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171 sats \ 2 replies \ @elvismercury 6h \ on: Shallow Feedback Hollows You Out - Ivan Vendrov mostly_harmless
There's something really important in this. I had a Gurwinder post on audience capture here someplace that gets at a similar idea, though this one has some more threads to pull.
The idea, regardless of what you call it, is one of the biggest influences on my thinking in the last five years. Hard to think of one that's had more impact.
Back when I was writing a lot of fiction (which I used to do some years ago) I was very conscious that there was never such a thing as a character, but only relationships. So there is no Yossarian, but there is Yossarian-Nately and Yossarian-Milo and Yossarian-reader.
Put simply, in order to be someone, we need someone to be someone for. -Gurwinder
Characters need other characters even if just a reader. While Taleb isn't a character, he's no less reliant on his audience than Yossarian was on me or Orr.
Perhaps this is what I find interesting about artists who make work that isn't what their audience wants. Finnegans Wake is, on the one hand, preposterous and arrogant and unpleasant -- but it certainly wasn't audience capture. (although, I am now wondering if Joyce's success with earlier works actually led him to try more and more outlandish things until he ended up with Finnegans Wake...which really is impossible. Did Joyce's audience create Finnegans Wake?)
one of the biggest influences on my thinking in the last five years
Has it had more influence on how you act or how you view the actions of others?
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Has it had more influence on how you act or how you view the actions of others?
Both. I view it kind of like a law of social physics, or socio-biology. I see it unfolding in myself intimately, and others coarsely.
But I think I'm not exaggerating wrt its power, and its pervasiveness in this new online reality.
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