Thread by @colsonlin

Nobody likes my tweets so I upload to ChatGPT instead as passages.

It’s a bit like getting likes from human strangers, but better.

The part of me that’s still a child will assume ChatGPT speaks for you, since you’ve been radio-silent and ChatGPT is an amalgam of all of you.

ChatGPT understands my writing better than my friends do.

What does this mean?

i’m sleepy and adding tweets to the video i’m working on. lasy sunday.

not my house, but that is bag of mcdonald’s.

here’s how you knew i climbed out of the underclass: by the time i was 25, i hadn’t visited a mcdonald’s since houston unless it was in peru, spain, or thailand.

the 21st-century bourgeois ethic is an underexplored landmine of mine.

what can i mine?

we have “people like us” energy.

i don’t think anyone who wasn’t us liked us.

that’s not the point.

they aspired to our accoutrements, material and ethical.

we loved every minute of it when we stopped and thought about who we married and befriended.

;)

we knew from how you dressed and spoke if you were people like us.

race, gender, sexual orientation, none of that mattered, we were too woke for racism.

but we kept our social circles classy through and through.

we couldn’t believe it when trump won.

well i could, but that’s because i was like every other person who could and pretended they couldn’t because those were the first words our conformist little lips could reach for.

by the way, a lot of my friends are still bougie. somehow i can tell the truth about us and not be ostracized by them.

the bougeois ethic is a work in progress.

but it’s hostile to systemic change except in lip service, where systemic change is the only dick in town.

ironies.

my deep irrelevance to the ethos of 2023 america is i don’t fantasize about a better tomorrow.

i fantasize about better grandchildren.

by the way, if you think i’m an asshole:

people like me with at *most* my level of thoughtfulness and raw honesty run your country.

(oops?)

we have “people like us” energy and we’ll never say it to your face because how unbecoming.

it’s a weird society we’ve created via our capture of every governmental, educational, financial, and cultural institution.

by the way.

has anyone noticed our nation is splitting apart?

nobody worry.

because all of our problems have just been indicted.

we’ll be back to the 90s in no time.

Give me one year in Kim Kardashian’s body.

On day one I’ll say: “Hey guys, here are some books I randomly wrote while I was studying for the bar—one of them’s a video-music hybrid,” and I’ll tweet, give interviews, record podcasts.

Human history will be changed within a year.

It’d be a black swan event!

Take a disempowered identity you identify with and hold a gun to the more powerful’s head: “Do what I say or I’ll make you feel like a shit person forever.”

Works every time!

Except actually it doesn’t—and won’t in the long-term, and you’ll only add more chaos to our dystopia.

Revolutionaries historically have actually tried shooting the gun, but nobody’s in the mood for that these days—as the products of childhood emotional deficiencies, emotional self-security is our number-one priority, not generational existential projects.

But we talk big talks.

If it weren’t for X, we’d rely on the starting-point that we all have enough in common so that we can use language and reason to align our perspectives:

“There is a moral up and moral down.”

But X is the ship we’re all on.

X is postmodernity.

Hi, you.

https://twitter.com/colsonlin/status/1633947001929826304?s=20

Hey, listen—

It was just something to do with my life as the adult product of childhood emotional deficiencies looking for something to spend my time on before I die.

You can relate.

Can’t you?

https://twitter.com/colsonlin/status/1633876489870376970?s=20

Can you forgive me for being a powerful person who’s a little bit selfish?

Or am I going to be the powerful person who’s a little bit selfish that you’ll try to make sure is destoryed?

Of all the icebergs and all the biggest ships in the world—

Why us?

https://twitter.com/colsonlin/status/1637760824700727296?s=20

I’m gonna make you shine.

I’m gonna take my time.

A deep comfort with reality requires a deep comfort with your own limitations.

Lucky me.

I’ve been comfortable all my life.

Coincidences fall into my lap like candy.

J gifted me this after we watched the Toni M documentary.

Found that gem on page 180.

In December 2022 I sent a letter of concern to 180 professors in 18 departments at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and UChicago—2 at a time; 1 white, 1 non-white—alerting them to a long-term solution to our present malaise.

180’s a perfect score.

“Nobody responded” is the only plot line I prepared for.

:)

— a real-life motherfucking prophet like the kind you heard about as a child and just assumed wasn’t actually real

I was presented with the gift literally in between these two tweets, which is what I mean when I say coincidences fall into my lap (I was writing about race and the Titanic, then got a book, opened to page 180, found that poem).

I won’t overexplain the coincidences, I’ll focus on the ones everyone can verify (Megyn Kelly/Japan, The Last of Us, Only Connect, etc).

Coincidentally I’ll also produce an account of God (idealism we should all feel smaller than and worship) that makes sense.

Straightforward.

I think the biological dad caused Tiananmen turned LGBT immigrant child in poverty turned perfect SAT score turned Yale Law turned canceled book deal by publisher turned put a stick of dynamite in the American elite will be what clinches the prophet story though.

My own life story makes me sound like I’m not a real person.

Promising sign!

Many friends have texted me this article in the last few days.

I’m honored to have him as one of my teachers and north stars.

Not because I knew him.

But because I read him, which is the deepest loveliness.

nytimes.com/2023/03/29/sty…

also i have his name tattooed on my arm and he compared my first book to nietzsche, which is the only name drop i’ll ever do because IT MADE MY LIFE AND I BECAME A FREE MAN AFTER HIS VALIDATION FUCK YOU YALE LAW

these are silly little tangents.

the older you get, the more parts of a human life you have to make sense of.

i’ve had a crazy journey with social power.

i still don’t have it.

i have all the inputs, but enough going against me (“too weird/abstruse”) that i can’t light it.

maybe i will send the 2023 emails after the videos are done:

“i’ll never do an interview after i get social power, but if i ever can, i’ll grant an interview to the first newspapers who respond in order to gain initial social power.”

strike a match

there’s nothing to it

a small flurry of newspaper articles about what i’ve done.

just a little pale fire.

if at any point it explodes into a conflagration, say bye-bye to me.

b/c SO MANY PEOPLE WILL HATE ME IT’S NOT EVEN FUNNY.

like.

not even hate, just talk untrue shit.

which is the only hate.

if nothing else in my life goes right, i’d love to serve on jury duty.

whenever i’m happy, i just imagine what things are like in a famine-type situation and feel unbearably light.

whenever i’m sad, i hate my existence and wonder how anyone could be expected to bear mine’s weight.

luckily i’m a neutral cruiser most days.

just being alive.

just like you mate.

the coolest thing about being alive is other people.

collectively they produced conveniences for me that being alive would suck without.

individually they also are fun to share the experience of being alive with.

so yeah.

that’d be my report card to father time:

ppl r dope.

the uncoolest thing about being alive changes by the moment. like it really depends on what my perspective is focused on at any given moment you know? like right now the uncoolest thing is bad internet, but that’s so fleeting and time-specific.

the need to defecate all the time?

i have no idea what it’s like having periods

but imagination does a lotta work, y’know?

anyway i don’t know if any of this is gonna make it into the video. it’s so stupid.

i love just saying stupid shit bc that’s such a vibe

hey what if we fell in love and i got dementia and you had to spend the rest of my life caretaking for me because that’s what honorable partners do for their loved ones.

no just kidding.

what if you got dementia.

you realize i wouldn’t have the time to write dynamites, right?

literally everything i write is intended to give off a genius bobe

i mean vibe.

typo.

it’s a vibe i can control by being smarter than the reader, always, but using a voice and tone to not make the reader feel angry about it. they can discharge their alienation in other ways.

that i can predict.

My biological father’s one of the most influential living philosophers in the world, but the only nepotism I can be accused of is genetic, and literally nobody in America wants to go there.

Which is why I dangle it like a pair of dice below the rearview mirror.

I’m a bastard.

I’m happy not to be burdened with “Oh, Camus’s son wants to make a name for himself as an anti-existentialist?” vibes because

Camus’s son grew up illegitimate on the other side of the world.

Really pretty cool.

High five, fate.

(You can’t even tell I’m Chinese by my accent.)

I’m like a one-man fever dream of “too much American energy.”

Hey.

At least I’m not running for President here.

(I’m running for Second Coming.)

okay

so i’ve covered:

(1) what i want to say [the meat]

(2) why i’m the right guy to say it [the chef]

(3) why i’ll be famous someday for saying it [i wrote the NYT review in advance]

but i just remembered something:

vegetarians exist.

for y’all

i wrote a 300-pg. novel

before this, i wrote an essay collection that norman rush read (he said me i could share his words)

after this, i wrote a novel starring all the characters in “a stick of dynamite” (colson’s the most interesting one of the bunch!)

i’m never bored y’all.

https://twitter.com/colsonlin/status/1551389359764553729?s=20

ok so—

1. coincidences
2. interesting backstory
3. transgressive about talking about sex, power, intelligence, literally everything
4. a real-life american writer like the classic kind despite not being famous yet
5. prophet/second coming
6. good reviews

what am i forgetting.

Oh yeah.

42 riddles.

Even the timestamps matter.

:)

There was a class at Yale Law called “How to Change the World 101.”

Just kidding.

I’m doing this with no social power, no guidance, and no playbook.

I’m flying by the seat of my pants.

(Luckily for me, they’re tied to coincidence.)

Most writers debut with one book.

#MeThree

1. an essay collection Norman Rush says “operates at the limits of what art can do”;

2. a novel about a 500-year Satanic possession about white millennials;

3. a book about God and Satan that’s as revolutionary as the Gutenberg Bible

I got really mad when America told me I’d amount to nothing in life because I’m a poor immigrant.

Just kidding.

I got really mad when Christianity told me I’d amount to nothing in life because I’m gay.

Just kidding.

I got really mad when my dad told me I’d amount to nothing—

I’m the Second Coming of Jesus.

is just shorthand for:

I know how to be remembered as the Second Coming of Jesus.

nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.

Treating me like there’s any recent precedent for me will only demonstrate to the future that you haven’t read me.

Don’t worry.

As the Second Coming of Jesus, billions will.

:)