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Some notes on influenceering

lcamtuf.substack.com

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Re: Some notes on influenceering

#31

Post by bawolff »

luu wrote: post #8

> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…

I wonder though if there is a long term benefit.

E.g. people might pay attention to you because of your reputation. Your reputation might be based on high effort posts (over the long term) even if they get less attention. The lower effort posts might get more direct attention but only because of your reputation which is indirectly caused by the high effort posts which much fewer people read.

Just a theory, i wonder if people who are actually internet famous would agree or not (since i am not).

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#32

Post by baby »

> #1: It’s still a chore

just use a static site if you can. I think I’m also stuck with an old stack and don’t have the time to move to a static site and I’ve been paying the price for years. All my new stuff is static, pushed on github, deployed by cloudflare pages. Worst was when a linux upgrade deleted a bunch of user content, fortunately I had set up backups! But spent the entire night fixing things. Now I do static site or managed databases.

> #2: There are weirdos on the internet

I agree. The worst is when it’s people you know (or even admire) who take a direct (or indirect) stab at you and your content. But I think you can’t let that stop you, because it stops most people from publishing what they have in their brain. The more successful you are the more haters you’ll attract, that’s just the way it is.

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#33

Post by bawolff »

dinkleberg wrote: post #6

The best thing I've learned about "influenceering" is to stop thinking you're hot shit and focus on being useful (or entertaining if that is what you're about). Years ago I was pumping content out all the time and I was just creating the content for the sake of creating it. Consequently, the content was mostly pointless and garbage. If you want to treat your social media as a public journal that is cool, but not like…

> If you want to treat your social media as a public journal that is cool, but not likely to make you an influencer

I think the key trick is you need to be interesting. A public journal can be for some people but probably not most.

I'm interested in a public journal of someone in the top of their field, thinking deep thoughts and explaining how they see the world.

I'm not interested in a public journal that amounts to: today i bought groceries and binged netflix.

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#34

Post by jacobolus »

bawolff wrote: post #31
luu wrote: post #8

> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…

I wonder though if there is a long term benefit. E.g. people might pay attention to you because of your reputation. Your reputation might be based on high effort posts (over the long term) even if they get less attention. The lower effort posts might get more direct attention but only because of your reputation which is indirectly caused by the high effort posts which much fewer people read. Just a theory, i wonder i…

There is definitely a long-term societal benefit to doing both kinds of work. Often work seen by only a few people (which might gather only a handful of citations, or none at all) inspires a later generation's breakthroughs at the frontier of human understanding. (For example yesterday there was a post about Hermann Grassmann and his pioneering work in linear algebra which got almost no positive feedback at the time but 150 years later is considered foundational for whole fields of study.) On the other hand making very popular material that helps a large number of people to slightly better understand old well-known ideas can still have huge benefit.

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#35

Post by mike_mg »

luu wrote: post #8

> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…

Predicting what people want to consume is hard, especially if # of impressions is your success measure. More broadly, I have been endlessly surprised by how users use my products and what in particular they liked. You do tend to get better at feeling this out from seeing people interacting with your product, but you stand to be bewildered, forever. If only you saw in what circumstances people read your posts!

At the same time, some might say it's about the area under the curve. If 10 folks get their mind blown by in-depth treatment of some curious topic, it's roughly same amount of utils as 1e5 impressions on some silly quip if you ask me.

I, for one, am perpetually grateful to lcamtuf. I have been looking up to him for like 15 years, and he has shaped me profoundly by showing what level of focus, productivity and insight is possible. You wouldn't think that someone's life trajectory can get changed by super detailed CNC lore write up, but here we are, years later (: Thanks!!

Also, if you're reading this lcamtuf, I would like to put one vote in favour of re-instating the American essays. Pls don't pull a Kafka on us! I did read your "choosing how to be remembered" post, but still, the fact that you took the American essays down feeds right into the topic of this current post. I found them positively entertaining and insightful.

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#36

Post by xmprt »

luu wrote: post #8

> Some of my most popular posts are throwaway quips and memes that went viral on social media. One of my life’s crowning achievements is this: [witty, throwaway, quip tweet]. > In contrast, some of the work I put weeks or months into essentially lost the SEO game and gets nearly zero traffic ... Even though I don’t write for money, there is an immense pressure to produce clickbait — even if simply to add “hey, since…

I think this is more of a quantity vs quality thing. You make 100 low effort posts in the time of 1 high effort post. Even if there's a 1% chance of the low effort posts getting traction compared to the 10-20% chance of a high quality post getting traction, on a net basis, the low quality posts will end up being more popular.

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#37

Post by righthand »

skilled wrote: post #5

The problem is that communities got replaced by algorithms who think on your behalf. The algorithm is by definition random , and yet for countless years now it is how most social media sites, including popular developer communities, operate. In the era of the feed and timeline, nobody bothers to check “Following” when you have “Recommended” enabled by default. The former requires effort , while the latter gives a fal…

Isn’t it just automated channel flipping, but instead of isolated display space per channel, instead the channels are conglomerated together into an endless feed? A never ending loop isn’t intended to bring joy and happiness and that’s why it fails. It is however intended to remove control from the controller.

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#38

Post by exitb »

paulpauper wrote: post #18

but otherwise, it’s OK to write about what excites you, and to do it as you learn.” yeah, but what if no one else cares what you write about or it does not gain traction

If the lack of traction takes away from your excitement or ability to learn, it best to just skip writing. It’s fine to do fun stuff just for the sake of it, no need to justify it by getting an audience.

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#39

Post by ImaCake »

ipython wrote: post #3
emmanueloga_ wrote: post #2

> early on, it plays tricks with your mind — what if I’m really as clueless as they say? > What stings far more is when you get no reaction whatsoever Wow, even someone like lcamtuf can feel like this sometimes. This guy is the author of super-awesome stuff like "The Tangled Web" book, the "Guerrilla guide to CNC" and the "american fuzzy lop" software. Definitely, his work is the kind of content that makes the intern…

I still remember being in awe of his paper on strange attractors - plotting the random number generators from various oses and languages in 3D space to discern patterns. That blew my mind at the time. Edit: ah here it is. It was initial tcp sequence number generators: https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/oldtcp/tcpseq.html

That's an amazing piece of work. Even in a quick skim I picked up a lot of new ideas which speaks to how well the author can explain tricky concepts!

Re: Some notes on influenceering

#40

Post by ImaCake »

gowld wrote: post #9

Surely that throwaway "computer science" tweet only went viral because lcamtuf was already famous and had a high follower count because of their previous, substantial work.

Him making this joke is also a product of his expertise. Like, it takes at least some experience to have the insight and then be able to communicate it in a pithy way.
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