how to de-escalate tense situations
A thing i’ve gotten very good at that I just helped a friend in DMs with is de-escalating other people, eg someone DMs y
how to DM your heroes
How to DM your heroes when they follow you 1. specific proof-of-work: “I’ve been a fan of your work and writing since the
status quo soldiers lose in the long run
Here’s a tiresome thing when some bad shit happens: when people unaffected by it actually spend their precious time and
accumulating social capital
(1) the creative life is lonely but freeing when nobody cares about your work (2) it gets good when discerning folks like your
small talk
“What are you supposed to say if someone asks what’s new with you?” (original thread) This might seem odd bu
hostage
WIP / buncha notes There’s a 2018 video game called Detroit: Become Human. It has its pros and cons, I’m not sure I would
“Wrong.”
This is more of my personal approach to things rather than some kind of claim about how the world works, or even how it should
fuckability
fucking is labor, fuckability is capital many (most?) people wanna be fuckable more than they wanna fuck having good sex is a
☢️ the apocalypse test
A thing I do that brings me great clarity is to focus on individual people over everything else. I don’t care much about
elitism
It’s interesting how often the phrase “elitism” comes up when I solicit feedback from others. I’m aware that this will
❌ when and why I block people
(I’m thinking about this mainly in the context of Twitter, but there are some general principles here too.) I don’
👋🏾 everyone loves to make a great introduction
I think the big secret of social life is that everybody loves to make a great introduction. If you can become someone that peo
👯♀️ make friends
I’ve kind of developed a name for myself as “the friendly guy”. My book is titled FRIENDLY AMBITIOUS NERD. I
👫 relationships are challenging + a lot of work
Preamble: Hello everyone! This post has been getting shared a little bit, so I thought it might be worth taking some time to p
💃🏾 flirting is about signalling interest with plausible deniability
What I tell my nephews: flirting is basically this – give moderately strong signals of interest with plausible deniabili
🗣 mansplaining is sometimes (but not always) innocuous
If I had to do a “the difference between men and women” type of standup set, I think I would focus on the phenomenon of ma
👓 different people have different mental models
People typically have high-res models of their own lives and lower-res models of other people’s. We are all born clueless wi
📺 we turn our lives into mostly-predictable sitcoms
(The following is from a conversation with a friend, after an acquaintance told us about feeling suicidal) it’s interesting
👀 when arguing, strive to understand context
— 1. When arguing, seek to understand context — [Published 2016] Roughly between ages 13 and 23 I was thoroughly convinced
an analysis of power and social dynamics in ‘Mean Girls’
Theory: The movie has such enduring power and is quoted so much because it sheds some incredible light on real sociological ph
🤝 how to build and maintain communities
This blogpost started out as a bunch of notes and links, and I found myself sharing it with people over and over again so much