communities<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To me it became a game, of sorts. Every community can be \u201ccracked\u201d. I became a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quora.com\/profile\/Visakan-Veerasamy\">Quora Top Writer<\/a> (3x, then got bored). I got a blogpost to the front page of Hacker News. I even have a couple of mod-issued Points on \/r\/theredpill. Became a \u201csociopolitical blogger\u201d in the local news<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I say \u201cgame\u201d, though, I don\u2019t mean it in a dismissive way. I took it all very seriously and spent lots of time and energy on it. I was particularly determined to avoid faking or lying, so I learned how to present a genuine version of myself that\u2019s compelling to people<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was invited to <a href=\"http:\/\/visakanv.com\/sg\/meeting-pm-lee\">speak with PM Lee<\/a> (along with other \u201cprominent bloggers\u201d). I\u2019ve also openly criticised SG Govt\u2019s policies, and even had those views published in the \u201cGovt mouthpiece media\u201d bc I knew how to frame it. All of this with skills I picked up to impress video game nerds<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Started a t-shirt company on the side, ended up <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shopify.com.sg\/blog\/building-a-six-figure-business-shopify-singapore\">selling thousands of tees<\/a> and got media attention for that. Organised an event inviting people to scream at the designated public protest park, got media attention for that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I can\u2019t wait to see what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oddball confession: one of my first life-shaping experiences on the Internet was lying on a video game forum (Darkstone, Delphine Software). Somebody joked that they got \u201cHelm of the Arse Gods\u201d, and I lied and said I got it too. I was like&#8230; 8. Everyone cringed and laughed at me&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[578],"tags":[658,294],"class_list":["post-12765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoirs","tag-communities","tag-memoirs-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5gxNz-3jT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}