We see curiosity theater all around.

Audience members asking questions at panels that are actually mini-speeches. People at dinner name-dropping obscure books in conversation but never engaging with their core arguments. Folks on social media starting ‘learning projects’ and abandoning them after a week.

Then there’s curation theater.

Posting endless... See more

People were losing excitement about the internet, starting to articulate a set of new truisms. Facebook had become tedious, trivial, exhausting. Instagram seemed better, but would soon reveal its underlying function as a three-ring circus of happiness and popularity and success. Twitter, for all its discursive promise, was where everyone tweeted

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Find something important only you can build, he said, which would not exist without you. It’s inspiring enough advice on its face, which is how it’s generally taken, and how I always took it myself. But the advice requires an important, rarely considered step: introspection.

Do you even know what you’re good at? Do you even know what you believe... See more