I went to class today. I woke up at 8am, an hour earlier than usual. I left to catch the bus to the GO train, the subway at Union didn’t work so I had to take the PATH to Easton then TMU. It’s supposed to be the coldest here in Toronto. I attended the final class needed for me to graduate. It went well, my professor is a yapper who was fine with me missing the final group presentation. I told the group to pick a use case and I’ll have a demo ready. I now take the GO train back home. Thinking about another man who yapped a lecture on computers, devops, virtual machines, religion, christianity, growing up in toronto, Cancun, Spanish grammar, and being a DJ. He was in his 30s, his dad 50 apparently born in 1974, with a sister who’s 13 and a brother who’s 6. Half his teeth were missing. There was sincerity in his tone but justification in his voice. He embodied the character of a performative male beyond my explanations. It was lovely to be a part of. Not once did he ask me about myself. During his yapping, all I could think, was how do dates get a word in? Obvious to say, I lacked the courage, or heart to say nothing maybe? An interesting fellow, who came to see me on torontos coldest friday (apparently)
In Japanese, "tsundoku" means collecting books and letting them pile up, not for neglect, but for the joy of knowing books are there, full of untold stories. I do the same practice back home in Toronto, specifically Brampton or "B-City." I am a writer who has published only one story in 2025. The good thing is that I used the rest of the year finishing the pile of books in my room (time to collect more). I am mid as a writer, but I found that the only way to be good at something is to do it often.
Notes From The Oversky is project for one person (me) to write and publish one book (Notes From The Oversky) by the end of 2026. What this book will be about, I'm not sure, but I'm sure the process of consistent publishing will help reveal the mystery. What I can tell you is the outcome I would like, which is to deliver a product for others to pile up in their homes. These letters are meant to explore and collect potential stories to share with others who would enjoy reading them. Do subscribe (I promise to write stories that LLMs couldn't comprehend, let alone reproduce).
https://paragraph.com/dashboard/@oversky
Publication For Performative People
Not everyone who performs is lost. We perform for progress, especially in the stage of social media where content is king, and the creator its obedient servant. All of us go home each evening, and at some moment in time, with whatever degree of consciousness, we go back over all the signs that aid in the continuity of our character.
The dilemma of the performative person is thinking one day the act will be done. “I’m only doing this now so that one day I can do what I really want with my life.” The passport bro may say, “I will travel and sow my wild oats...only then will I settle with a woman to have children.” The situationship may think to herself, “If I stay with him long enough, he’ll commit to me one day.” They are both on the pretense that things will be different in a fundamental way as long as their act continues. It rarely ever does. They may not intend for malice, let alone plan for it, but such performative people justify to think highly of themselves. “I am good, am I not, very, very good? All right then, tell me why I am so good.”
The clueless consultant who is sent into his office to gather clients, is hardly encouraged to fix their problems. He sees his clients and computer, and nothing beyond, then sinks into the role of being a cog in the corporate machine. Boring professors scarcely give an ideal worth to lectures, they are ridden by the routine of research, subjecting their soul to dollars. Dull students may become messengers to artificial intelligence, outsourcing their lessons to machines that are far from creative. A daily rehearsal can become permanent. The man who rents intimacy learns to negotiate desire. The consultant who sells certainty learns to avoid doubt. The student who delegates thought learns without understanding. They wake up more refined at being what they already were. So it goes for consultants, professors, students, passport bros, and situationships.
The solution is simple and deeply uncinematic. Identifying a performative male is like running a Turing test to find if a machine is human, you’ll know they're real when they stop pretending. Like the For You Page, they are clever algorithms designed to manufacture admiration, not meaning, and it runs until the man inside it realizes he has worked overtime to impress people who are not actually there. The only sensible escape is without an audience. It's the same feeling Truman felt when exiting his show, “In case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.”
It’s a long, sore process giving anyone a social conscience. It’s hard to see our own life in relation to the whole world. We learn about the two things in different ways
The man who rents intimacy learns to negotiate desire. The consultant who sells certainty learns to avoid doubt. The student who delegates thinking learns without understanding. None of them wake up one day as something else. They wake up more refined at being what they already were.
I made a workflow that takes random vids from my phone and edits them into a vlog edit with an ai narrator doing a voiceover of my past blogs. final output comes out grainier than usual but has a nice feel to it
As I walked down Soi Cowboy in Bangkok, I felt that a my sexual choices are the result and the sum of my fundamental insecurities. I may walk about, laugh, talk to people, no longer conscious of myself, all while I lie awake some nights counting the sins committed. The man who is ashamed of his uncertain values, will want the easiest type of woman he can find, the woman he discounts, and the cheapest to negotiate with. It is the rental of a prostitute that will satiate his lust, not the company of a woman reflecting the noblest version of himself
so i found a use case for creator coins and I’d like to put it to the test by creation content around it, for now there’s not much use of the coin but with the paragraph sdk there could be something there to do a bunch of experiments
plan to launch a publication on Base, using this token to track the work that will raise the yield. Will be writing more stories as part of the content and this will tie into the end to end creation process starting with my newsletter
We are already creating through our digital activities, enormously rich records of how we think and what we feel, and during this decade, our technology for recording, storing, and organizing this information will advance rapidly. Like the Hubble telescope, capable of discovering dark matter in the universe, mobile telescopes have made it easier to discover dark talent onchain.
the light forest theory explains that in open networks, visibility is selected, unlike the strategic silence of a dark forest. It is when coordination technology like the internet make signaling net-positive, where the equilibrium is showing your work to solidify your being. Base is a light forest.
The Dilemma Of The Performative Male
The consultant who is sent into his office to gather clients, is rarely encouraged to seek truth in their problems. He sees his clients and his computer, and nothing beyond, then sinks into the role of being a cog in the corporate machine. The professor scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, and is ridden by the routine of research, where the soul is subjected to dollars. The student becomes a messenger to artificial intelligence, outsourcing their studies to a machine that is far from creative. These are but performative people, unaware of the impotence of their character.
Identifying a performative person is like running a turing test to find if a machine is human, you’ll know they're real when they stop pretending. All of us go home each evening, and at some moment in time, with whatever degree of consciousness, we go back over all the signs, seeking confirmation that aids in the continuity of our being. This is not self awareness, it’s self justification.
The willingness to accept awareness for one's own life, the source of self respect, is what gives someone character. If you take a walk down Soi Cowboy in Bangkok, you’ll find that a man’s sexual choices are the result and the sum of his fundamental insecurities. He may walk about, laugh, talk to people, no longer conscious of himself, lacking self respect, all while he lies awake some nights counting the sins committed. The man who is ashamed of his uncertain values, will want the easiest type of woman he can find, the woman he discounts, and the cheapest to negotiate with. It is the rental of a prostitute that will satiate his lust, not the company of a woman reflecting the noblest version of himself.
It’s true, or more accurately, not false that evils are caused by insufficient knowledge. Harm is also done by people who want to feel important. They may not intend for malice, let alone plan for it, but they surely will justify it in order to think well of themselves. “I am good, am I not, very, very good? All right then, tell me why I am so good.” Such feelings may get projected onto others, especially to those that will accept the cash to validate such myths. Men who fool themselves are often the ones to throw hot coal in the face of others. I know this because it’s the same feelings I channel when I write, witnessing a man yelling at a waiter on a cruise for a joke about him being drunk at the dinner table, or the moment a man handed a cigarette to a child selling roses outside of a club in Bangkok. I’m no better.
I want people to read such words and consider me insightful, the same way I read the literary influences that precede me. Yet there’s no point dwelling on silly evils, even if horrific, because suffering is not compelling. It happens as long as you react, but it’s more interesting, more complex, more demanding to behave beautifully as one can under such circumstances.
It’s true, evils are caused by insufficient knowledge, but harm can also be done by people who want to feel important. They may not intend for malice, let alone plan for it, but they surely will justify it in order to think well of themselves. “I am good, am I not, very, very good? All right then, tell me why I am so good.” Such feelings may get projected onto others, especially to those that will accept the cash to say such myths. I know this is the case because it’s the same feelings I look for whenever I write. I want people to read these words and consider me insightful, the same way I read the literary influences that precede me.
