A Conversation With Visakanv - On Scenius, TPOT, Alan Kay, and Taking Life Seriously
Season 1, Episode 1 of the Andrew Rose Show
The first season is my experimentation phase. The quality might be below average, the editing might be non-existent, the transcript is… difficult to read, my microphone could be improved. But I'm going to upload anyway, because this is how progression happens.
One day, when I'm ready, I'll launch Season Two with a number of improvements to my studio and recording process. Season Three might include editing.
You can read along with the full transcript here:
Andrew Rose:
All right. I have Visa here for the second episode of whatever this podcast is going to be called. I don't
visa:
Nice.
Andrew Rose:
really care about that right now, but
visa:
Excellent.
Andrew Rose:
how are you doing Visa?
visa:
I'm good. I just cleaned up like a ton of my house, which is an amazing event. Like my wife and I have been frustrated with just the mess in our living room and we finally cleared it. So I feel great. I feel like, ah, I'm so unblocked emotionally, psychologically. I'm
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
like ready to unblock more things now.
Andrew Rose:
Oh wow, you're making me so jealous. We actually just moved
visa:
Right.
Andrew Rose:
across the hall to 4A and we are currently in the like pre cleanup stage. So you can see those two
visa:
Uh-huh.
Andrew Rose:
whiteboards need to be hung. The guitar needs to be hung.
visa:
Nice.
Andrew Rose:
We have like boxes kind of around.
visa:
Nice.
Andrew Rose:
And so
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
I'm feeling the psychological burden of a space
visa:
Right,
Andrew Rose:
that is not cleaned up.
visa:
right, right. Fractal has good vibes though, so I mean, I'm sure you'll
Andrew Rose:
Yeah,
visa:
figure it out, yeah.
Andrew Rose:
yeah. I mean, we're going to do it literally today. It's on the calendar. So
visa:
Nice.
Andrew Rose:
what do you do? OK, so let's get to business.
visa:
Let's do it.
Andrew Rose:
In your 50-year plan,
visa:
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rose:
you say that you found a graph of smart, thoughtful people.
visa:
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rose:
What are the social and cultural dynamics that have emerged as you've grown older together? I'm especially kind of curious how when you wrote the doc initially, you
visa:
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rose:
thought about that graph of people versus how you think of that graph of people now. and what has changed over time.
visa:
Interesting. I mean, it hasn't been that long since I first wrote the thing. I think I wrote the plan like early last year. Is it? Oh, I'm not sure. Let me
Andrew Rose:
I think
visa:
check
Andrew Rose:
you wrote
visa:
the...
Andrew Rose:
it in 2021.
visa:
Let me check the version history. C version history. 2022. How far back does it go? Still in 2022. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Oh yeah, December 2021. Probably goes for the September. September 5, 2021 was when I first wrote it. But honestly, I've had their version. If you go through my entire corpus, you can find all the way back in like 2011. I wrote this thing called the Legion of Heroes project, which was a... And even before, so like in 2010, I started a Facebook group, like locally with my friends. And the idea there was like naive and cute and simple, but like, you know, all of my friends would from time to time tell me about some cool things some other friends said. And I'd be like, why don't I know this friend? You know, like, why don't you introduce me to the cool people that you know? And I was like, oh, on Facebook, we could do that. And this is, you know, this is still early days of Facebook. And I was like, let's start a group and I'm gonna invite all my favorite people and each of you invite your favorite people and we will just chat about whatever's on our minds. And I think at that time, we were all like 2019, and many people were in university or around it. And I wasn't, but I was getting my intellectual fix. The thing that people describe as, oh, in the college dorm rooms, you're having conversations about life and meaning and everything. And I was getting that from my Facebook friends. But it ended up kind of, there was a schism down the middle that eventually came out, which was basically. And it's interesting. It's kind of prophetic. From that experience has taught me so much, and I see so much of it in the world. It's like the people who are like, we don't have to care about each other's feelings. Like this is an intellectual talk shop, and we should just discuss whatever, even if it upsets and offends other people. And then the other half of, no, that's not OK. We should care about each other's feelings. And that became the split. And the conflicts in those conversations, I would say they were very illuminating, but also I At the time, I did not feel like a hands-on leader. I was very much like, oh, I just created a group and people can show up and do whatever they want. I don't want to get involved. I don't want to tell people what to do. I would write these comments of like, hey, I see that everyone on both sides of this conflict is making sense and they have things that they care about. Can we all get along? Can we chill? But in retrospect, if I were to do it all over again, I would be more rigorous about. not including people that I felt were too abrasive. And, or, like, there's a bunch of things I would do differently. I would be more deliberate about who I curate. I would be more deliberate about laying out ground rules. I'll be more deliberate about taking people aside and talking with them one-on-one, rather than, like, making a semi-scene, a public scene about... I mean, it's within a private group. But, like, there is this thing that people often do that they think helps, but I think actually makes things worse, which is, like, make this big announcement and, like, everyone's like, what's going on? Why is this so dramatic? Uh, anyway. So those were like my formative early experiences, like running groups like that and talking with people online all the time, many forums and all of those things. And by the time I wrote my 50-year plan doc, I already had accumulated a bunch of the people in my life online, whatever, that I feel I trust and respect that I look forward to doing stuff with in the coming decades. And your question was like, what's changed since writing it? I have come to realize that I, so while I did, so while I was describing my earlier story with the college kids, and I did err on the side, I do think my learning is, I should err on the side of caring about people who are able to practice good reply game and take care of each other emotionally and stuff. At the same time. I want to be even more deliberate in selecting for people who are actually doing scholarship and people who are actually, whether it's running companies or doing stuff that's going out into the world and interfacing with reality. I wouldn't pressure people too hard to be like, you've got to start something now. Sometimes you've got to simmer on a thing for a few years before it really comes to fruition. But I have in over the past year and a half, two years. I am becoming more sensitive to, I would say, just the, you know, simplistically, you might call it like a will to power type thing. It's just that might resonate differently for different people. Like just people who want to get shit done. Basically, I'm looking, I'm trying to look for people who. If they notice themselves in a loop of not getting anything done for a long period of time, they see that as an issue that needs addressing and they work to address it. And now I'm reminded of there was this talk that Toby from Shopify, the Shopify founder CEO, he gave a talk, I have a transcript of the talk and the video is gone, but like it was like a keynote at Ottawa, like a tech something in 2013 maybe, and he told the story of boxes, like people being, so he says when he was a kid, The world that he lived in was in a very small box, and he cared about, like, oh, I've got to get the Nike Air Jordans to impress my friends. That was the limit of what he cared about. And then you graduate, or you move out into the world, and now you're out of that little box, into a bigger box. And now you start caring about, oh, I want to make software, I want to make code, I want to do well, I have a career of some kind. So it's a bigger box. And then he talks about how there's these successive layers of boxes, boxes. And every time, once you've been to the world, come to an understanding of the box that you currently live in, eventually you may or may not look for the exit and break out and go to the next box. And most people do this a few times. And he said at some point, everyone has an uncle who stopped very early on, and then just grumbles about it. Like, oh, I could have been a contender. I could have done something, whatever. But they are trapped in that box of just complaining to their immediate family and friends or whatever. And they meet their f-----. friends at the pub every week and for 50 years, right? Which is
Andrew Rose:
Yep.
visa:
incredibly tragic. And yeah, but I mean, so the thing that I'm looking for, I'm paying attention to people who actually leave boxes. And here's the crazy thing, right? And the thing that I would, I don't think I would tweet because on Twitter, amongst other people who are also on Twitter, tweeting it feels like a bit of an act of aggression maybe.
Andrew Rose:
Yep.
visa:
And I don't want that drama, but. You can see, I'm not going to name names, but you can see just looking at the past four or five years, let's say, there are people who have gotten out of the box that they're in into the next box. And there are people who are very much still trapped in the same box they were at the start. And again, I don't mean like moral judgment as in the people who are still trapped are like worse people, less like lesser people or worse. Some of them are lovely. But like, if you, so like what we're trying to do with building seniors and dominos and big plans, we need people who are able to leave. the box they're in for the next box and repeatedly over and over again. And it's okay if some people try doing this like three or four times and then they decide, ah, I'm happy here. This is good enough for me. I'm just going to settle down with my family and that's fine. But we'll still be nice to them. We'll still love them as friends and whatever. But the core mission requires people who are committed to go next box, next box, next box. And you can see that there are people who are doing it and there are people who are almost trapped and like again I hate to make negative predictions but like and I hope people surprise me but I think you can kind of tell from some people's pattern of utterances and the fact that their life circumstances haven't changed and they're not doing anything to change those circumstances that they are going to be in that loop for you know again like people can always surprise you but if you serve if you look at an overview of like a few hundred people you can make some predictions like oh this person is going to blow up eventually Oh, this person's kind of, I would not bet on them. I wish them the best, but I would not bet on them. And so I have been trying to be more rigorous over the past year or so to identify the people who are toppling their personal dominoes and unblocking themselves and the people around them and doing new things and trying new things. And I don't need to be like dramatic about it. So like a failure mode would be someone in my position makes this observation and then they do this big speech about. how some people
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
are like this and some people are like that. That's actually the wrong thing to do. That actually encourages
Andrew Rose:
It keeps
visa:
people,
Andrew Rose:
people in boxes. Yeah.
visa:
exactly. It encourages
Andrew Rose:
Well, and
visa:
people
Andrew Rose:
also
visa:
to... Go
Andrew Rose:
there's
visa:
on.
Andrew Rose:
something interesting where like, what is a box becomes an important question. And you
visa:
Yes.
Andrew Rose:
making a speech about boxes keeps people in boxes that they didn't think were boxes. So in other words, it
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
keeps them in this psychological zone of I'm an improver when
visa:
Correct.
Andrew Rose:
in reality
visa:
Yes.
Andrew Rose:
you kind of look at them and you're like, you're not improving at all though, because
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
you aren't ever changing or moving.
visa:
Right.
Andrew Rose:
I'm reminded of this story. Actually, you have some really fun stories of janitors who just did their job so well. It's like you can tell, it's like, yes, in the discipline of janitor or cash collector or whatever,
visa:
Great.
Andrew Rose:
you could say that they're consistently moving out of their box into higher and higher forms of this art. But there's an interesting story I heard recently of the guy who led the Nuremberg Trials and how he basically went to law school, went to Harvard, was very smart, all these things from a pretty poor family. But then because it was just the patriotic era, he and all of his friends, everybody at his school went and drafted to fight
visa:
All right.
Andrew Rose:
World War II.
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
And he was so short and so pathetic that he became a private, which
visa:
and
Andrew Rose:
is like the lowest rank. And
visa:
get
Andrew Rose:
there was really nothing to be done. And there's something interesting. I don't know what it is, but like the quality of his character was such that he just stayed. being a private and did his job. And then eventually somehow later on, he was called into general Patton's office and he was given the task to lead the Nuremberg trials basically.
visa:
Wow.
Andrew Rose:
And then all of a sudden it was given like this huge authority. So he went from being a private basically to going into camps and commanding people. Get me all the files,
visa:
All
Andrew Rose:
like lock down that
visa:
right.
Andrew Rose:
room. This is mine.
visa:
Wow.
Andrew Rose:
Like this trial is mine. I'm taking all this data. And like, I don't really know quite how to think of that, but it's something like. It doesn't really necessarily matter where, like, if you, if you try to play these status games about like my position is cooler in
visa:
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rose:
society or like, I am more of a box changer than you,
visa:
Right.
Andrew Rose:
then
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
in fact, you miss the opportunities to kind of like transcend your role or whatever.
visa:
Correct, yeah, yeah. That's beautiful. So he must have been doing something on the side or something in plain sight that wasn't, you know, fitted, like it wasn't getting
Andrew Rose:
Somehow
visa:
him promoted
Andrew Rose:
people
visa:
to corporal.
Andrew Rose:
must have known, yeah.
visa:
Yeah,
Andrew Rose:
Apparently
visa:
yeah.
Andrew Rose:
like back in Washington, they identified him as like one of the brightest like possible lawyers
visa:
That makes
Andrew Rose:
that
visa:
sense.
Andrew Rose:
was in Germany at the time or something,
visa:
Yeah. So yeah,
Andrew Rose:
yeah.
visa:
so another interesting, like I was replying to someone else yesterday, I think, about, so the question was, how do you source your self-worth? And it's one of those things. It's very tricky. Like, how you manage that conversation is very tricky. Because people who have issues with it will often have this homeostatic impulse that keeps the conversation in that space. And like, the part of them that doesn't want change will run out the clock by keeping the conversation in that space.
Andrew Rose:
Mm-hmm.
visa:
And the way to get out of that space is actually to distract them from that conversation of what is self-worth and like, do I have it? Why am I unworthy? And be like,
Andrew Rose:
Totally.
visa:
no, what do you like? What do you care about? You know, what's important
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
to you? And then you go that way and then you kind of distract them from the original. It's like one of those, I saw this amazing thing, people who are like chronic stutterers. when they learn new languages, sometimes they don't stutter in the new language. There's a whole class of thing like that where people think they can't do a thing, and it stops them from doing a thing until you distract them from the fact that they can't do it. And then they're doing it. And they're like, you look at your feet, and you're like, oh, shit, I'm running on water, sort of. And yeah, so it's very, very tricky. And the only kind of general purpose move that I think works is really to repeatedly go back to focusing on what you actually want to see more of. But even then, I've noticed people using that kind of as a way of like policing other people, which is so funny and tragic to me. So it's like, anything good that you can come up with can also be like inverted in some way to like get back on your bullshit. And you really need like high trust, high context peers. So you know, like while I'm talking about boxes and whatever, like someone else who I trust might tell me, hey, Visa, you know, I've been watching you over the past year and like... you seem like you're kind of stuck in a certain way. I'll be like, oh shit, like, yeah, tell me more. Like, you know what? But that requires trust. And you can't do that, like, to some degree. You know, like someone, sometimes I get people that I think of as concerned trolls who are like, the things that you're saying could potentially be used by someone to hurt themselves. And I'm like, well, if you go on Twitter to read what some random stranger is saying. and you're choosing me of all the possible people who could have said something that the person might have read, and that's how they ended up self-harming themselves. I'm like, you know, like this poor person is so... They are so gonna get screwed by anything,
Andrew Rose:
Yeah,
visa:
right?
Andrew Rose:
yeah,
visa:
Like they
Andrew Rose:
right.
visa:
can walk down the street and, you know, there's a million ways you can hurt yourself. And I see... And even then, when someone says this to me, it's very seldom that... What I sense is it's seldom that... How do I frame this? It's usually actually a projection and an understandable projection. And I think maybe they need to hear, I'm going in many directions. They
Andrew Rose:
Like
visa:
themselves
Andrew Rose:
as in maybe they're just telling on themselves, basically.
visa:
kind of, kind of,
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
and maybe that can help them, right? But the thing that they're telling on themselves about is that they are afraid to intervene in case their intervention makes things worse, which is as a general thing to care about, like everyone should run their. actions through maybe one pass of, wait, am I making things worse? But if the, am I making things worse question prevents you from doing anything, then it's like the world is deprived of your action. The world suffers more from your inaction than the possible consequences of your action. And again, it's super context dependent. And if it's like a surgeon or someone, it depends on the context. What's the problem? What are you trying to address? And Twitter is a very low context environment, for better and for worse. And so oftentimes the best thing to do is just ignore people who are not getting what you're saying. And I feel like I've drifted a little bit. But yeah, the general idea is to look for people who are making progress. I'm definitely going to have some false positives. Sometimes I'll read people wrongly, and sometimes I will not see that someone's actually making tremendous progress on something that's not visible to me and maybe even not visible to them. Right? But nonetheless, if we want to move forward, we have to go with imperfect knowledge, and we do the best we can, and seek out the best people we can
Andrew Rose:
Right,
visa:
to
Andrew Rose:
well,
visa:
do.
Andrew Rose:
and ideally there are other people who catch the people that you miss, because they don't just like see you as the correct
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
determiner of what's good in the world.
visa:
And the crazy thing for me is that I remember when I was a nobody online and I'm just some kid with sitting at the beach or wherever and thinking I want more out of life. I wish there was a table for nerds like me or weirdos like me. And so I start a thing, just talking online or whatever. And now I have some kind of space. And then people now come to me sometimes with good intentions and they're like, oh, you are... you're being exclusionary to other people. And I'm like, wait, I could have just not done the thing. No good deed goes unpunished. Like
Andrew Rose:
Yeah, totally.
visa:
the privilege of getting criticism is part of the price for doing anything substantial and worthwhile. And the safest way to not get any criticism is to just do nothing. And people aren't going around lecturing everyone else for being a... And even if that happens, you can just ignore it, because it's so generic.
Andrew Rose:
No, I
visa:
But
Andrew Rose:
get it.
visa:
yeah,
Andrew Rose:
We got cancelled
visa:
yeah.
Andrew Rose:
for living with our friends and then
visa:
Right,
Andrew Rose:
a
visa:
exactly,
Andrew Rose:
bunch of people had
visa:
exactly.
Andrew Rose:
to message us and we're like, uh, what's going on? That's crazy.
visa:
It's so crazy. And so part of getting seniors to work, I think, is we have to, and again, even in historical times, you need friends who tell you, what the fuck? That's not relevant to you. You shouldn't let that get to you. It's not important. Because you don't want to go off the deep end and absolute, actually insane. So yeah, like seniors requires deviance and deviance will make non-deviants or like normies uncomfortable and they will express their feelings which is their right to express. But like then it's on the deviance or the group of deviance to know how to filter that information as relevant or not relevant. And
Andrew Rose:
Yeah,
visa:
yeah, so that's very
Andrew Rose:
there's
visa:
important.
Andrew Rose:
a couple ways I could see the conversation going here. One, like really quick. Um, I, part of my original question was a little bit leading. I'm curious, are, is the, your scene losing people to suburbia, um, or our scene or whatever. And by losing people to suburbia, I mean something more spiritual, which is like, do you see people that are kind of dropping off because they just get too busy or they like stopping online or whatever it is and
visa:
Hmm
Andrew Rose:
I get that there are always more people and that's not
visa:
Right.
Andrew Rose:
necessarily a problem, but I'm curious like you probably have more of an idea of
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
what that dynamic means for a scene than anybody else.
visa:
Yeah, I definitely can immediately think of like a dozen people who I love, who I think would be like heroic actors, given the right context, who have been disheartened and frustrated by the last several years. And they are basically in their... fuck it, I'm gonna live on... psychologically, they're psychologically retired right now. I miss them, but I do think that they are smart and they are making the right decision for themselves in the present moment. And I also, if I ever get an opportunity, like I find something that I think is the right shape for them, I would be the first to like bang on their door and be like, all right, time's up, man. I like,
Andrew Rose:
Yeah,
visa:
you know, like,
Andrew Rose:
yeah,
visa:
you know
Andrew Rose:
yeah.
visa:
those, in every heist
Andrew Rose:
The classic
visa:
movie,
Andrew Rose:
Star Wars story,
visa:
yeah,
Andrew Rose:
yeah, yeah.
visa:
in every heist, like I got one last job and they're like, son of a bitch, I'm in, right? But like, it has to be, it has to be a legitimate opportunity. So I do, I do, you know, is it sad that some of these people are dropping off? Yeah, but like, Sometimes keeping those people around against their will actually makes things worse. Then you just sour the existing nexus. So people who wanna leave should be allowed to leave and encouraged to leave and to rest and relax and recuperate and whatever. And yeah, I'm fairly confident that like probably 80% of the people who are currently in suburbia, quote unquote, I believe that for the right mission, for the right event, the right circumstances, they will return. in their own way or they might start something new or whatever. But yeah, you're right, people do live and it's important to kind of price that in or acknowledge that and be
Andrew Rose:
Yep.
visa:
okay with that to some degree.
Andrew Rose:
Priya and I have an internal saying that we enforce pretty strictly, which is we'll never be unhappy or frustrated or try to change it. And we have to go in expecting that every single month we will lose
visa:
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rose:
30% of the people that live
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
in the community. And it turns out that's a huge amount. We literally never have lost 30% of the people that are living in the community. There's
visa:
Mm.
Andrew Rose:
some sense that if you aren't be pricing in like a huge amount of churn, then you're gripping something too tightly and
visa:
And you know
Andrew Rose:
you aren't
visa:
what?
Andrew Rose:
letting it do what it wants.
visa:
So a thing that my ex-boss, Dinesh, did, which it was my first job, so I thought it was completely normal. And I was shocked to find out that some people not only not do it, they do the opposite of it, which is insane to me. So what Dinesh would do is every time someone left a company, he would send out a mass email celebrating their accomplishments. He'd be like, hey, this person is leaving. They've done this, this. The company is better because of this, this. And join me in celebrating. And like, I never knew if the person had quit or was asked to leave. So whether the person quit or asked to leave, or for whatever reason, Dinesh would celebrate them anyway. And some of those people would then, like two, three years down the line, they would refer some of their friends to come and work at this place. Because it's such a great work environment. And you know that your contributions will be valued and that your exit will be honorable and dignified for whatever reason. And people just want to look at it. Refer their friends to a great place like that. So even the people
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
who churn they are still a part of like they are like alumni right, like they are part of the
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
ecosystem and Yes, so I've
Andrew Rose:
This
visa:
heard
Andrew Rose:
is really
visa:
of people
Andrew Rose:
interesting.
visa:
who
Andrew Rose:
Like exit trauma, basically. Like how do
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
you as an org help people with their exit trauma? Because
visa:
Right.
Andrew Rose:
both entering and exiting new scenes are
visa:
the
Andrew Rose:
moments
visa:
most meaningful
Andrew Rose:
of like great,
visa:
days.
Andrew Rose:
vulnerable, yeah, like
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
we're very vulnerable to both amazing and horrible outcomes.
visa:
Yeah, so even if you're kind of mad at the person who's leaving, their actual exit, you should do everything in your power to make it as gracious and beautiful. Scream into your pillow afterwards if you have to, and tell the story of how they fucked something up a couple of years later maybe, if necessary at all, or have an internal whatever. But the practice of people leaving and people joining is symbolically important to the entire enterprise for everyone involved, and everyone is watching.
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
So those things. So it's very important to really handle those things very, very well.
Andrew Rose:
Um, let's talk a little bit about deviance. So something interesting, it comes up repeatedly in the senior's research that I'm doing,
visa:
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rose:
and especially in some of the failure modes, which
visa:
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rose:
is like, you'll have groups of people that genuinely understand how to pursue deviance, but they don't understand how to add like reality to their loop or something. Um,
visa:
See that again? The
Andrew Rose:
so
visa:
understands?
Andrew Rose:
they understand how to pursue deviance. So they like
visa:
Okay.
Andrew Rose:
pursue deviant shit. But.
visa:
All right.
Andrew Rose:
They don't understand how to make that deviant shit useful to reality.
visa:
Right,
Andrew Rose:
And
visa:
okay.
Andrew Rose:
so they pursue like increasing levels of catharsis due to unique deviance. Um, like a good example here is leverage research. I don't know if you've read very much about that
visa:
I'm
Andrew Rose:
organization.
visa:
moderately familiar with it.
Andrew Rose:
Yeah, so like they were trying to solve psychology and ended up pursuing a lot of kind of deviant ways of using the mind and using the body in order to pursue like unique psychological experiences. But I suspect that what happened is they never well, I interviewed people and what happened is they never used that for anything. And so the whole group went crazy, basically. And even though a lot of the people were smart, even though a lot of people would go on to do great things afterwards. the org failed and there was this kind of element of like driving each other crazy that happened because I don't know how to think of it actually. Like I don't have a full causal analysis, but I'm curious if you've seen that in other places and also how you think about avoiding that in a scene that is especially interested in growth and healing and unique deviant experiences and stuff like that. How do you make sure it's always pursuing something that is real, so to speak, and how do you determine what's real?
visa:
Hmm. So my memory of what I read about leverage-ish stuff, I don't know if I'm misremembering or I got the details wrong or whatever, but like there was this sense of it was selecting for people who agreed with the notion. So I was going to say bought into the narrative, but that sounds a bit... And we all, even my 50 year plan or your fractal, we're all creating narratives for people to buy into. So it's...
Andrew Rose:
Totally, yeah.
visa:
It's not a pejorative. It's like there's some narrative and people join it. And I
Andrew Rose:
Definitely.
visa:
think some of the narrative around leverage was like, we are going to bring people together to mold them into world changer type personalities
Andrew Rose:
Totally, yeah. They
visa:
and
Andrew Rose:
were trying to literally
visa:
address.
Andrew Rose:
mint Elon Musk's, basically.
visa:
Yeah, so I wrote a theory about this. The first thing you have to think about when you want to mint Elon Musk's is recognize that Elon Musk did not go to an Elon Musk minting facility.
Andrew Rose:
Right, yes, correct.
visa:
And Steve Jobs did not go to a Steve Jobs minting facility. And so anybody that, and even, you know, I was reading about like, what's his name, the guy who nailed Martin Luther, the guy who nailed the 95 thesis, like even he, he was like a disagreeable motherfucker his whole life. Like people hated him. Like he was just annoying, the kind of annoying guy who would, you know, contradict authority and insult people. And I mean, not insult, just he was, if you look into the details yourself, but like he's like, he was not the kind of guy who would have. this the thing that I guess I'm trying to get at is like the opinionated assertive kind of person will not be mold will not go to a molding facility because they're too disagreeable
Andrew Rose:
You're right.
visa:
for that right and
Andrew Rose:
Yep.
visa:
then yeah so my way so like I
Andrew Rose:
Like the
visa:
think
Andrew Rose:
molding
visa:
you
Andrew Rose:
facility would have rejected them even as well.
visa:
Yeah, they would have been rejected, and they would have rejected
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
it. So my approach is the feral free agent, slightly chaotic kind of thing. I don't want anyone who comes to me thinking I'm going to fix all of their problems, and I'm going to mold them into someone else. And I've really, in the past few years, come to understand the trope of the selective guru, master, teacher kind of guy. I know there's this thing, I think in Japanese, I read something a long time ago. many different aspiring students go to this Swartzman teacher or something, and they're like, great guru, please teach me. And he's like, no, you're not ready, you're not worthy, I'm not you, you're not the right student. And I was like, why would you do that? That sounds so mean. But now I get it. When people come with a certain kind of... There's a few different tells.
Andrew Rose:
It's like a neediness. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
visa:
Yes, yeah. So...
Andrew Rose:
I literally had a call like this earlier this week. It was really difficult even, because it's like somebody you think would be amazing,
visa:
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rose:
and you're like, oh, but you're doing cool work. And everything almost fits, except why do you want this so much then? Like,
visa:
Yeah,
Andrew Rose:
if
visa:
yeah.
Andrew Rose:
you're actually so perfect for this, you shouldn't
visa:
Great.
Andrew Rose:
want it so much. And I don't know. That's weird to say out loud, but I think maybe women get it more instinctively or something
visa:
Yeah,
Andrew Rose:
than men
visa:
yeah,
Andrew Rose:
do. But.
visa:
yeah. So even when I was, so like when I was serving in the military in Singapore, so like every guy, most guys have to, based on whatever, and so nobody really wants to do it. If you really want to do it, and there are guys who really want to do it, they sign on, so they become regulars, which is like, so the proper full-time soldiers for five years rather than two. And amongst those guys, when it comes to like weapons handling, there is this issue of like overzealous soldiers who are like a source of problems. Like they, run a marathon or something and their body can't take it anymore but they feel like they must and so they keep going and then they collapse and then
Andrew Rose:
Mm.
visa:
now they're a problem for everyone else. And there's a few different cases where overzealousness is a problem and people who are from the other end of the spectrum who are like I don't even want to be here, I don't want to do this, like they won't relate to that idea whatsoever of being overzealous. But yeah, it's like the people that we need should have to be kind of autonomous, they have to be kind of self-satisfied or self-healing, self- correcting, self-directed. And one thing I always tell people is like, so once somebody accused me of being a cult leader and that upset me deeply, and even that was interesting because if it wasn't at least partially true, I wouldn't get upset. I would just laugh and be like, that's so, no, obviously not. But I guess it hurt me because I myself wondered if it might be true somewhat. And so what I decided to do was I went and looked up, like there's this, I have a tweet about this somewhere. There's a list of all the signs that you're in a cult.
Andrew Rose:
Yes, correct.
visa:
And so my approach is to create good seniors, you take the list of signs you're in a cult and you flip it and make do the opposite. So like, you know, there's one true leader, like, okay, like the seniors has no leaders. I mean, there might be some people who step into leadership roles, but everyone questions everyone. And then another thing is like, oh, you don't question the thing. Everyone questions the thing often all the time. And like questioning the thing is part of like the price of entry, right? If you're gonna leave people like cause problems for you, like let everyone leave as easily as necessary. isolate the person from their friends and family, insist that the person go home and spend time with their
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
parents and whatever. And that, sometimes people see that and then they're like, ah, that's not what they want. You know, like I've,
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
like something like once a week-ish.
Andrew Rose:
I don't want to go see my family.
visa:
Yeah. And once in a while, I'll get a DM from some kid, usually a guy, and it'll be like, you are my hero, you are like my god. And it's like half joking, like half, but I reckon... In my view, I recognize this as pedestalization. And they might be joking about it at first. But if I... So every utterance is a bit, right? It's a proposal. Like, hey, let's play this proposal where I treat you like a god and you absolve me of my sins or whatever. And I refuse to do that. Because I think that if you even jokingly allow it to start, they will then get into this cultist. follower dynamic and they will pedestal. And I think, you know, if you watch people like Jordan Peterson and others in that sphere, like, I think there's very much a case where they get pedestalized by a bunch of people who want them to help and want to be helped by them or whatever, but they abdicate their own personal responsibility and they just be like, oh, whatever that guy says is correct and right. And I should just follow what he says. And... It's unhealthy for both parties. It's unhealthy for the person on the pedestal. It's unhealthy for the people doing it. It's dehumanizing in both ways. And so it's like, I repeatedly insist that, like, I'm just some guy. My friend Rosalind told me about, like, a guru that she actually liked, and what he would do when anyone, like, tried to touch his feet to, like, ask for his blessings, he would try and touch their feet back. And so they would then do this thing where
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
they're like, oh no, you're the great guru. How can you touch my feet? I'm supposed to touch your feet. And it's like, you know, the... dust on my feet is the same as the dust on your feet. And I think that's great. I think it's healthy for creators and people of seniors to be seen as, it's just some guy. It's just some guy doing some stuff, and it's fun, and it's cool. We can celebrate the cool works, but we shouldn't canonize someone as saints or gods or whatever. And again, you take people like Steve Jobs or Lee Kuan Yew or anybody that gets venerated for their agency or the things that they accomplish. Like those guys were not going around touching other people's feet. They were just pursuing what
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
they thought was right and interesting. And so the best way you can honor people like that if you want to is to play well yourself and to take responsibility for yourself and find your own taste and your own things that you care about. And yeah, I forgot what your question was.
Andrew Rose:
Yeah, it's interesting too, because it's just true. Like people are just some guy or some gal. And I think maybe my favorite talking point of yours recently, the one that I've been bringing up or sharing the most is, are your threads where you talk about how famous people got their starts.
visa:
Mm, right.
Andrew Rose:
Because it immediately shatters every illusion you have about what
visa:
Mm.
Andrew Rose:
it means to be famous. Basically, it's
visa:
Yes.
Andrew Rose:
like, oh, what it means
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
to be famous is that you start doing parking lot concerts. What it means
visa:
Yes!
Andrew Rose:
to be famous is that you like, build shitty computers in your garage. What it means to be famous is that you like hang out with your friends and you like do
visa:
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rose:
some comedy bits with them until they like push you to give a standup special or like to do an open mic in Greenwich village or whatever.
visa:
Right. Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
And.
visa:
Right. When you really start studying these things, and I think what happens, at least for me, is that, you know, so with Lady Gaga doing the IKEA parking lot concert, I find that concert more impressive than the Super Bowl concert that she eventually did. Because
Andrew Rose:
Well,
visa:
once
Andrew Rose:
it's obvious
visa:
you're... Right.
Andrew Rose:
to say yes to the Super Bowl concert, yeah.
visa:
Yeah. By the time you're there, it's like, oh, you have all this, there's this whole ecosystem that's set up for you. You already have a massive fan base. There's like experts who will do choreography for you and sound and everything. But to bring that kind of energy to an IKEA parking lot and be like, I'm going to get backup dancers and I'm going to get, I'm going to put on a show, even though like no one else recognizes my super stardom yet. That takes, that's the real thing. Like that's the, that's the actual ticket to going on to do the Super Bowl later. But like people don't see that. And like, if we can even get like 10% more people to see that, I think then we will, we want to see. 10x, 100x more IKEA parking lot concerts in that sense. Done with
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
like real spirit.
Andrew Rose:
It's like an under promising and over delivering on life or something.
visa:
Yes, yes, yeah. Just take the thing damn seriously, because it matters to you. So even if you do stand up, whatever you do and hardly anybody shows up, the people who showed up there are still, you should consider them even more valuable than thousands of people subsequently. So the first 10 people who buy your book, they are worth 100,000 people once you're a bestseller. you know, because they took a chance on you, they were willing to like, so it's, and yeah, I keep like, the tragic thing I sometimes see is that people don't see that, like they don't see that the, it's not that when you're small and you have nobody, yeah, so this is the thing, I don't know if I've said this in this way, or I've said it enough, but like, you know, a friend texted me a few weeks ago, like, they struck out on their own to do a thing that they think is worthwhile, didn't quite get product market fit. So like for like, a couple of years, it's kind of languishing, doing their best, but like their audience isn't really growing, they're not really getting the gigs that they want to get. And it's just kind of, ah, it's not really working. It's kind of failing. And the thing that I believe that, again, I guess tweeting about this is a bit tedious, but the thing that I do genuinely believe is that how you struggle in that struggle zone is what defines who you are as a creator, as an artist, as a founder, whatever. Like, again, once you're successful, everything you do in the success zone is... Great, sure, you put a person in the success zone and they will succeed. But getting to the success zone when you have nothing, when you're in the dip, and how you maintain your psychology during that time, that is the sauce. So there's this great video of Seinfeld and Orny Adams. Years ago when Orny Adams was a nobody, and he's like, and I've been a comedian for three years, it's not really working out, how do I succeed or whatever? How do I... what do you do and like your parents, what do you tell your parents? Where your friends are successful real estate or finance guys and like you have no money, you're just some shitty comedian. And Seinfeld was just like, what the fuck are you talking about? You know,
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
like the fact that I get to do comedy is the juice, you know, like even if like no one shows up, like I'm standing there, that's sacred to me. And there are some tiny nitpicks we can make about like success and like feedback loops and whatever. But I do believe, this is a semi-quasi religious belief, that once you can truly embody the state of, I'm on stage as a stand-up comedian and I don't give a fuck what you think about me. I'm here to do my thing. And there's in the audience laughter, if you laugh, great. If you don't laugh, fuck you. Like there's that genuine, once you enter that genuine state of, I love what I do and I don't care what you think about it. And not like in a caustic, like fuck you, I'm bitter and angry,
Andrew Rose:
No,
visa:
but.
Andrew Rose:
I know exactly
visa:
Just
Andrew Rose:
what you're talking about. It's like
visa:
pure.
Andrew Rose:
you're embodying something that says, I will be here for the next 20 years or something. Like you're embodying
visa:
Right.
Andrew Rose:
something that says to people, this is real and if you are my fan, you might not be the fan to the best comedian, but you're the fan to something that will be here, like something
visa:
Correct,
Andrew Rose:
real that you can kind
visa:
yeah.
Andrew Rose:
of hold in your hands. Whereas I think there's like, if you do something ironically, nobody wants to tag along because when you shatter your own illusion, all of their investment just gets shattered too.
visa:
Yeah. And the tricky thing is, once you're really, really there, it might take several more years for people to see it, but when people see it, they know. They know that, oh
Andrew Rose:
Yep.
visa:
shit, this guy is for real. This guy has crossed the threshold of like, will they like me? I want them to like me. And they're like, oh, why do I want to see that? And then that guy spitting truth, that guy spitting... It's religious. It's really, it's like that guy has the voice of God flowing through him in a way. He's transcended his... is like meat space boundary. Like musicians have the same thing. Like when they really
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
feel the moment in the zone and they've lost like consciousness of how the audience is responding or whatever, that is the like oasis in the desert that everyone wants to be drawn to. And once you can get there, it will resonate with some people, maybe not everyone, but like it will resonate with your people. And like the job of the artist or the creator or whatever is to seek out that zone. and throw themselves into it with all their heart. And even while they're broke, even while like, oh my god, my bills are not getting paid. Oh my god, my friends think I'm a joke. Fuck everyone. I'm just really, really. And as I say this, I guess there's some chance that someone might be delusional in a bad way. So here's the thing. Even if you're delusional in a bad way, that cannot sustain you more than a couple of years. The Seinfeld Oni Adams example is very interesting to me because you can then see Oni post on YouTube for like 10 years afterwards. And it's shit. It's like nobody really cares. Like nobody, it's like boring, not much response. But he did keep at it and keeping at it while being mediocre. And eventually he lost his illusions. And like his latest couple of specials now have like millions of views and he's doing pretty well. I wouldn't say he's like, oh my God, great greatest of all time comedian, but I can see he has the spirit now. And he's like, he's doing jokes like, He goes up to some kid and he's like in the audience and he's like, you're young, I bet you still have dreams. And he does it with such earnestness and you feel like, oh, this guy is speaking his truth. And like, for me personally, I wouldn't say like I'm a huge Oni fan, but I can say that, Oni fan, he has crossed the threshold from wanna be to legit. And once someone is legit, like they can't help but succeed almost.
Andrew Rose:
Yeah,
visa:
And
Andrew Rose:
I'll
visa:
some
Andrew Rose:
find
visa:
people...
Andrew Rose:
myself, I'll find myself with my collaborators having this distinction in my head between people where when I'm talking about their projects and they're, and they have any amount of anxiety, I say like, don't worry, it's inevitable. Just keep like, you actually do not need to worry. Like your success is inevitable. Let's just wait. We'll wait. We'll like keep working together. Like, and then I'll, and then there's a distinction where like people who I don't feel comfortable saying that to, because I don't think it's true.
visa:
Right,
Andrew Rose:
And,
visa:
yeah.
Andrew Rose:
and like. It's very interesting for me to reflect on the difference between those two, where it's like, what am I picking up on with the people where I just know that as long as they feel supported, then they will win. They will become famous. They will accomplish all of their goals. I think it's something like this. They already have the spirit. And then once you have that, it's just like, oh yeah, just keep investing in that thing. That thing will never break. It will just keep growing bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger forever. And so just invest in that. as long as it takes and you will be fine.
visa:
Yeah,
Andrew Rose:
Well,
visa:
it
Andrew Rose:
that's
visa:
do
Andrew Rose:
an
visa:
be like
Andrew Rose:
interesting
visa:
that.
Andrew Rose:
way to think about it. It's almost like you're building containers that you're... Like, as a creative, you are building some container for your work and whether or not that container will break or not is kind of the crucial aspect of whether or not you can sustain yourself doing that
visa:
Hmm.
Andrew Rose:
thing.
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
And I don't really know what that means, like that container, because that's not really a good way. It's not a great way to think about it. But it does place the work outside of yourself in an interesting way.
visa:
Yeah, so there are technical considerations. So some things like optimizing for bare bones survival. So if you're starving with no food,
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
then you might die of exposure or whatever. And so that has to be avoided somehow. So you might have to take a second job. You might have to go slower or whatever. That's it. The other thing is that if you can solve for distribution in some way. So it's unfortunate if you're a. the legendary comedians of today, they went through phase, they were pre-YouTube, right? So they had to rely on word of mouth and they have to do well at one venue and trust that people will tell their friends. And that's still a valuable way of trying to do things. But if you can catch lightning in a bottle in some way, like if you can have a recording of a good set or you've wrote an essay where you were particularly inspired, then those things can be shared more and more into the world. And so it's sometimes slightly unfortunate when you encounter someone who's doing good work, but they are averse to sharing that stuff, distributing. And I get it myself, because
Andrew Rose:
Well,
visa:
even
Andrew Rose:
that's not unfortunate.
visa:
I.
Andrew Rose:
That's the most fortunate thing. It means that I can share their work for them.
visa:
Oh yeah, so that's again as part of what makes for great scenes. And I do think that, yeah, that's the most elegant solution. The most elegant solution is that people celebrate each other so they don't have to fall into the complex difficulty of celebrating, selling themselves in that sense. But yeah, you know, there is, so I can go back and forth on this for a long time about what is the right time or the right context to share. But again, I always argue about this internally from a place of strength. Like I only, like, you know, so like I once had a thread in like 2018 about unpaid internships and whether or not those are good or bad. And like, I mean, so most people are arguing whether it's good or bad. And I'm like, so my question is, how are you doing financially yourself right now? Like to whoever the person is arguing about it? Because if you are, if you have a job and you're happy with it or whatever, and then in your spare time, you want to argue about unpaid internships, great. If you're unemployed, and you're spending your time arguing on the internet, and you're struggling with your bills and whatever, like, like do yourself a favor, you know what I mean? waste time on frivolous. I mean, it's not even. It's like put on your mask first. That's what they say in the plains. Before you start worrying about the problems in the world outside you, do you have a roof over your head? Do you have financial stability? Do you need help with that? If everyone can have those conversations and resolve stuff for you. And I love that you do a version of this with your peers. Like. If you get people together, get better profile pictures for everyone, better resumes.
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
It's tremendous. You create real wealth. And then now everyone has more disposable income to go to each other's shows and support each other creatively and all those things. And I guess that mainstream public Twitter is not the best place to do that because people feel, most people have a bit more shyness and aversion to vulnerability and whatever. And yeah, so the people who are willing to tolerate, like, weird looks and bad replies and whatever from randos. As long as they are not anti-social freaks, as long as you have actual goodness in your heart and you're trying to do something good, being willing to tolerate random nonsense from strangers is what lets you recruit more people. And then once you've recruited people, you can invite them to semi-private contexts where they can open up and do more. And again, I feel like I'm preaching to someone who already gets it, but for
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
anyone who's listening. Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
Yep. OK, well, let's get back to this in a second. Here's something that I could use your help on.
visa:
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rose:
I'm designing a curriculum,
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
like a canon slash library, to help 14-year-olds navigate the world, especially digitally. I basically think there is nothing stopping a 14-year-old from creating their digital career, whatever
visa:
Yes.
Andrew Rose:
that means to them.
visa:
I agree.
Andrew Rose:
And I think the main thing stopping them is actually just a lack of supportive context. I want to build that supportive context. I think part of that is also building a canon. One of the things that there's a couple of quick questions I have for you here. One is just like, what should go in the canon? Like what should I give to a 14 year old in a list somewhere that would change their life forever? Maybe like on 5% odds. Another question is, how can I communicate the feeling that the real world is more exciting than fantasy worlds? That like They already live, kind of like you say, they already live in a fantasy MMO. Um, and I think there can be something which is tricky where the real world seems like work and then like other worlds seem like play and how can I also communicate that the real world is play.
visa:
Ah, man. So I think in both cases, the thing that is the highest impact thing is stories.
Andrew Rose:
Mm-hmm.
visa:
And the first thing that's coming to my mind for some reason is I once tweeted something. I can't remember what, I can go and look this up if you want, but I tweeted something about people helping people maybe, and someone in the replies said that they needed a camera to do more of whatever art that they were doing. And someone else in the reply, bought them the camera. And I was like, holy shit. I just tweeted. I'm just tapping on my screen. So the thing here is that everyone in the world right now, in the developed world or whatever, everyone in the smartphone world picks up this rectangle every day and taps on it. And there are things you can do. There are ways in which you can tap on that rectangle that make people's lives better, that give people
Andrew Rose:
Mm-hmm.
visa:
money. My friends in Singapore. In 2019, my friends who read the stuff that I was tapping on a screen liked it so much, they put me on a plane to fly to San Francisco. And then it happened again. And earlier this year, I flew out and met you. And in all of those cases, it was just me tapping on a screen. And I actually been meaning to write, and I say about this, I was going to title it something like the ways in which I was, the missing thing from my education. maybe even this. So I do have like a thread about it. I was quote tweeting, I think Rune. So Rune tweeted something like, it's crazy that you can like armchair quarterback on the internet and acquire real power from it. And I was like, hell yes, this is my jam. I quote tweeted it and I'm like, yes. And you know, this is not even a new thing. Like this has been true for hundreds of years, but in the past you had to have like some amount of privilege, some amount to be born in the right place at the right time, have some amount of money and. But yeah, so Montaigne was, I would say, one of the early cases of someone who was excellent in this way. And after him, after the printing press and everything, Erasmus is another one. Alexander Hamilton is another one. There's a whole bunch of lists of people like this. And the pattern you see, often they're orphans. Their parents are dead. And they throw themselves into the world of letters, of writing, of reading books, and whatever. And the belief that they have that School does not seem to give people, and I mean, let me just continue first. The belief that they have that school does not seem to give people is that, you know, Lin-Manuel wrote it as Alexander saying, I wrote my way out. I wrote my way out
Andrew Rose:
Mm-hmm.
visa:
of poverty. I wrote my way out of my circumstances. I wrote my way out of, you know, I wrote letters to my girlfriend until she fell in love with me. I wrote a new constitution. I wrote, you know, financial systems into existence. Like everything, and you know, this goes back to like really basic shit, like, things have to be conceived of in the mind before they can be manifest in reality. And Steve Jobs has a quote about this. Everything around you is made up by someone. I have a desk fan. Someone designed it. Someone dreamed up the idea of, oh, I want to, I feel hot right now, and I would like to not feel hot. How do I spin a thing? Maybe I wave a thing and feel better. How can I get something to do it that's not my hand? And then they design it, and then it's good. It works. They sell it. They become rich. And they whatever. And it's just that sense of. things are possible, you can do things, you can change
Andrew Rose:
Mm-hmm.
visa:
things. And this has always been true. It's truer than ever, because you can connect with other people. And yeah, so but the thing is, school is almost designed not to let you know this, you know, it's almost designed, like if I want to be antagonistic about it, it's like, it's designed to keep this knowledge from you. Because if you really knew that shit, you would stop going to school, you would just make shit happen and get bridge and
Andrew Rose:
Yes.
visa:
make friends and wonder, why go to school? You go to school to be indoctrinated or socialized in the mainstream culture and the checkboxes and do as you're told. But even doing as you're told, that's five layers down from the guy. So the guy, some guy discovered fans, and he built a fan corporation. And the fan corporation hires part-time staff to do assembly line stuff. And then they're like, oh, we need to hire some assembly line people. And so assembly line people, it's like all the way down, you get a job, you get resumes, and then the schools teach you to get that job at the end of the line. But if that's what you want, fine. But the world can be so much bigger and broader than that. Yeah, again, I would definitely open with the Steve Jobs quote about life can be so much bigger than what you feel. I would point out that Erasmus and Alexander Hamilton and all these people, they have this story about this guy wrote a very thoughtful criticism of Sony's products. And they loved him so much, they made him a consultant, and then they eventually made him president of Sony. And all he did was just write what he thought. And the thing is, most people don't write what they really think and what they really feel. They write what they think passes the test. And so there's such a deficit of genuine emotion, genuine feeling, concern, thought. And yeah, people completely don't. Even I myself, I feel like I have this. The entire life that I have, which is like magical, based relative to what my 14 year old self thought was possible in the world. I'm living a fulfillment of all of those dreams and more. Even then, I did that in bits and pieces. From time to time, I would get inspired and I would feel, I've got to do something, I've got to write something, I've got to say something. And I was living like that maybe 10% of the time or so. I would sit down and I would write my butt off and... What if that had been like 80% of my time or 90% of my time, right? Like if I had felt that kind of possibility and power that shit is worth saying and like a well articulated thing can be of use to many, many more people and it just opens doors for you. People are interested in who you are, what you have to say. And I think, yeah, one of the other things is like, the world is big, right? There's a lot of people in it. Everyone in your immediate social environment might not... know or care about you or what you care about. And that does not mean that what you care about is invalid. It just means that you're in the wrong environment. And the internet allows you to find anyone. And the world is so, so big. Sometimes when I'm trying to help someone see the possibility, I'm like, some people like to eat shit, literally. And like,
Andrew Rose:
Mm-hmm.
visa:
Anytime someone says, oh, I'm never going to find a girlfriend, or I'm never going to whatever. I'm like, based on what? Based on your life experience so far, which is like a drop in the ocean, you don't know shit. I don't know shit. Neither of us knows shit. Why are we pretending that we do?
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
The realm of possibility is so, so large. And yeah, so regarding the real world being more exciting than fantasy, the excitement is in manifesting things in reality. So that you can say a bunch of people You can say, let's do this thing. And then other people can be like, yes, that's kind of cool. Let's do it. And then it actually manifests. And yeah, the reason reality is more exciting than fantasy is that you can manifest things. You can make things happen. Persuasion is real. It's a skill that you can cultivate. And it starts with cultivating your own taste, saying, I'll be cool. It'll be cool if, wouldn't it be cool if this? Make a list of things that you think would be cool. And
Andrew Rose:
Hmm.
visa:
you never know who might. You could be like, It would be cool if someone funded me to write something. Just whatever the thing. I wanna write, I don't know, Aladdin fan, that's one of my things. I wanna write Aladdin fan fiction. And then you leave some notes, right? So you do some of the work, because it is interesting to you. So you make a list of whatever you think would be cool. And then, so you make the list first, and then whatever you think is the most cool in that list, write what you would do. So if I had a year's worth of... free time and resources and whatever, I would build this thing and I would, you know, invite these people to this place and we would do this thing. Like, just write it up. And like, there are wealthy people in the world who will like fund it for fun. You know, and it's one of my beliefs when I was, when I was like 15, 16, 17, and like, my family and society was telling me that, oh, you gotta get a job and you gotta whatever. I was thinking, okay, how rare am I? you know, me, Visaghan, Bheerswamy, like, what kind of a weirdo am I? Like, one in a thousand, one in 10,000, one in a hundred thousand? Even if, let's say, I'm one in a million, which I don't think I'm that rare, I don't think I'm one in a million rare. But let's say I'm one in a million rare. That means there's 8,000 people like me in the world, right? Okay, suppose half of them are in poverty, right? Suppose, like, there must be, out of the 8,000 people like me, okay, half in poverty, out of the other 4,000, like... 50 of them must be rich and they are like me. And if I were rich, and I see one of me, I recognize that's another visa out there and he's just broke and I have like a billion dollars. I would no questions asked, give him a million dollars on the spot because he's me. I know that if I have another me walking around doing cool shit, that would be great. It's not even a handout. It's like an investment. It's like this, it's obvious thing to do. And like, yeah, I'm not that rare. And so I just need to be prolific publicly and like 99.9% of people can tell me that's stupid, that's not important, that's ugly, that's whatever. I don't care about any of them. I'm just trying to find other me's. And I think reading history is helpful. Like it's good to go look up like, you know, so Montaigne existed. That's a relief. Like Maria Montessori existed. I learned about her fairly recently. I'm like, holy shit, here's a person
Andrew Rose:
She's amazing.
visa:
who took education seriously before I was born. And that like immediately makes me so much more optimistic because I used to think that, ah, nobody gets it. No, nobody in my
Andrew Rose:
One
visa:
immediate.
Andrew Rose:
of the only people who took education seriously. Yeah, just
visa:
Yeah,
Andrew Rose:
an absolute
visa:
but
Andrew Rose:
legend.
visa:
she existed. And if she existed once, she can exist again. So
Andrew Rose:
Yep.
visa:
she must be walking this earth right now in some other person. And we can find them. And we can set up beacons to find these people. So one of my favorite sad letters from Marshall McLuhan to Ezra Pound. He was basically saying, let's set up something like Fractal. Let's set up something like Friendly Ambitious Nerds. But I don't know how to find the right people. I know somebody in this city, somewhere else. But I don't know why they would move. They're busy with their thing. I know like 10 people like that. And what do we do? What do? Sucks to be us. Oh, well, we try our best. They didn't have Twitter. They didn't have the internet. We have the tools to make their dreams come true. And if we consider these people to be our predecessors, and I do, it's almost like, again, we are obliged to do it. Like a happy obligation. How wonderful it would be to make. I would love to. So one of the things I would do when I have my own version of Fractal House or whatever, it doesn't really matter what the specific instantiation of it. I would print
Andrew Rose:
Yes.
visa:
out. And maybe you can do this for me. print out Marshall McLuhan's letter to Ezra Pound. And they're like, we've got to find, let's try and start a milieu. It's like, I can send it to you. And it's like,
Andrew Rose:
Yeah, please,
visa:
we
Andrew Rose:
now.
visa:
are doing it. Yeah, we're doing it. Let's do the thing. And it's no longer like, oh, we are a bunch of nerds with no history and no tradition and no legacy and what. Like, maybe not every single person needs to worry about this, but I've thought about this a lot. So I can provide that as my service to other people. Like, you don't need to think of yourself as like this. you know, this kind of isolated, missed... Like people, sometimes weirdos feel like they are factory defects. You know, they feel like, oh, everyone is like that and I'm different, like, fuck me, right? But it's like, no, there have been people like us throughout all of time and we have made the world what it is. It isn't normies who invent planes and flight, you know, it's some very weird guys who are like running a bicycle shop and be like, you know what would be interesting? If our bicycle could fly before any human ever flown, right? Like... holy sh- like that's not a normal person and that person enabled commercial flight for the rest of mankind, right? And yeah, you know, so if there are people like that and they just don't feel great about themselves, like we can solve this. That's for me, that's a fairly easy thing to do and so it's like I do it as much as I can. Yeah, like so you're not alone, you're not crazy. There have been people like you in the past, they succeeded. Their stories have been kept out of centralized mainstream education probably because They don't want you to know your power. Like, it does make for... And there is a growing pain, there's a period of time, I think, where people who learn this become temporarily insufferable. When you suddenly realize, oh shit, you can do anything. You go around, you poke other people like, hey, have you heard the good news? Like, you can be anyone you want to be. Like, shut up, dude, I'm trying to go to work. I'm confused. Like, so you might have to go through that phase for a little bit, but eventually you kind of settle down into something of a moderate, like, okay, like, if... I mean, you might try that and then people respond badly. And then if you're curious, you investigate, OK, why did people respond badly when I went around nudging them saying they can do anything they want? Oh, I guess because they are not in the right state of mind to receive that message or they might not. People
Andrew Rose:
Right,
visa:
tend
Andrew Rose:
then
visa:
to.
Andrew Rose:
design better social containers,
visa:
Exactly,
Andrew Rose:
like write
visa:
exactly.
Andrew Rose:
in a different medium. The medium is message, yeah, whatever.
visa:
Yeah, so every failure is just an opportunity to find a better way to. As long as it's not catastrophic and you don't die. So don't die, right?
Andrew Rose:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
visa:
But every failure has some lesson in it that you can learn from and be like, OK, why didn't this work? What if I did it differently? And yeah, so I've learned that changing people's, and even when I reflect on my own mind, there's a bunch of stuff that I learned from my ex-boss Dinesh about focusing your attention and not worrying about most people. He tried to explain to me why I shouldn't worry about most people over multiple conversations over several years. And it took me several years to really properly internalize it. So why do I expect anyone else to get it in a flash? They are going to take several years to get it, too. So I have to prepare for that. I can even say, and it's kind of ominous that you can say this to people. You can say things like, OK, I'm going to tell you this. You're not going to believe me. And then come back to me in seven years, and we'll chat again. And people are like, what the fuck? I'm like, yeah, for real, because this is a destabilizing thought. It's a thought that does not fit with your existing experience. And if you can tell someone something like that, like, You don't have to agree with me right now, you don't have to believe me, whatever, but like when you have an experience over the next few years and you do, like I will be waiting like come back and talk to me again. And like those people who come to you, they're like, holy shit, like tell me everything. And like, yes, like here's a, I mean, and again, like this caveating with what we were saying earlier about like people who are needy or whatever, like sometimes you just got to tell them, no, you got to do your own thing. You know, don't, don't worry about me. But
Andrew Rose:
Yep.
visa:
yeah.
Andrew Rose:
So with respect to people that you should care about, by the way, do you have a time that you have to go? Cool.
visa:
Nah, I'm free.
Andrew Rose:
With respect to people that you should care about, I think it's kind of two things. One, I think a lot of people have already internalized the idea that the haters don't matter. It's like a pretty common meme on the internet, and I think a lot more people are picking it up. I also think a lot of people are internalizing that your true fans really matter and finding your
visa:
Yep.
Andrew Rose:
true fans matter. There's another group of people you should care about. Why do great scenes attract sociopaths, needy people, and grifters? And how should you care about those people? Because I think I have seen a lot of scenes fall to... Like, it's like one person can destroy everything.
visa:
Correct. Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
And not even a very powerful person, just like a really needy
visa:
Yeah,
Andrew Rose:
person.
visa:
that's true.
Andrew Rose:
What do you do about that?
visa:
So some of my kind of foundational principles that I think help say that things are going to take a long time. I think that automatically, like a lot of people, so sociopaths, grifters, and even needy people, they all want results tomorrow, or next month,
Andrew Rose:
Yeah,
visa:
or next year. And
Andrew Rose:
definitely.
visa:
if you're just going to be like, this will not bear fruit for 10 years, that automatically bores those people, and they
Andrew Rose:
Right,
visa:
go looking.
Andrew Rose:
it's not a get rich quick. Yeah.
visa:
Yeah. We're going to do it slowly. You're going to change jobs. You're going to get married, have kids. Some of you are going to get divorced and marry again. That's fine. You know? It's like, just being willing to play a very long game, I think, and signaling that. And all the things are like variations of this. I heard something about there was this one of the, I don't know if it's an MIT lab or if it was, it's in my scenes notes somewhere in that room page. where there was a place and it was very makeshift and everything was containers and rubbishy, messy stuff. And there was a lot of good research happening there. And then somebody had the great idea of, oh, we have more resources now. Let's clean it up. Let's have a nice building, nice weather. And then the whole thing just died. And part of it is that the makeshift ramshackle.
Andrew Rose:
Oh, that's like Richard Hamming's you and your research, right?
visa:
He says that too, right? Yeah, it's
Andrew Rose:
Yeah,
visa:
the same principle.
Andrew Rose:
yeah.
visa:
It needs to be janky. You need a junkyard to produce. Like you can't produce good stuff in a art gallery. Like so the art gallery is a pretty place where art kind of goes to sort of die. But like if you see where the art was made,
Andrew Rose:
So true.
visa:
like the artist's studio, it's like there's paint everywhere. It's a mess. It's nonsense. And like the tragedy, and this goes back again to the IKEA parking lot versus the Super Bowl. The tragedy is people see the Super Bowl and they think, I want to do a Super Bowl show.
Andrew Rose:
Yeah,
visa:
I should
Andrew Rose:
right.
visa:
rent the stadium. No, you should absolutely not. You should only rent the stadium when you have so many fans selling out your smaller arenas. They're like, oh, shit, I guess I've got to buy a stadium. Because if you try to rent the stadium, so some people are like, I should write a novel. Maybe write an essay first and see what people say about it. Because if you spend three years on a novel and it sucks, then you're going to get depressed. You can fail quicker in smaller ways,
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
and then you learn from something. Back to sociopaths, grifters, needy people. So yeah, I think with sociopaths telling them that there's no status in the thing. I mean, there's two paths to it.
Andrew Rose:
But it's just wrong. There is status in the thing. And that's what's tricky.
visa:
Yeah, so that's the thing. Yeah, there's layers to it. We could have a whole separate three-hour conversation about this.
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
I'm trying to figure out what's the cliff notes. It's very tricky. You need people who understand this. Most of all, you need people who understand this and are at the core of the thing and are willing
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
to make difficult decisions. You might have to kick some people out early for seemingly no reason and be willing to do it and not become a sociopathic status. obsessed crazy person in the way. And that does happen. Like if you read up about like, I have this article somewhere about like web comics, like the rise of web comics was a bunch of nerds making comics and then it got very popular very quickly. And so they got social status and power and they didn't know how to wield it. And they're still inside their minds, they're still like needy virgin teenage loser boys. And, you know, so they conduct themselves, they get like pissy and whatever and then people get hurt. And so if you have someone who gains a lot in power in a short amount of time, status, whatever, they are going to need a coach. And I think I'm actually
Andrew Rose:
Mm.
visa:
a pretty good. I've offered several times informally on Twitter, and I wonder if I should make it a little bit more explicit. Because I've studied this stuff a lot. I am adjacent to some people who are even bigger celebrities and wealthier than me. And I think I have done a decent job of like, helping them manage it psychologically, because I've thought about it a lot, and I've made some. I'm on that path somewhat, so it's not purely academic. So yeah, whoever's in charge, if they have a good heart, but they have growing pains, they need a coach, or they need someone who can mentor them, try to be. And I hear that Silicon Valley has a bunch of these people who are behind the scenes, who are like, you know, which is why even
Andrew Rose:
Yep, totally.
visa:
Zuck and whoever, they talk to the Bill Campbells and whatever, who are behind the scenes, who take them aside and like. show them what's what. That's good, right? And you want that in every scene if you can, like elders
Andrew Rose:
Mmm.
visa:
who are wise who can. But yeah, so I think every
Andrew Rose:
It's
visa:
scene
Andrew Rose:
like
visa:
needs
Andrew Rose:
if you
visa:
to...
Andrew Rose:
are skyrocketing in the scene, then they just
visa:
Yeah,
Andrew Rose:
like pull you aside
visa:
you
Andrew Rose:
and
visa:
need,
Andrew Rose:
they're like, oh
visa:
yeah.
Andrew Rose:
no, you need extra help.
visa:
Ideally, there's that. So that's like the, that's for people who are like doing shitty things, but they have good hearts and they're trying to do good things. If the person is outright fucked up, right? Like then you need to stage some kind of like... intervention slash like cut the person out. And that's always going to be tricky depending on the, you know, it's almost like, it's almost like a coup, staging a coup to oust someone. And like, that's always tricky. Always. You hope that it'll be bloodless. Like hope that nobody's feelings get hurts and nobody, but like, you know, in practice, like it might get ugly. And so you need. to make sure that there's a core team of people, like a diverse-ish team of people that you trust that want what is best for the scene and are not vindictive. So you never wanna like stomp on someone terribly on their way out. I don't know. The best way to do this is to discuss
Andrew Rose:
the thing you're
visa:
like...
Andrew Rose:
saying about Dinesh helps too, right? It's like
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
you can both trigger the immune system and say
visa:
Right.
Andrew Rose:
like we need to excise this part of the org and also give them an honorable exit, which almost confuses things in a good
visa:
Yeah,
Andrew Rose:
way. It
visa:
yeah.
Andrew Rose:
like makes it less legible what's going on.
visa:
Right. I guess, yeah, so one thing is someone should talk to the person and
Andrew Rose:
Definitely.
visa:
make
Andrew Rose:
Like
visa:
an
Andrew Rose:
a
visa:
effort.
Andrew Rose:
one-on-one walking conversation is super helpful.
visa:
Yeah, so this conversation is not fun, but it has to be had. I just need to talk to you about this and see what you think. And again, I feel like I don't know how to estimate what percentage of people will take that well. Some of them will take that badly, and then they'll become more hostile. That's kind of dangerous.
Andrew Rose:
Yes.
visa:
I think it's, you know, so I remember I once, I once kicked the guy from my Telegram chat or my Discord, I think probably my Telegram chat. And he was like a kind of a fanboy beforehand, but he was just very abrasive and ruining the vibes for everyone. And I made the executive decision to be like, I'm just going to kick him. I'm not going to like explain. Like so my house rules for my Telegram chat is I'm the benevolent dictator. Like you just trust me. And so that there is, you know, a failure mode there. Like what if Visa goes rogue and it's a horrible person? Like, you know, like that. I do care about that as well. And so I try to, I tell people like, okay, if you think that I've behaved in a way that is not good, like there are people that I trust that you can go to and you tell them to talk to me. So I will be likely to listen to them, then listen to like a rando telling me something, right? Like that's just the human nature and stuff. So like, you know, don't blame, like if I get like random people saying stupid shit all the time and I just, I swipe left on all of that, like I might swipe left on something that's meaningful criticism and like that's just the nature of, just high information That's it.
Andrew Rose:
Wait, were you saying something about that story? Like it went well.
visa:
Oh, it went well for the group. It didn't go well for the guy. The guy was mad at me. The guy thought I was a coward.
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
And I think there would have been a better option where I could have DMed him one on one. It didn't occur to me to do that at the time. So now, if I were in that situation again, I'd be like, hey, again, not a fun conversation, but the way you've been talking in the chat, I feel, is whatever. And you can hate me for it if you want, but. If you're not going to do this, I hope you're going to do it. But if you're not going to do it, I'm going to have to kick you. I'll say something like that. And maybe he'll swear at me then. But I would then feel like I've been fair to him as well, as opposed to like, without telling him, I just kind of kicked. I mean, the group is just a casual telegram group. It's not that important. It's not like there's some amazing thing going on there, that whatever. It's semi-dead now anyway. But
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
I remember that story because I do think that Kicking him was better than not doing anything. Like if I had not done anything, I feel like the quality of, like everyone is just getting grumpy and it's getting shitty for everyone.
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
So like
Andrew Rose:
Yeah,
visa:
asking
Andrew Rose:
there's this
visa:
some...
Andrew Rose:
theme in Scenius over and over again, which is basically like, creatives need protection from a lot of social contexts. Like, they need their social context to be protected. It's a little bit like the art studio needs to be protected from being turned into the gallery or whatever.
visa:
Yes. Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
And that's one mode of protection, but also the art studio needs to be protected from turning into a living room. The art studio needs to be protected
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
from turning into like a battle zone. The art studio
visa:
Right.
Andrew Rose:
needs to be protected from turning into politics,
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
like
visa:
So
Andrew Rose:
all
visa:
yeah,
Andrew Rose:
sorts of things.
visa:
a good thing to do is to have adjacent spaces for each of those things that you can
Andrew Rose:
Yep.
visa:
direct people to. So if there's only one social group for everyone to hang out in, then kicking someone out becomes ostracization unto
Andrew Rose:
Yes.
visa:
social death. Whereas if you can be like, OK, you're very disagreeable. Why don't you go to hang out on this subreddit or in this whatever? Maybe not that literal, but like,
Andrew Rose:
Yes.
visa:
If there's a multiplicity of spaces, then it can be like, OK, this is a political discussion, and this is the art studio. We're supposed to do artwork. Let's host a political discussion at that room this weekend. And there's also a principle in marriages and relationships. A thing that people struggle with, and the deaf spiral goes like this. Somebody is upset with someone else for doing something or not doing something, and they say so. And that other person, and they say so right after the person did the thing. And then that person. gets upset with the way this person has brought up the criticism. And they feel like,
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
OK,
Andrew Rose:
Yeah, but
visa:
like,
Andrew Rose:
not the actual words. Yeah.
visa:
yeah, like, you'd mind. And then that person says, you know, let's say Jack and Jill. So Jack complains that Jill isn't doing something right, or she did something wrong. She's not being fair to him. And Jill is like, the way you said that is fucked up. You're hurting my feelings. And then Jack's like, well, you know, like, how else can I talk to you about these things? And then they just get conflict escalates. And the way out of that is that they have to schedule time outside of everyday life to have those discussions. And so sometimes, Jill will be like, why do you have to say this now? We're just about to go to my parents' place or whatever. And then Jack's like, well, we never talk about this except when we're in a, you know, it's like, if you have this weekly or monthly session that's purely for the airing of grievances or for the discussion of what didn't go well. and you both trust that conversation will happen, then it's a lot easier to be like, okay, not now. And then you'd be like, instead of feeling dismissed, like what the fuck? Like if I can't talk about this, then like why are we in a relationship? Whereas like, okay, like we have to do the children's birthday party or we gotta do whatever first. We get that done and then we'll talk about it at the next thing, right? And like individuals need to be able to do that. And you know, I feel that when you hear phrases like boys don't cry, I suspect that... It's been transmogrified over the years to have stripped of all the useful connotations. Because I mean, I can have separate conversation about that. But yeah, I think a lot of things boil down to, you need to do the right thing in the right place at the right time. And if something is not the right place or the right time for something, then identify what would be the right place in the right time for that thing. And then you can have the best of both worlds. It does take a little bit of executive function and capacity, but you can train this. This is a trainable skill.
Andrew Rose:
Right. Yeah, Mueller on the Apollo mission would famously host Black Saturdays, which are basically like, you come to this meeting and there is no good news. We only talk bad news.
visa:
That's amazing. Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
And the whole point was basically like, you know, we need, like if we're going to succeed here, we just need everybody to know what is going wrong constantly.
visa:
All right.
Andrew Rose:
Um,
visa:
Yeah. That's
Andrew Rose:
which is
visa:
great.
Andrew Rose:
very interesting.
visa:
Oh, nice. Yeah, I also had another Facebook group that was doing pretty well for a while. And nothing bad happened. It just kind of decayed. But I call it VV's feels posting. It's like for people to just post feels. And then everything's kind of sad. And then I think once someone said they were suicidal, and I was like, oh my god, that's more than any of us is equipped to handle. And I mean, we try
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
it. But then I updated the about thing to be like, OK, this is like. Three glasses of wine said, not like emergency room said.
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
Just to manage expectations.
Andrew Rose:
Call
visa:
Like,
Andrew Rose:
the hotline. That's
visa:
yeah. I mean,
Andrew Rose:
so,
visa:
just to
Andrew Rose:
yeah.
visa:
manage expectations of like, you should not be coming. I mean, if you come to this group with way more needs than we can help you with, it's not the worst thing in the world. It's understandable
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
if maybe of all the options you have, this is the least bad option you have. But I want you to know in advance that. This is not a room of trained professionals who are going to drop everything to help you. If you need this group to save your life, it might not.
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
It might be the least worst option you have, but just to manage expectations. So yeah, a lot of things is all about managing expectations. And usually, we learn how to do that after fucking something up and seeing something go bad. I'm like, oh, shit. And yeah, so.
Andrew Rose:
Okay, next quick cue, if possible. I'm curious, 50 year plan, what's
visa:
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rose:
next? What are the blockers? Like let's get
visa:
Right.
Andrew Rose:
into
visa:
Good question.
Andrew Rose:
project management.
visa:
Yeah, I think the main thing, you know, I have made it, the document is kind of inaccessible. And it took me a while to realize that it's probably by design. Like, I didn't want to make it so accessible that I get overwhelmed with people wanting to join in, and then I have to vet them, and whatever. So it's deliberately tedious. So that is why you put the monastery on the mountain, right? So only the people who climb all the way up go there. And yeah, I should maybe make it a bit more path-friendly. I think one big thing to do is the thing is, so actually now what I'm thinking about, I'm thinking of my substack as the main engine of what I want to be doing that plugs
Andrew Rose:
Mm-hmm.
visa:
into everything else. So even, I want to update both of my books. So if someone reads Friendly Ambitious Nerd and Introspect, they are very likely to just. and they internalize it, they're very likely just by existing in my sphere to be like a meaningful member of the 50 year party. But like both of those are books and so friendly images that you can read really quickly, but like, you know, it's still there are ways to make that more accessible. So you can think of it as like my job, how I'm currently thinking of it is my job is to improve the assets. So a fan is an asset, introspect is an asset. The 50 year plan is also an asset. And like there are paths to those assets that make things more accessible. And so you emailed me earlier with a list of things. And one of my suggestions was, with the list of things, you should add a one-liner of
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
context
Andrew Rose:
Great suggestion.
visa:
for each thing. And that just makes it more accessible for people to understand why the thing is good. And I should take that advice myself. So the essay that I told you I've been meaning to write about the 14-year-old kid and about Hamilton and Erasmus. That should be an essay. I should just be able to point you to the, so I have my Voyages essay, I have my Are You Serious essay. I feel like this will be the third one, the what was lacking in my education essay. I gotta find the right word for it. And if I do that, I just feel like there's a dozen essays like this. And they're all in, if you read the 50-year plan, it's all in there but crowded somewhat. When you have a conversation with me, we were both in the same room. Like we can feel it, like it's the thing. Making it legible in the right way for the right people is the ongoing challenge.
Andrew Rose:
You mentioned that you want to, in the next three years, make 100 fans media stars
visa:
Oh yeah, yes,
Andrew Rose:
in your plan.
visa:
yes.
Andrew Rose:
Say more about that.
visa:
I think that's one of the good ways to be legible in a way that, oh, it's a great, that's a, hats off to past V server coming up with that. Because that's such a legible thing, and yet it requires proof of work. People have to actually put in the work and build a YouTube channel or whatever. It might take 5,000 people trying to get 100 people who get it right. I should write something more specific. Thank you for that, Ash. Let me edit my. It's always the things that 100 media stars. Yeah. It's funny that the password that I use for my, so I shouldn't say what it is, but it's kind of similar to that-ish, but it's a bit more grand and it's a bit more long term. It's something like, it's part of the fear plan thing. So every time I type my password, I'm like, oh, yeah, I got to do that thing. But it's a bit further off. So it's like, I should maybe change it to something. closer to this, which is like, oh, in the next three years, I should do the thing. Because every time you type it, you're like, you know. Yeah, anyway, this is a thought. 100 Media Stars.
Andrew Rose:
So you encode your goals in your password.
visa:
Yeah, I mean, it's like my password
Andrew Rose:
Very smart, yeah.
visa:
has like exclamation mark and whatever. But yeah, your password is a thing that you write every day. So you totally make a mantra that challenges you every time you type it. And eventually, you normalize it and you might need something else. But yeah. 100 Media Stars. Yeah, it's just like one of my, even earlier before we got on this call, I was tweeting about somebody, one of my friends. I should start a YouTube channel. And I quote tweeted it with, yes, I will always encourage my homies to start YouTube channels. It's easy. You can just do it with your phone. Record once, upload. It lives forever. You can share it with everyone. So that's the top of the funnel, just saying it repeatedly. Then the next thing is to find people. So even in my consulting work, I consult with people who are usually halfway along the way. They already have some. Maybe it's a blog. Maybe it's a YouTube channel. Maybe it's a business or whatever. They're already doing something. It's kind of successful already. And they just need. They need to make it bigger. They need to make it more, not necessarily bigger. Like they need clarity on like the next steps. Kind of what the conversation we're having now, but like, so in this conversation, I'm a bit more informal and I'm not like in problem solving mode, but with them, I like the ritual I enact is come to me, pay me, and I will, you know, like get into problem solving mode for you. And usually the thing that is the real blocker is not even... they don't know what to do. Smart people know what to do. Your business is doing, you have 5,000 YouTube subscribers, and you're like, how to get more YouTube subscribers? You search it up, you look it up, a bunch of things you can do, OK, again. So there's usually an emotional blocker stopping the person from doing the thing that would get the next result. And so even with my YouTube channel, I know that to get more subscribers, the smartest, fastest thing I can do is to make content about existing properties. So one of my most popular videos
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
is about Jimi Hendrix. because everybody, so like, and most of my videos are just me talking about how to build trust, how to play long games and stuff like that. And...
Andrew Rose:
It's all your own language that you invented, but
visa:
Yeah,
Andrew Rose:
like you
visa:
so
Andrew Rose:
can
visa:
nobody's
Andrew Rose:
just
visa:
searching
Andrew Rose:
hook
visa:
for that.
Andrew Rose:
into somebody else's language and
visa:
Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
you can hook into a search term basically. Yeah.
visa:
Correct, yeah. And that's what I used to do for a living when I was working in marketing. So I've been putting that off almost as long as possible to avoid attracting a new wave of people who don't yet know my culture or my style. So it's like I've been slowly cultivating the first 4,000, 5,000 subscribers so that they hang out in the comments section. And that is an existing culture for the new people to plug into. So that when they come, they see that, oh, there's already a dozen comments, and that's what the thing is like. And there's some threshold that you reach and you cross, and then you're like, oh, OK, I'm ready to change. And maybe a useful thing to do in Seniors is to just ask people fairly periodically, are you ready for your next big step? And the answer will be no,
Andrew Rose:
Hmm.
visa:
like, nine out of 10 times. That's fine.
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
Even just thinking about it, are you ready for your next big step? What's your next big step? What is the next domino? Or what is the next? So how do I get a? the next 100 media stars? Well, I guess the first thing I should do is I should make a list of all the people that I think are on the path. Have I made the list? No. Am I ready to do it? Yeah, actually I could do it. It's not, I'm not blocked on that. I'm just in a vague fog of all the things that I'm doing. So I'm glad that you asked me that question and I wrote it down, so I will follow up on that. Yeah.
Andrew Rose:
Um. Okay, I have an interesting thought that
visa:
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rose:
spontaneous just based on what you
visa:
Go
Andrew Rose:
were
visa:
for
Andrew Rose:
mentioning,
visa:
it.
Andrew Rose:
but we could model for the audience what it would look like to properly challenge your peers. So you know the projects I'm working on. Challenge me on my projects.
visa:
Okay, in fact, you just sent me an email about it earlier, right? Why do you need a cannon? I'm curious to hear what you think about that.
Andrew Rose:
So basically, it's for me.
visa:
Okay.
Andrew Rose:
I have this experience where people will ask me a question about community building, and I will want to reach into a shelf, pull
visa:
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rose:
off
visa:
Mm.
Andrew Rose:
a piece of paper, and hand it to them, and just
visa:
All right.
Andrew Rose:
deliver it to them right there. And then
visa:
Okay.
Andrew Rose:
if I'm going to the effort of... In order to do that, first of all, I need to make a list of the things that I think should
visa:
Okay,
Andrew Rose:
be pulled off of shelves.
visa:
right, right. Okay, let's say you have like a... If you spend the next year building a beautiful cannon and this mysterious act of God, 99% of it burnt down somehow and you're left with like one shining thing and you're like, oh my God, thank God it's this one. What would
Andrew Rose:
Yeah,
visa:
that be? What's like the one thing? Like
Andrew Rose:
just
visa:
the most
Andrew Rose:
the power
visa:
important.
Andrew Rose:
of context by Alan K. It's like eight pages explains everything that I want people to know.
visa:
Okay, so have you, so there is the Power of Context, it's eight pages. Most people will not read eight pages. Have you done a Twitter
Andrew Rose:
Yeah.
visa:
thread about it?
Andrew Rose:
No. Okay.
visa:
Okay, so you should do a Twitter thread about the Power
Andrew Rose:
Yeah,
visa:
of Context
Andrew Rose:
yeah,
visa:
by LNK. And in
Andrew Rose:
yeah.
visa:
fact, you also sent me a video that's like a talk by LNK, and I am astounded that it has no comments and it has like a few thousand views or whatever. So you should. You should just be like, what's up, Twitter motherfuckers? I'm going to teach you about LNK. Here's a thread about the power of context. You should read it, but you won't. So here's a thread.
Andrew Rose:
Yeah, yeah,
visa:
And then
Andrew Rose:
yeah.
visa:
when you do the thread, having like, so that's like softening the ground, right? It's like the one line of context. When you do the thread about the eight pages, that's like maybe 12, 16 tweets long, that will then be the thing that you can link to people. And they will read the thread and then they'll be like, oh shit, I should read the eight pages. I'm going to read the eight pages. Like my friend Andrew recommending this is enough to get me to read it. But like for someone else, it might not. And
Andrew Rose:
Right.
visa:
so there's anything we can do to make things simpler, clearer, easier along these dimensions. Right. So, so it's interesting, actually, like even in conversation with you, it's like, there are some things where the monastery should be on the mountain. Like, so if it's like what we're going to do, things should take long time, whatever. But like for things like content, like if there's a piece of think that reading it will blow your mind. It's worth having the bite-sized breadcrumbs along the way, which then inspires them to climb the mountain to go and see the monastery. So I actually think that's enough. I can try to keep going. But my sense
Andrew Rose:
No, that's
visa:
is me
Andrew Rose:
very
visa:
trying
Andrew Rose:
helpful.
visa:
to come up with a third thing is distracting you, would then be distracting you from the. So that's the thing that I have learned to do in my consults that is very hard to do. put into a tweet. I know when something's enough. When you hit the spark. Actually, I know what to point at. There's a talk on Netflix called something abstract design something. Anyway, the lady Paula Sher, she designed the Citibank logo. She's in New York. Paula Sher, she talks about how she does her pitches. And she says, when you pitch a design change to someone or whatever, to an organization, it starts with people are excited. And then there comes this point where everyone's kind of like, wait, is it really going to work? Well, what if it doesn't work? I'm not feeling this too great. And then you win them over again. And then the high point, the second high point that you get there, you've got to end it right there. Because if you let the discussion keep going, it will go back down again. And it will never go back as high to the second point. And
Andrew Rose:
Mmm.
visa:
then it can kind of keep going eventually to like bland neutrality. And there is a skill in knowing I'm going to end there. That's the point to end. And actually, this is also a great, if you want to end the podcast now, this is also a great, I just, you just feel it. It's like,
Andrew Rose:
Yep.
visa:
we just covered a bunch of stuff. I can keep talking to you for hours, but like I'm thinking about the person listening to this. I would like the last thing for them to know is that Visa and Andrew were talking about a bunch of shit. And then Andrew asked Visa to challenge him. Visa said this, like, what's the thing on your list? And then you're like, oh, I would go with this thing. And then Visa said, have you written a thing about it? Andrew was like, oh, not yet. And then Visa said, okay, go do it now. And then I want the listener who's listening to this Oh shit, there's a thing I should do. I should go and do it now. And then they should go and do it. And then it was like, bam. That's the perfect way to end the recording. Right?