Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv 2025-03-07

I prefer to get 1 good reply from a thoughtful person than 1000 RTs with no meaningful engagement. and these days the RTs really don’t seem to increase the odds of quality replies by much, and in fact near-guarantees low-effort low-quality replies


Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv 2025-03-07

i think two things are true– I think (1) some aspect of this dynamic is near-universal with the acquisition of any kind of capital, and I also think (2) the climate on twitter lately has been particularly inhospitable, partially because of algo, partially bc of politics/vibes


Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv 2025-03-07

the lesson in (1) is it’s a bad idea to get too successful (too rich, too famous, even maybe too sexy) too fast– and here by too fast i mean before you’ve established filters, peers, etc to navigate the eventual onslaught of tedious bullshit that’ll come your way


Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv 2025-03-07

if you get too rich too fast it’ll seem like everyone just wants to be friends with you because you’re rich, because they want access to your capital, etc. this isn’t 100% true, but by volume it’ll be like >95% true, and managing that will be psychologically challenging


Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv 2025-03-07

if at that point you become overtly grumpy and cynical etc you’ll then drive away the 1% or 0.1% of thoughtful players, and then ‘suffering from success’ becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy


Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv 2025-03-07

and it’s often the case that the people who become successful in some dimension are usually the boldest players with the least self-doubt etc who had opportunity strike at the right time, and it’s v difficult for those people in particular to suddenly switch to being nuanced


Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv 2025-03-07

I think celebrities in the 2010s and 2020s are actually psychologically doing far better than their predecessors, imo in large part bc they have access to each other’s DMs, so wiser voices can guide the newbies who are overwhelmed. one mentor who’s been there can be all the diff


Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv 2025-03-07

i’ve been fascinated by this topic for a long time– I think a question i’ve always had was, why don’t we have a better class of public figure? i’ll probably write an essay about it someday, but for now you get these periodic threads where i sorta sketch out a proto-form. ok gn


tutor vals @TutorVals 2025-03-07

what’s a recent post you’d like a good reply to?


Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv 2025-03-07

i don’t really think about it like that
 a good reply can come from anyone, in response to anything. it’s about resonance between the post and the replier, which is particular to that *relationship*, not to the post


tim @wayfaring_tim 2025-03-07

one good replyguy is a worth a thousand ____


Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv 2025-03-07

100,000 even


male leo (NYC Apr 17-20) @inconcel 2025-03-07

been saying for a while that the twt tl is just a wrapper for twt gcs. All the alpha is there

Tool to find mutuals-of-ur-mutuals would make this much more obvious

Also bringing circles back


Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv 2025-03-07

i agree with the spirit of this, tho i’m also sort of naively earnest about wanting there to be ‘gc-spiritedness in the open commons’, for the weirdo outsider kids who don’t have an intro (yet)


@SelectStarMan@techhub.social @SelectStarMan 2025-03-07

Micro blogging sites would be much better if they tended toward a few group chats rather than “small chance of virality”


Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv 2025-03-07

twitter actually was more like that around 2013-2020 imo!


Sanjay Nadaraja @SanjayNadaraja 2025-03-07

It seems to be a law that the quality of human interaction scales inversely with the number of participants.


Visakan Veerasamy @visakanv 2025-03-07

generally true, though i believe exceptions are possible if it’s carefully managed