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legendaryPOV 04 · defensibility: very high
Sameness Is the Disease
Sameness is the disease; specificity is the cure — and the algorithm rewards it less than it should.
The creator economy has flattened into an ick-onomy — three of the same thumbnail in one thumb-swipe, identical hooks, identical hustle-bro packaging. Bucking the trend doesn't win short-term metrics, but it's the only thing that compounds now that AI makes the median attempt cheap. Specificity is not a tactic; it's a survival strategy.
Inscriptions
328
Sources
221
Became
2
Last fed
12d ago
Inscriptions — the highlights that fed it
“Three months later, he got an email with the subject line Octoburr. There was going to be a reading in Manhattan that October, and Lin-Manuel wanted him to play Aaron Burr. Leslie Odom Jr. said yes.”
booksmy notehe doesnt shy away from being too niche, living in his own universe that he built
“Pessimism just sounds smarter and more plausible than optimism.”
booksmy noteHow to create news that are more realistic (optimistic tone) and not pessimistic? S&P plays it neutral - doesn't get us clicks.
“One possible answer lies in the standards by which we evaluate an art: do we judge it by how “meaningfully” it has transformed its model—such as life, or whatever it’s supposedly copying—or do we judge it by how faithfully it has reproduced some specific original?”
articles“The more specific the verb, the less likely you’ll need an adverb. “Raced” doesn’t require “quickly.” “Meandered” doesn’t require “aimlessly.””
books“As the computer scientist Cal Newport has noted, writers were the original remote workers, and anyone who studies the great ones will notice that they tend to go out of their way to designate a specific space and time for their work.”
articles“Franchise thinking is choosing the template over the original. The intellectual class, which loves to imagine itself above this, is among the worst offenders.”
articles“Introducing an original idea is buying a lottery ticket — on rare occasion, you win big, but mostly you look stupid for trying. But sequels are sure things — pure dividends.”
articles“"When I notice myself worrying about 'what other people will think,' I find I'm usually not worried about any single person's opinion. If I pick a specific person, I'm rarely concerned about what they will think. What I fear is the collective opinion in my head. It's imaginary."”
articles“Focus on the words and the image. Here are my three favorite templates. Pick one and start testing.”
booksWhat this taught me to write — receipts
01Instagram Already Showed Me This
Beck At It
Creator Ick Onomy
Beck At It
⚷ Unwritten · the next page of this tome
“Specificity is the only moat left”
Turn the ick-onomy critique into a constructive frame: five concrete tactics — proper names not categories, contrarian two-word hooks, anti-growth metrics, analog artefacts, 'this happened on a Tuesday at 11:36PM' timestamps. — drafted from the tome, not yet published.