Curiosity Traps

In computing, honeypots attract bad actors into interacting with a system. As usual, this principle can be reversed. You can deliberately put out some kind of intellectual honey that will attract good actors instead, and lead to joyful serendipity. If you wear a shirt that says, “Dyslexics are teople poo”, that attracts one kind of conversation; a CERN standard model tee attracts another (in my case: “what’s it mean?”, “dunno”, the end.). The examples are endless – trail race swag attracts conversations with fellow trail runners; wearing something handmade gets the attention of other crafters – but conversations started by conversation pieces aren’t usually that deep or well-targeted. Conversation pieces are decent at starting conversations, but we don’t see that many people face-to-face (well, I don’t!), so there’s a limit to how specific you can make the reference, and still meet people who get it. Henrik Karlsson (are you tired of me referencing Henrik Karlsson yet?) articulated the idea that a blog, or any public collection of work, is a way of passively collecting a network of interesting people that are unusually well-matched with your interests, without having to go to hundreds of speed-networking events in a nerdy tee shirt. A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inboxWhen writing in public, there is a common idea that you should make it accessible. This is a left over from mass media.Escaping FlatlandHenrik Karlsson This seems true. I’ve met a lot of interesting people by putting things out on the internet. But this, like most worthwhile things, can be fractal. First you go in public, then you wear a conversation piece, then you leave “handles” and “doorknobs” in your answers to the basic questions, creating a choose-your-own adventure for your conversation partner. First you make stuff, then you put it on the internet. If you stop here, you’re missing out! That’s like going out in public – with airpods in, and staring at the ground. The next step is to put lots of links to your contact form or email, and explicitly ask for feedback, and make it easy for people to say hello. Each post is a hook for a different conversation, with a different kind of person. Each post has a chance of pushing a reader over the activation energy threshold to start a conversation. Posts are, also, cumulative. Someone might read for years, and then write in to discuss draining pasta without a colander. (Other people might subscribe, and then realize, oh, that’s not actually an $X blog, it’s a kitchen sink blog, and I’m only interested in 1/10th of the things they write about.

Bye!