{"id":13650,"date":"2023-01-12T17:45:49","date_gmt":"2023-01-12T17:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/?p=13650"},"modified":"2023-05-07T17:50:39","modified_gmt":"2023-05-07T17:50:39","slug":"aesthetic-conformity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2023\/01\/12\/aesthetic-conformity\/","title":{"rendered":"aesthetic conformity vs being distinctive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(og thread<\/a>) a lot of recommendations on how to look\/sound better goes something like “here’s how to conform better to the dominant aesthetic” which is cool but what’s cooler to me is “here’s how to more fully express your own inner aesthetic”, however this is much harder to instruct<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the tricky-tragic thing is when someone sells a course on how to conform better you then get 1000s of imitator conformists which then actually devalues that dominant aesthetic. every dominant aesthetic was made by someone with taste\u2026 oh i’m rewriting geeks\/mops\/sociopaths here<\/p>\n\n\n\n

people with taste will be frustrated at witnessing their aesthetic get devalued, but they’ll ultimately be fine because they can just move on to doing whatever their taste directs. it’s the conformists that will struggle, shuttling from one conformist-exploiter to the next<\/p>\n\n\n\n

there is no substitute for cultivating your own taste, and nobody else can teach you how to do this. it’s your own resonance with your own feelings. a good teacher can try to direct your attention but you are the final arbiter of your own taste<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the way in which you are a weirdo deviant freak<\/a> is also precisely the way in which nobody else can copy you. i keep seeing creators spending their time and energy sanding off their edges to fit in and then panic about having become indistinguishable from all the others<\/p>\n\n\n\n

but yea there’s an \ud83c\udf00\u26f5\ufe0f\ud83d\udc09 tension between being excruciatingly alien and devastatingly fungible, and there are no simple\/easy answers. it’s a life-complete problem, it takes everything you got, everything you know, everything you feel, to be truly dynamic<\/p>\n\n\n\n

any simple\/easy answer, by definition, will be copied, commoditized, imitated, run into the ground. so you’re left with the complex, dynamic answers. which can have simple outputs<\/em>, but it takes dynamism, courage, curiosity, confidence, to move boldly into uninhabited space<\/p>\n\n\n\n

i’ve been using the word “dynamic” a bunch lately, and i wonder what I mean by it? I usually mean in opposition to “static”, so it’s kinda tautological, like saying “it takes moving to move”. but we can dig into it. (Da Vinci: Motion is created by the destruction of balance.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and usually the main reasons people don’t move is something like fear \u2013 they’re conserving their resources. which is broadly a sensible thing to do, you probably don’t want to waste your precious resources on unknown quantities that have no obvious payoff (Constraints)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

but you can’t just hide and do nothing forever, because that will deplete you too. depletion is the default outcome until you find new resources \u2013 food, charge, $, encouragement from peers, etc (MVP model)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

at some point I’ll weave all of this into “Are You Serious Pt 2” (it’ll likely have a different title than that \u2013 it’ll probably write itself when the title comes to me) so I can stop quoting the same 7-12 threads and just point at the essay instead<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a recurring thing that surprises people when they ask me “so what do I do” is that my answer tends to revolve around fun. are you having fun? if you’re having fun you can keep going. if you’re not, you might burnout or get bored or tired and quit. fun is existential issue<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“having fun yet?” could conceivably be the other title lol<\/p>\n\n\n\n

idk yet i’ma wait it out and see what feels right<\/p>\n\n\n\n

but, y’know. can’t wait too long. \ud83d\ude02 how do you know how long is right? you can’t! you gotta feel it<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(og thread<\/a>) \u2018how to be distinctive amongst the distinctive\u2019 is a fun puzzle I like solving<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the first critical thing is to seek deep inward resonance with one\u2019s internal thoughts, aesthetics, vocabulary, history, etc. superficial heterodox contrarianism won\u2019t take you far especially since a bunch of people will already have that covered anyway<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think heterodox contrarianism generally tries to invert the consensus, and then the 2nd order contrarian inverts the inverted consensus, and so on\u2013 this echoes back and forth in a predictable and discernible way<\/p>\n\n\n\n

better interestingness imo comes from gaps<\/em> in the consensus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh here\u2019s a scorcher: the reason contrarians don\u2019t look for gaps in the consensus is because they\u2019re obsessed about what other people think, lol. looking for gaps in consensus requires genuine nerd curiosity, eg to read a book nobody else is interested in or talking about<\/p>\n\n\n\n

here I arrive at a thing where I tend to lose a lot of people: if you\u2019re obsessed about winning people\u2019s approval, for eg, why not do the better thing and get the bigger, more substantial reward? here imo the problem isn\u2019t a desire for approval (basic human need) but neediness<\/p>\n\n\n\n

for the real nerds; you might not be interested in consensus, but if your curiosity leads you into knowledge and power, the consensus will eventually be interested in you<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and at that point ideally you\u2019d be prepared, but few true nerds ever are. this is where mentors can help<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a person\u2019s curiosity about chemicals eventually makes them a strategic asset for their state (every chemist knows how to make bombs). real curiosity is dangerous and consequential, which is a big part of why it\u2019s socially regulated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(this thread prompted a patio11 thread!<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(og thread) a lot of recommendations on how to look\/sound better goes something like “here’s how to conform better to the dominant aesthetic” which is cool but what’s cooler to me is “here’s how to more fully express your own inner aesthetic”, however this is much harder to instruct the… <\/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":[1],"tags":[733],"class_list":["post-13650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-twitter-thread"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5gxNz-3ya","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13650","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=13650"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13653,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13650\/revisions\/13653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}