Richard D. Bartlett
@RichDecibels
vibes mechanic, social process designer, breadcrumb dropper
Joined: 6/14/2011
Archived: 9/20/2024
51.1K Tweets
27.1K Followers
1.7K Following
100.3K Likes
@RichDecibels
vibes mechanic, social process designer, breadcrumb dropper
Joined: 6/14/2011
Archived: 9/20/2024
51.1K Tweets
27.1K Followers
1.7K Following
100.3K Likes
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the coolest possible start to a rule book https://t.co/9ZkRrIHUSV
my favourite people have a near pathological aversion to bullshit. they'd rather burn every bridge, become unemployable, divorce their family, destroy their reputation rather than participate in socially convenient delusion
maybe you're lonely because you're fundamentally broken or maybe it's because we spent the last 70 years dismantling social structures that took centuries to develop and we haven't replaced them with anything yet
it's kind of a blackpill on humanity that there's such an enormous market for "a crap version of the thing" https://t.co/KqSoNROowY
I made a dumb joke and she laughed like this spilling all that beauty into the room like copper coins dropped from a pocket and for the thousandth time I thought let's never stop doing this https://t.co/fmVHjCZdTi
question for people who have experienced long dark depressive periods in the past and are mostly better now: how did that happen?
guy who has never hosted a dinner party: I should start a network state
embarrassed bc it took me 37 years to figure out my parents are entirely based https://t.co/nJTgnzbfJS
ohhhhhh! if you learned early on āwhen I flow thru life intuitively I frequently get sanctioned, humiliated or ostracisedā then it would be an adaptive choice to retreat into analytical modes of relating to others aka ācannot vibeā
@jakezward YOU ARE SHITTING IN THE WATER SUPPLY
America probably solves climate change the same way it won WWII: showing up inexplicably late, then finally retooling its entire industrial capacity for total annihilation and unleashing potentially apocalyptic tech in the process
I just need to get my shit together before I ask for help https://t.co/popIwDTZ7Q
if you, a girl, live in a house with a boy and you want him to tidy up more: donāt teach him how to build a boat, teach him a love of the sea. he lacks your aesthetic sensitivity, and you can patch that hole without risking condescension. train his pleasure receptors
serious question what are all you tech people doing for a job next year https://t.co/oc9Anu3m4x
oh shit what if religions evolved to be a single source of truth that can be understood literally by the naive and metaphorically by the esoteric and therefore create solidarity across a great diversity of perspectives
allow me to indulge for a second about one beautiful word in the tv show The Bear: "heard" "heard" is used by kitchen workers to improve coordination. it's like "message received". reduces miscommunication. - "burger and fries for table 7" - "heard!" but in the show they exapt it, out of the kitchen and into their interpersonal relationships. I share something heavy and you say "heard" "heard." period. no ritualised performance of empathic listening. no defensiveness. no advice. just a decisive "heard" it's solid af
dating advice: be visibly into the things you are into, around people you don't know yet
lol when they said "you are the company you keep" I thought they meant "the people you hang out with have a big influence on you" not "your companions literally set the limits of who you can become"
as a teenager you look at your parents world like, "you guys are idiots. the government is dumb. the economy is dumb. jobs are so dumb" as an adult you learn that teenage impulse was mostly true, but you just underestimated how hard it is to make any improvements on that system
dating advice your job is to discern who this person is becoming and who you could become in their company
@mechanical_monk when Nati & I do this it means "hi, welcome to a shared experience of the present moment, you're present, I'm present, and we're mutually aware of each other being present" it acknowledges that we just crossed a threshold into intimacy
sufficiently advanced openness is indistinguishable from compatibility
I fucking love clumsily figuring things out from first principles without regard for existing bodies of knowledge š
seems like 80% of everyday creepy male behaviour mostly boils down to vibe blindness, making a pass at someone you're attracted to after drastically misreading (or not even attempting to read!) how she might be thinking or feeling in that moment. skill issue honestly
@OneEyedAlpaca I met a client once and immediately had the most intense crush of my life, like tripping high on drugs, ready to blow my life away on a whim, called my homie to ask for advice and it went something like this... that was the last time I had a relationship-threatening crush
I promise you don't want personal sovereignty you want to be inextricably entangled in a mesh of mutual obligations
if you take a bunch of those people and say āhere is a space which is much more tolerant of divergent social behaviour, you are less likely to be punished for being yourself intuitivelyā they can rapidly discover things like āholy shit I can vibeā and āI am loved & loveableā
I will not be sad in this world https://t.co/bDPhCKSBEC
I drew this diagram to illustrate a lot of related insights about agency, hosting, community-building, collaborative leadership & social change come with me now, the thread is long and full of bangersā¦ https://t.co/hX3lV9xylT
they should invent a motivation that's not sublimated desire for parental approval
finding your people has surprisingly little to do with "who" they are and surprisingly much to do with "how" the encounter is structured
there's this pop therapy trope where people discover "I was already Enough!" as if simply existing makes you worthy of love. do people actually believe this? I find it so hollow and unconvincing
culture war is a symptom of culture shortage, people bonding over political beliefs instead of local songs, gardening club, community theatre etc
starting to think it might be extremely counterproductive to build a model of the self and of psychological healing on a foundation of "all the ways my parents let me down"
capitalism is not in a late stage. the old system is not dying. a new world is not struggling to be born.
ok not to sound dramatic but I used to be kinda dumb and now I'm smarter than like 80% of people and I know when & how it happened & I think the same method would work for most people
hypothetically speaking if your parents massively failed to meet your emotional needs growing up it would be a pretty smart strategy to transfer your family loyalty to a supernatural parent in the sky who never dies and always cares for you
I am learning that sometimes when people say "I'm intimidated by you" they mean "I think highly of you and I'm nervous about making a good impression" instead of "you are acting in an intimidating way and should be different" š¤Æ
a group is ruled by the conversations it can't have
no one with secure attachment ever wrote a great love song
there's an emotional profile I've seen numerous people navigate but never adequately named, the unbelievably painful hangover that comes after a particular kind of peak experience: 1. lonely dissociated nerd has no life satisfaction, no feelings, no great friends, not engaged at work, lives in a constant state of shutdown for self-protection 2. by some luck they wander into a festival, burn, vibecamp, retreat etc, have the feeling of "I have found my tribe" for the first time in their adult life. extremely high peak experience, re-enchanted with the world, feels that anything is possible 3. returning to everyday life, they soon realise they're incapable of creating the changes required to sustain those good feelings. now they're confronted with the same sorrow & loneliness they've dealt with for years but now WITHOUT the protective forcefield of dissociation 4. extremely bitter brutal agonising dark night of the soul 5.... if that doesn't kill them, then after months or years of trial and error they land on an upward spiral, gradually reorienting their life towards meaningful work, belonging, openness, care for self and others etc, eventually they mature into an exceptionally kind and caring community pillar
rookie mistake for smart people everywhere is to obsess over truth at the expense of memetic fitness
is it universally acknowledged that taking a photo devalues the meaning of an experience or am I just an Old
life hack: let people know when they have made a positive impact on you
interesting to think about major quality of life improvements. surprising list, like: - loving wife - meaningful work - quit gluten - psychedelics - noise cancelling headphones - good friends whatās yours
image an alien culture with a strict taboo on sincerity so if you wanted to signal intimacy you had to deliver a sick burn precisely calibrated to be painful enough to let your friend know you know them well but not so much to make them hate you wouldnt that be weird
half my friends flinch when I say "wife" and the other half flinch when I say "partner" š
low executive function is a symptom of being under fucked
here, have a mass produced microtargeted identity, here's 100,000 people with the exact same values, beliefs, triggers and psychological baggage as you. yummy yummy why don't you enjoy this cozy monocrop community why are you still feeling isolated??
Iāve been intensely depressed the last couple weeks. feels like the clouds are parting for a second so I want to write about it, see if that helps shake it off. hiding seems to be a key part of the depressive mechanism
whoever fixed the youtube comments section deserves a nobel peace prize https://t.co/3uyP3Xnsdn
I published my book! Now I just need to finish it... https://t.co/Hh83QNHd5w
spoiler alert: the feeling of cringe does not originate in you, it arises in the tribal body. cringe is the tribal policeman threatening punishment if you don't realign your behaviour with the expectations of the tribe
I don't know who needs to hear this but it's completely normal and fine to be a bit fucked up about sex
I'm sorry but mocking people who still believe something I stopped believing 3 months ago is an important part of the developmental process
the "heroic dose" is misnamed. sobriety is the heroic choice. visit the present moment without armor, unmediated, in direct contact with your desire & pain. writhe under the touch of the animal currents of aliveness. meet reality without a prophylactic.
@collider_sama @visakanv girl #63 may be different
if you're going to advocate for unguarded open-hearted intimate contact with the present moment please let me know you also understand the survival value of living with guards up, dissociated, tightly controlled by the grip of self discipline
*slaps roof of muscle tension* this bad boy can fit so much unacknowledged grief in it
speaking as a specialist in non hierarchical organising, it is very confusing to discover in me a growing respect for hierarchy and understanding of the role it plays in nearly all groups of people
amazing how many people believe that what the world most needs is precisely their kind of extremism
well let us celebrate we live in a golden age of sculpture! every store filled to the brim with realistic sculptures that look almost exactly like a functional object
not freaking out is the core of all spiritual practice
when you feel you have no agency every problem is catastrophic
I am not 100% sure that feelings and thoughts are different things
I feel like many more people could benefit from developing awesome spreadsheet skills, but most people don't know what they're good for so I'm going to document some of the nice things I do in Google Sheets in case anyone wants to pick up some tips
just published a newsletter that's been 6 months in the making: a big hot list of web3 people & projects with real social impact potential if you're into coops, self-managing orgs, or mutual aid then I think it's time to pay attention to web3 https://t.co/lsqLOwBKDq
groups have extraordinary capacity for coordination with entirely implicit norms, but as soon as you start adding explicit structure, thereās a mental bug that will activate in some people where they suddenly find ambiguity 100% intolerable and demand everything be 100% defined
a recipe for changing yourself: (dont use this for brainwashing/cults ok) many of the traits you perceive to be "your personality" or "your limitations" are not "inside of you" they are your relation to specific social norms norms are enforced by shame shame is anticipation of social sanction appreciation is anti-shame medicine norms are context dependent social contexts are malleable we can make a social context where you can break the norm you usually strive to uphold, and instead of being shamed, you are appreciated precisely for that behaviour after just a couple of tries, if we invalidate your hypothesis that you will be punished if you break the norm, you become highly malleable
so the good news is: it's not your fault bad news though: if you want to change this, it is your responsibility
hypothesis: "sensory overwhelm" is a side effect of using your serial processor for tasks that should be handled by the parallel processor
cycling thru Berlin today, beautiful day, I notice myself surreptitiously checking out the babes and I think, why am I being subtle? where did I learn I should pretend to not be admiring babes when babes are out in such numbers? so I switched my vibe, stopped hiding, allowed myself to be seen looking and within moments I found myself making contact with people, nothing major, just friendly eye contact and smiles, like hey dude I see you looking and it's fine, it's good, I like it. I felt like the street switched from private to public. like I switched from northern europe to southern europe norms in an instant and suddenly the social world opened up as much more friendly, much more inviting, much less private than I had been treating it. all this is to say I wonder how much loneliness and social frustration could be resolved just by changing how you look. I dunno, maybe I just like looking at babes š¤
listen, this is not a call to retvrn. 1950s USA had stable social structures, but it was a fragile stability built on subjugation & marginalisation, belonging built on sameness we need to build new structures for belonging that are not predicated on conformity
I can't keep up with all the comments but I offer you all fistbumps and/or forehead kisses if you're in a depressive period I hope you find some inspiration in one of these comments
if I'm honest it's pretty hard to distinguish my desire to sleep with someone I'm attracted to from my desire to establish my place in the pecking order
if you're grappling with a problem, and you seem to get stuck when you're trying to deal with it on your own, and you only make progress when you have the right people around, instead of beating yourself up about this,, have you considered,,, you may be a mammal
@jim_rutt hyper tolerant, brainy but not strictly materialist, autist adjacent, hobby psychologist/psychonauts, extremely online sweethearts who decided that twitter is actually a great place to make friends
years ago my friend told me about Ring Theory, it helped me to be better at taking care of people in crisis I've never heard it discussed since then, so I'll write up my understanding here bc I think it could be useful
you get stuck in inaction when you're trying to satisfy multiple competing values simultaneously I've been practicing a specific move to get people unstuck in this situation...
Twitter Is A Dating App For Making Friends here's some ideas about how to have fun on twitter dot com (this is the thread I will send to people on their first day here)
low executive function is a symptom of being under encouraged
I'm going to curate a thread of my favourite educators on youtube probably mostly various types of engineering, music, science & DIY stuff everyone on this list produces exceptional material
today Iām thinking about āHow To Be a Vibe Mechanicā - a practical guide to making awesome groups I want to name what does an excellent host/facilitator/group process designer is paying attention to first thoughts...
if you're stuck: increase momentum before optimising direction
so sweet to discover that the work of maturing/ growing/ healing is mostly just relaxing
I think a lot of nerd problems are caused by us trying to use our 100,000 year old human symbolic reasoning brain to do tasks that are better suited to our 220,000,000 year old mammal intuitive vibing brain
are NPCs real? when I meet someone new and I ask "what you been up to lately?" and there answer is incredibly dull I am confused, are they having a dull life, or do they lack practice in narrating their inner experience, or is it just a relational mismatch between us
increasingly trippy instructions for a meditation on the self... Seeing Like a Superorganism On the surface, @micro_solid is a community-building framework, an engineerās attempt to invent a cure for loneliness. But beneath the waterline, there's a deeper project. If Iām honest, I am trying to change how you think about your self. I want you to see your self as a superorganism. And I want you to see the superorganisms that you are part of. I want the perceived boundaries of your self to leak. I want you to see how your agency is not a tidy black box contained inside the envelope of your skin, but distributed in a network, intra-penetrating with other people. I want you to feel the incorporeal beings steering your choices, and I want you to learn that you can steer their choices too. Itās common knowledge that a person is made of organs, organs are made of tissues, tissues made of cells, cells made of molecules, right? The simple individualistic humanist frame treats the person as the seat of agency, the atomic unit of moral responsibility and choice-making. I want you to see the limits of this model. Agency exists at micro- and macro-scales, the āpersonā is just one step on the ladder. To my knowledge, nobody argues this better than developmental biologist Michael Levin. Levinās āmulti-scale competency architectureā describes the problem-solving competencies at each layer of the biological system, from cells to tissues to organs. Each layer is uniquely adapted to solving problems within its domain. Your brain is not a micromanaging boss directing the chemical interactions of each cell in your body; each layer is mostly self-managing and able to solve novel challenges. You are not born with a blueprint documenting all the paths of your circulatory system: your blood vessels have goals and creativity and they figure it out for themselves. Just as a we can see the distinct layers of ācellā, ātissueā and āorganā at the micro-scales, I want you to see the distinct layers at the macro-scale. I want you to see that a group of 5 people is a distinct superorganism with distinct competencies. A group of 150 people is another species of superorganism, it can do other things. You may be thinking to yourself, what the fuck are you talking about Rich? I canāt explain it, you have to see for yourself. Maybe I can give you some instructions to help you see like a superorganism. People-Watching Games Sit for a coffee. Notice the people walking across the plaza. Maybe thereās 100 people, but theyāre clustered into 20 small groups. Imagine a physical envelope around each cluster (include their wheelchairs, dogs, kids etc). Watch the invisible springs holding the cluster together. Feel the surface tension of the bubble. Notice that each bubble maintains its own integrity and avoids crossing into the territory of every other cluster. They slide around each other like amoebae. Occasionally you get lucky and two bubbles combine, forming a bigger, slower, louder unit. Can you see it? Can you see the stretchy-springy-flexy macrobeings walking-riding-rolling through the square, each person a limb? Feeling the spirit of the group In a room with 20 people, how does the group change when you drink a strong coffee? Notice how a laugh propagates across the superorganism. Notice how each of its limbs trips on the same awkward piece of furniture in the hallway. How does it react to changes in music style and volume? What is the impact of different lighting levels? How does the group spirit change when you have a rough oval of 20 seats, or 5 clusters of 4? How does the group spirit react to empty space? to soft textures? to aromas? Cultivating scale-sensitivity Look for patterns: what is the biggest group that can hold a single conversation, with everyone engaged, and no formal structure, no facilitator, agenda, whiteboard? Is it bigger than 3? smaller than 10? How big is it? How does a festival of 3000 feel different from 30,000? Are the strangers equally anonymous at each scale? How big is your mental address book? How many individuals can you recognise? How many tribes? Questions for extra credit Once you know how to see a group as a singular macrobeing, you can notice groups of groups in the same way. Fractal insight generator go brrrrrrrr. How many groups of groups did you see in the plaza? What's a good name for the group-of-group-of-group-of-groups that contains all beings? Can you stretch the time domain? Can you learn to see a family as one coherent creature persisting over centuries, a single spirit installed temporarily in individuals? Can you see it?
my whole shtick: your behaviour is constrained to a surprising degree by the people around you so if you wanna change you mostly have to change who you're spending time with (or how)
pessimists be like boo hoo I'm scared of the future after plugging myself into depressing news 24 hours a day waaaah I'm a giant baby who amputated my own sense of local agency for some reason why did capitalism do this nooooooo ššš
@bashu_thanks pretty sure every concept is a feeling
if you're trying to practice new relational skills but you're surrounded by immature people you'll keep getting negative feedback even if you're doing all the right things
OK so firstly you don't need to feel ashamed about your phone addiction. a major share of the world's intellectual, computational and financial resources are dedicated to tugging on your brainstem. your screen fixation is not a moral failing...
when the homies take psychedelics thinking the insights should just integrate themselves https://t.co/nWVD49prQ9
I am experiencing intense amounts of its going to be alright when I think about the future these days
sure sex is cool but have you ever booted up all the motivation and mental context for a complex project and kept it booted up for days without interruption
there are people who broadcast a nonverbal signal that persuades your body that its safe now to unwind the tension you're usually holding
imagine you're an earnest but slightly weird + bit lonely, extremely online person who joined a couple of twitter events and suddenly found belonging & rapid personal transformation (plus maybe some drugs & free love). how would you know you're not being pulled into a cult?
I promise you this: we can forge pluralistic trust networks, we've been doing it for millennia. but we don't get there by deconstruction. it's time to build baby!
I wish I knew how to show you that most of your behaviours are socially permissioned and not internally generated