#015 - Visakan Veerasamy on Scenes, Deviants, Introspection, & Writing

Visakan Veerasamy (AKA Visa) is a writer, both on Twitter and through his books Friendly Ambitious Nerds and Introspect — both of which I highly recommend. We talk about writing; networks, scenes, and subcultures; deviants and outliers; being introspective; and more.

— (00:42) Visa's background (05:45) Online networks need a cultural paradigm shift to realize its true potential (12:25) We need clusters of independent yet connected communities encouraging pro-social behaviors (18:16) Change comes from small, bottoms-up movements (26:25) The next round of recruiters for the scene (29:04) Historical scenes & outliers, and how to manufacture more of them (34:44) Being authentic & informal, & attracting intrinsically motivated people (43:03) The lifecycle of sub-cultures (46:44) Accepting & encouraging deviants (55:26) Writing Friendly Ambitious Nerds and Introspect to Introspect (01:02:26) What he wants to write next (or rather, what wants to be written) (01:07:13) Trying to become more ambitious, & the tradeoffs of improving your strengths or weaknesses (01:20:13) Visa's final question for listeners

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Visa’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/visakanv

Visa’s website: https://visakanv.com/

Introspect: https://visakanv.gumroad.com/l/introspect

Friendly Ambitious Nerds: https://visakanv.gumroad.com/l/FANbook

Spencer’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/SP1NS1R

Spencer’s blog: https://spencerkier.substack.com/