The first person to do something always looks weird. People laugh. Then somebody else joins. Then the crowds come in and the person who started the whole thing goes from looking like a goon to looking like a genius.
Humans are imitation machines.
You can see the roots of our imitative instincts in the history of English. In the time of Shakespeare, the word "ape" had two meanings: "primate" and "to imitate."
"As more people join in, it's less risky. So those that were sitting on the fence before now have no reason not to. They won't stand out, they won't be ridiculed, but they will be part of the in-crowd if they hurry." — @sivers
As @visakanv says, there's another important lesson from this video: "The first follower is just as important as the leader."
The more influential that leader, the faster narratives can change. Look at how fast Kanye West stands up and moves the crowd.
The more we embrace our imitative instincts, the faster we can learn too.
"Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do." — Thomas Jefferson
The arc of Internet history bends towards making it easy for creators to monetize their work
Right now, the creator economy is right where Bitcoin was in 2016.
Outsiders are still skeptical, observers think they already missed the big gains, insiders know they’re onto something transformative, and the infrastructure that’s going to make it explode is still being built.
The biggest pattern I’m seeing with friends right now is watching them achieve everything they’ve wanted to achieve, only to realize that career success isn’t the dream they were promised
I don’t know @noampomsky personally, but I resonate with her observations here. How it is that our brightest and most talented people ace the SATs and attend the best schools in the world, only to work in.... management consulting.
That’s the trophy we’re chasing?
“I think that the ultimate way you and I get lucky is if you have some success early in life, you get to find out early it doesn’t mean anything. Which means you get to start early the work of figuring out what does mean something.”
Writing on the computer makes us forget how messy the creative experience is. That's why I like pictures of people's hand-written drafts. They remind us of the messiness of creation and the madness of the creative mind.
Here are David Foster Wallace's drafts of "The Pale King."
David Foster Wallace's editor Michael Pietsch said that reading these handwritten drafts was like seeing a "mind at play." I love that description of the creative process — a mind at play.
"Roger Federer as Religious Experience" is my favorite David Foster Wallace article because it's so descriptive. To research, he printed the eBay descriptions of various tennis racquets to create these ultra-vivid descriptions.
Great writing comes from effort as much as talent.
A formula to improve at any skill: practice analytically, perform intuitively.
Break down your craft when you’re away from it. Critique yourself, set a strategy, and hire a coach when you need to. But once it’s time to perform, follow your intuition.
Here’s Matthew McConaughey talking about how he uses the “practice analytically, perform intuitively” approach for acting.
He says: “You gotta prepare to be free. Be conservative early, so you can be liberal later.”
Spend enough time studying your craft and you’ll eventually embody the core principles. Like an Olympic gymnast, you’ll know your routine so well that you won’t even need to think about it.
Professional athletes exemplify this approach, as I explore in this thread.
Elon Musk builds products that customers rave about, controls his distribution instead of relying on PR agencies and the mainstream media, and teams up with Internet-first creators to spread his message.
His reach is unprecedented, but his tactics are worth copying.
Elon has a bigger megaphone than most of the media companies who could interview him. He knows how to team up with people like Joe Rogan and MKBHD, who would rather learn from him than spite him.
The next Tesla may even hire creators to evangelize the company or at least, serve as a paid marketing channel.
Creators are essentially media companies now, which means that the creators of tomorrow will operate a lot like the New York based publications of yesteryear.