I was feeling particularly annoyed at a certain type of person online. The easiest way to describe this type of person is someone whose interests are more strategic than personally intuitive. A person whose interests accumulate with an awareness of how they will reflect back onto them. A person who follows nodal points not from an innate desire, bu... See more

There isn‘t a clean way to get around the idea that personal expression is always at least in part performative. Expression is partly fun because it’s performative.

It’s also not like this type of behavior is a new thing. There has always been the type of person who is performative of their own interests or pursues their work because of the kind of ... See more

the sum total of all of a person’s nodal points could be some kind of proxy for a personal identity. At the very least, it’s an indication of an individual perspective. Since writing this essay, I’ve thought a lot about this kind of personal intuition towards things: the radar that any person has that leads them to different points in their life.

This got me thinking that, ultimately, it's the totality of those “nodal points” that indicate one's own unique perspective. It doesn't matter if you specifically sought out the nodal point or not, it’s the recognition that counts. When you encounter a piece of life-changing information (no matter how large the change part is), you are simultaneous... See more

consists almost entirely of individuals pursuing their own interests, refining those interests, and letting those interests lead to more interests through connections with others

That shared love for the thing or the overlapping interests allows you to tune your radar for certain types of people. Similar to the idea of desire lines, agency is the key component. There’s the agency to move through abstract space guided by your own intuition. In the case of Soulseek, there’s nothing (other than your own intuition) that is infl... See more

People have always lived in their own realities. A person’s intuition helps them decide what to pay attention to, how to perceive the world, and what to value.

Soulseek is a file sharing platform that came out around the same time as Napster and Kazaa, but it’s still around and still has a passionate userbase. One part about its design that’s worth highlighting is that if you search for a song or album and find a person who has that song or album, you could go through their entire shared music folder and ... See more

In an ideal world, one’s own personal intuition or radar is the same thing as the force that motivates them.