don't censor yourself, silly !

posted on 2023-02-16

there's this meme that, as you grow up, you learn that adults don't really know what they're doing either, they've just become good at pretending they do. i think the meme holds up; you'd be surprised how many people — even in charge of important things ! — don't really know what they're doing.

i don't like this pretending. i generally like when appearances match reality, and also i actually enjoy people being silly in a variety of fun ways.

this kind of feels like a coordination failure, a social appearance rat race in which you have to keep pretending that you're not silly because otherwise people who fall for the illusion are gonna think that you're sillier than others, and they'll take others more seriously than you as a result.

for this reason, i have admiration for people who go out of their way to help break out of this. it doesn't have to mean being maximally public about everything; letting your sillyness show even just a bit more, is a personal sacrifice that hopefully helps shift the norm towards less self-censorship of sillyness.

in that spirit, i'll mention that i'm more active on my twitter, recently.

(related-ish: culture tribes and legitimacy)

posted on 2023-02-16