#25: Tom White - Digital Identities

In a world which is like digital, which— where there's PFPs, there's, um, like the pseudonymous economy, purpleology, like what does it mean to be you?

All right, welcome to another episode of Cyber Patterns. Today we have Tom White on. Tom and I have been chatting for quite a while about newsletters, about writing, NFTs, etc. He is an awesome dude. He writes a newsletter called White Noise and he advises startups at On Deck. So Tom and I have a very wide-ranging discussion today, all sorts of books, content, everything in between. So I hope you enjoy.

Jason, how we doing, man? Good.

Great to finally connect.

Long, long last. But I mean, you're now the famous guy on Twitter. You've been killing it, man. It's awesome to watch. No, seriously, it's really, really cool to watch. I'm not being facetious.

No, I appreciate it, man. You know, still putting in that work, uh, just every day.

It never ends. I mean, writing is simple. You just sit at a typewriter and bleed, right?

Yeah, man, just every day. That's, that's a grind, dude. Let's, let's hop into this, talk writing. Um, amazing. Yeah, dude, I didn't realize you were— so you were writing at Google?

So I did a bunch of different things at Google. Um, I did sales and marketing. I did product strategy. I did some comms work around like responsible AI, um, which I don't know, in this day and age seems to be an oxymoron with DALL-E and everything like that. And then, um, I was working in, in venture capital and startup, uh, research and development for emerging frontier markets. Um, so really, really enjoyed my time there. Worked with some absolutely incredible talented, kind, intellectual people, and some of whom are my very good friends today. If you had told me when I graduated college that I would be as close, if not closer, with individuals at one of my companies or one of the companies that I worked for, I would've said that you're out of your mind, absolutely not. But I mean, the truth is stranger than fiction in that way.

No, 100%. 100%. Um, so back to, back to writing White Noise.

Yes.

Why is it called White Noise? And, um, what have you been thinking about recently? What do you got on the coming soon?

God, how long do you have? More question, what have I not been thinking about? Because I think, I mean, this is— someone told me the other day, uh, my friend Owen, that this is actually not a real phrase, but you know the Chinese aphorism, may you live in interesting times? That's like actually more of a curse than a benediction. Apparently that's not a real statement. So I've been quoting that to people like nonstop because the past 2 years have been interesting to say the very least with regards to euphemism. But it's called White Noise because my name is Tom White. My last name is White. I am literally white, Caucasian, and I make noise. So this is the noise that I make both like literally via writing, both with like, with tics, because I have Tourette syndrome. So I think it's a very, very apt name because it captures via punny language, which I love. I'm a sucker for like rhetorical flourishes, various different things. So on the docket, I have at any given time, I have like 30 articles in production, quote unquote, for lack of a better term. Let me just open up the things that I've been thinking a lot about as of late are a couple. So I have on the docket an ode to New York. Like, I'm a native New Yorker. You can take the kid out of New York, can't take New York out of the kid. So I'm writing kind of a love letter/poem to New York. I have an article coming out about It's called, um, working title, it's Masks All the Way Down. I don't know if you know the, like, the story of, uh, or there was like a physics professor and was saying, hey, you know, this is gravity, this is the Earth. And then someone stood up, was like, Professor, you're wrong, it's turtles all the way down. And it became like this famous kind of quote. And that's basically like, what does it mean to be you when you wear so many different masks in so many different situations? Like, me at a bachelor party is very different from me like in this conversation, which is very different from me at I don't know, a family party or, you know, playing pickup basketball or something like that. So what does identity mean when we wear all these masks in different contexts, colors, and situations? And then to stop being so verbose, the last one that I've been thinking so much about, and my writing process is weird, I actually email myself. So I email myself just to capture ideas. So I have a bunch of threads of articles. And the worst part is I have to take it, sift through them, and then like kind of place them on the correct article. So it's less staring at a blank page and a blinking cursor, and it's more, hey, I've written these things out, now I have to put them in the proper order, kind of like a patchwork quilt, so as to make it sing in some way. But that's— but I mentioned that because one of the threads is about truth. I think reality now is subjective, which is terrifying because we all live in these different echo chambers. So I think because of experts, when the tide going out, the vast majority of them not really wearing any shorts, economists with inflation and interest rates, doctors and the CDC with regards to COVID vaccinations and what have you. I I think a lot of individuals have questioned the faith of institutions. So I think the next decade, a lot of institutions are going to be in decline. A lot of individuals are going to be in ascent. And I think online tools like a Substack or a Twitter are a powerful mechanism and lever for that, as you can attest. You're killing it with your follower account and with Cyber Patterns. Everyone should subscribe. But what are the ramifications of a society where capital T truth no longer exists and it's lowercase t truth? I think that's terrifying. And I think the Fourth Turning comes to mind. I think it's deeply disturbing when a lot of things, I think, are breaking right now. I think Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital, I think he said, and it was a really cleverly phrased line, it was entropic apex, which is to say like we are at the peak entropy. It's like Murphy has come and his law is the law of the land. So that's what I'm thinking about. I'm, as you can tell, a big nerd and think about a lot of different things.

No, that's dope, man. I've learned to like embrace my nerdiness this year. Like it's really paying off, man.

It's a badge of honor. I mean, like I— read all the time and I enjoy it and I enjoy talking with people like you because it's the, I think it's Longfellow or Whitman. If you can't tell, I'm a huge quote guy. I have no original thoughts. But like each man is my superior in some way. And from that I can learn from him. I mean, I just love to learn from people because people are absolutely fascinating.

Yeah. I mean, just in that little conversation, I feel like I got 1 to 2 ideas for essays, definitely some tweets in there. Like, Digital identity. Like I haven't written about that despite, like, I wrote a tweet, like, you know, we all have digital, we started digital identities the second we chose usernames, but that like right there, like repurpose that into an essay.

Like, you know, and also like, like think about like even the identities that we wear, like on a day-to-day basis, like how you talk to your mom is not how you talk to me, which is not how you talk to your boss.

Right.

But like, take that to the nth degree in a world, which is like digital. Where there's PFPs, there's like the pseudonymous economy per Balaji. What does it mean to be you? And what are the ramifications of having a digital life and an in-person life? I think the analogies as of late were probably Second Life and World of Warcraft. But I mean, there's a reason why science fiction is more like science fact. Ready Player One just seems— at the very least, the direction in which we're heading. I don't know. The idea also, not to just cavort this in a bunch of different ways, reality privilege. The vast majority of individuals' lives are not great with regards to living on less than $1 a day, doing menial tasks that they do not enjoy, struggling to get by. If they're offered, per Ready Player One, an oasis, Why wouldn't individuals take advantage of that? Why wouldn't they escape? Because we're already escaping society at large with drugs, with jewels— well, not anymore in the US at least— um, with like alcohol and all this other stuff. So I, um, I don't know. I think it's, it's a, it's a hell of a time to be alive, um, just for those reasons, let alone like geopolitical conflict. Economic uncertainty, monkeypox.

Yeah, yeah. The podcast I put out this morning with Josh Rosenthal, uh, historian, venture capital guy, um, he talked about how we're in a renaissance right now. And in past renaissances, you know, the same, the first, the same, the last, like, uh, there's a lot of chaos going on. And that's kind of the symbol that a lot is going on and a lot is changing. So I think about that entropy apex, I could definitely understand that. And then Back to that Balaji point, he has this point where it's like declining countries versus ascending countries. I'm sure you've heard, but just thinking about declining institutions and ascending institutions, you know, is something that I haven't thought about, you know, because every business is an institution of some sort, like even a smaller one. So one might be ascending, whereas the New York Times is, and Washington Post, definitely descending right now.

I enjoy reading people like you, Paki McCormick, um, Barry Weiss, Nick DeWilde, Sarah Campbell, like a bunch of folks, much more than I do, um, the, the, the articles that are in the New York Times. Because I, again, like, this goes back to truth. They're not selling truth, like capital T truth. They're not like doing a deep, I think, honest intellectual exercise, or at least I think the vast majority of them. That's a generalization, but people that are doing it for the sake of intellectual inquiry and exploration, and better yet, people I can like reach out to and say, hey, like, I don't actually understand this, can you walk me through that? That's incredible because that begets learning, and it's a much more beneficial exercise than, I don't know, people, um, writing headlines so as to generate clicks, so as to generate rage, so as to get virality and get more of those ad dollars in. So I think a quote that I always come back to by this guy E.O. Wilson is, "We are a primitive people living with medieval institutions with godlike technology." We're not wired to deal with this stuff in any way, shape, or form.

No, we're not. My boy Austin Schlessinger just dropped a thread yesterday about the Lindy effect, and he's a health-focused writer. And so he talked a lot about that. I, I previously wrote an article called Airplane Mode is Lindy as Fuck because it's so true, man. Like we are not built for the internet. I'm not built for the dopamine of getting new followers and, and new, new likes and, and all the other distractions on the internet. Like we are not built for that.

We are built for like— the wild thing is like, because of neuroplasticity and like neurons that fire together, wire together, there was a study done a couple years ago, I think. And like even just having your phone in the same room, If it's off, if it's not even in sight, decreases focus, which is insane. Just shows this thing is a digital shackle. I mean, it's a shackle made of semiconductors. That's what it comes down to. I don't know. And again, technology is great. It's wonderful. I mean, it's led to outsized opportunities in my life and others, but I don't know. Jurassic Park comes to mind, right? He's like, Scientists were so obsessed with figuring out if they could, they didn't stop to ask if they should. Um, I mean, again, another quote. Sorry, I, I don't—

Dude, don't be sorry. The quote game's on fire. It's cool.

Uh, thank you. I mean, growth unchecked is cancer. Like, fundamentally, we have to, like, we have to, uh, step back and say, why the hell are we doing these things? I think a lot of people don't want to do that because a lot of people don't want to think because thinking is hard.

Yeah. I love the quote. I forget who said it, but like the brightest minds of our generation are switching to writing or, you know, writing ads.

Are focused on how to get people to click more on ads.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. When I was at Google, that was the case. I think like the reservoir of untapped talent there is tremendous. I bet.

I bet. What's your thought on— I'm writing an essay probably for this week, maybe for next, just digital public goods. I feel like there's been a huge focus on that. This year, especially in Web3, but also just like, Twitter's free, man. Twitter changed my life. It's free. It's a public good generally. We're the product. Yes, we pay with our attention, but it's free.

How would you define a digital public good? I think that gets hairy with private enterprise, but I just don't understand that concept fully, and I haven't really probably thought about it as much as you have.

Yeah, public good, like a physical one would be something like a park or roads or whatever, we pay our taxes and it's good, but a digital public good, something like Twitter, something like Google that's free to use, YouTube, you know, you could learn so much on there, Khan Academy, stuff like that. Yeah, I think it's a really interesting thing right now. And Web3 has been focusing a lot on that as well.

I, whenever I think of public good, I think of the tragedy of the commons. Like if everyone owns it, no one does. And if no one owns it, no one's gonna take care of it. There's a reason why like public spaces get like trashed and what have you. So that immediately comes to mind. And I think the only thing that's a bulwark against that is like strong community, knowing and like talking to your neighbors. Two things that are very like much in decline in America, at least I would contend. We move around so much. COVID locked us in our houses for all intents and purposes. Plus Robert Putnam's book like Bowling Alone, like the decline in American community has been insane. And I think because of that, both physical and digital public goods and public places are like in peril. Not like their existence, but rather like what they're— what they're— what good they could do is in peril because no one's going to take care of it. It's like, I don't care, like I'm going to use it and like get the hell out. Um, I don't know, it's— I think it's, it's interesting when you have like a company. I mean, It begets the question, is it a utility? That's the logical endpoint. Water and electricity are utilities. Is the internet? I mean, that's the question then downstream of that is like, hey, is Google search, is access to this online Library of Alexandria a common good or a right for all people?

Yeah. I think it's a question of human rights at this point, which is cool where we're entering a point where human rights is the internet, potentially. It's arguable, but—

Yeah, and then crypto/Web3, ideally. But yeah, 100%. Another conversation, a rabbit hole entirely.

Yeah, we could jump into that in a bit. But speaking of community, I know you know Kevin Eschrich.

Yeah, I do.

The man, the myth, the legend with the cool pants.

The jeans man, yes, sir.

The jeans man. And so what are you doing at On Deck right now? And, you know, what are you guys building there?

Totally. So I'm part-time at On Deck right now and I work as an Explorer Advisor. So what I do is I work with founders at really early stages, like the idea phase or like the MVP phase, where they're just starting to kind of get momentum for their idea or they think they're you know, kind of lurching towards product market fit. And my role is really to help them think through like founder problem fit, the trajectory that they want to take. And then like once they've like kind of mapped out that trajectory, like, hey, let's like attack product market fit. So like making sure they're the right person for this problem. Ideally they've experienced this problem and it's personal for them because entrepreneurship is I mean, one day it's climbing Mount Everest, the next is chewing glass. It's like just very volatile emotionally. And then third, once they have that, how do they— and I think this is so, so, so important, and this is— anyone that talks to me hears me say this, so forgive me, but a lot of people are very good at like the problem and fixing the problem. They're very bad at articulating why they're doing that and why it matters. And I think like business, as I've said, it's spreadsheets and storytelling. That's what it comes down to. Spreadsheets like obviously make the trains go and whatnot. But the story, as I've written in like a past piece, the story separates Uber from Lyft. I mean, like fundamentally at the earliest stages, they were selling like cheap transportation, which is a commodity. But like simple things such as like the mustaches or sitting in the front of the car with Lyft, as opposed to the back of the car with Uber, make, make a real difference. And Morgan Housel, just exceptional writer, has an incredible like article about this called Best Story Wins. And I think one of the lines that I'll steal from it is like, how many products, services, ideas, you know, died or kind of limping along because someone couldn't express them clearly? Either to investors or to potential people that were going to join the company or to customers. I think about that all the time because per Justin Kahn, first-time founders focus on the product, second-time founders focus on the distribution. I mean, you know it, writing online is the son of a gun. Like, you can put so much effort into an essay, but then since the flippant like tweet or whatever that you just fire off, I mean, there's no proportion between the effort you put in and the goods. The only right you have is to your labor. Not the fruits of your labor. And that's, yeah. So I think a lot about that. The story is absolutely vital. So I try to, I work with a ton of founders, both in On Deck, like in a one-on-one consultancy basis, like helping them craft their story, mainly 3 stories. They're kind of 3 sides of the same triangle, but you're trying to sell to investors, you're trying to sell to potential customers, and last but certainly not least, you're trying to sell potential people on joining your company because you can't do it alone, um, at least most startups.

Dude, I did not understand the product versus distribution thing until a few months ago. My boy Austin Schlesinger, that I, I had him on my podcast, I asked him like, how do you get your threads to go viral every fucking time? And he told me basically like, you gotta like double down on the hours you're spending. And I, so I did. And then hustle for distribution. And I didn't know what he meant. And And that's like why I send my threads to like, you know, a bunch of people. Cause that the next day after he told me that goes viral, I was like, oh, I gotta send to, I gotta put in like double the amount of work and distribute. And I didn't really fully get how important that was. Like I thought, you know, the build it, you will come. Like if you have a good essay or you have whatever, people will come running and wanna read your shit. But this book I'm reading right now, nobody wants to read your shit. I just finished it.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

That book, Steven Pressfield, is probably the greatest thing on writing. I reread— there are two books that I reread without fail every year. That one, Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit by Steven Pressfield, and then Letters to a Young Poet by, um, Rilke. Both exceptional, like absolutely exceptional. Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit is such a good book, um, and I haven't read it yet, which is embarrassing, but The War of Art By him as well. I've heard it was exceptional too.

Yeah, yeah, I— it's pretty good. I just got, uh, I'm finishing up that right now. Um, it's, it's a little more like spiritual, kind of, uh, weird, but not, not weird, but you know, a little more metaphorical. Um, but dude, this— the, the Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit, such an important just mental model that I did not understand. Like, even somebody like you know, Paki or whoever has like a huge thing, like reading is hard, you know. Some people just don't want to put in that work, so you have to convince them. You got to sell them with every sentence, you know.

Yeah. And not only that, like, you're not competing with— I'm not competing with you. You're not competing with Paki. You're competing with TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, all the other crap that just hijacks their dopamine.

Yeah, that's why, that's why I write short sentences.

Like, I try to. Sometimes it works, other time it doesn't. But like, you're not you're not competing with— like, like, people can get instant gratification and have their neurotransmitters light up, um, you know, like, with like a stupid TikTok video or a tweet or whatever. But like, an article— again, this goes back to thinking is hard, um, which I, I, I think ironically I think about a lot. But like, and it's mimesis, right? Like, most people don't know what they want. They just want things other because they think it will get them some attribute like respect, love, um, freedom, security, or, um, they want things because other people want them. Yeah, yeah, firmly believe that. Um, I was talking with a friend just before this, um, and I mentioned the M-word, like memetic thought, and he's like, it's literally all I think about now. Like, literally, like, ever since reading René Girard Um, that's all I think about. And it's, it's, it is, it is a paradigm-shifting, worldview-changing way of seeing things. Yeah, because like, I mean, like, think about it, right? Like, if you buy a Lamborghini or BMW, like, I don't know, I'm not a skilled enough driver to like feel the difference between those two cars. Probably it's like different speed and stuff, but I'm not going to be going 170 miles an hour anyway. Um, But why? I mean, you know, if they're fundamentally the same thing, well, like, I am more important than you, more interesting, more cool than you because I have a Lambo versus like a, I don't know, a BMW. It's really— and, and then once it's— once you see it, you see it everywhere. It's kind of maddening because, oh, I know why she's doing that, it's because of X, Y, and Z. Yeah, yeah.

That— I'm also writing an essay right now, Choosing Your Role Models, uh, off the internet. And when I was younger I chose terrible role models off the internet. I chose like Kanye and rappers and stuff like that because I thought that was the epitome of cool. And then as I got older, more into tech and that kind of world, you know, I started choosing technologists, writers, people like that. I remember reading in the Naval quote where he said like growing up his heroes were scientists. I was like, you're such a nerd, but that's amazing. Like why was I not like that as a kid? I probably, oh my God, you know, and it's choosing the role models that you want to copy. Is so important. Uh, something that I figured out this year and something that's helped me so much, you know, 100%.

It's, I mean, in kayaking, and I'm, I don't pretend to be a kayaker, but I've done it like once or twice. There's this whole concept of look positive, right? Like look at the chute you're trying to hit. Don't look at the rocks you're trying to avoid because you, if you're looking at them, you'll tend towards going in that direction. Um, so I like that with regards to life. Um, it's behavioral contagion, it's having guardrails, it's having a very clear path that you want to follow. Um, that's how I think through these things. Um, and again, life is— life is really simple, but it's not easy. I mean, losing weight, move more and eat less, right? Like, it's literally what it comes down to, but it's not easy because I want my bacon, egg, and cheese. Like, I want my, like, hamburger and stuff. Um, I know, and we tend to do a lot of things— I'm guilty of this as, as anything— like, to complicate it, um, for ourselves. We tend to do a lot, a lot to do that when fundamentally, uh, all we need, I think, is like family, friends, and faith.

That's it. Yeah, big facts. I've definitely been doubling down on that. Excited to spend the next 5 days— I'm going down the the lake, uh, for July 4th with the family and just like gonna chill, gonna do a lot of writing obviously, but, but important stuff. Um, what are you, what are you reading right now? Anything, anything good?

This book, um, The Mandibles. It's a novel, um, by this, um, this person Lionel Shriver. It's called The Mandibles: A Family, 2029 to 2047. And it's like a financial 1984. This book was written— it's so good. I'm only halfway through, but it's exceptional. It was written in 2016, 2017, and my God, it was prescient. Um, because basically it's about this really wealthy family, um, this like kind of patriarch and then a bunch of sons and daughters and stuff. And they're all— they all do their own things, have their own lives, kind of get by, but they always rest upon security, like the mental security, knowing that, hey, like if something goes wrong, I have this huge security blanket because, uh, the guy, grand man, uh, Grandpa Mandible, uh, has this huge fortune. But in a world of funny money, in a world of excessive printing, in a world of quantitative easing, in a world where, you know, like the dollar— like money's a story, right? Money's the greatest story ever told. It means nothing. Once you see that, that also goes into crypto, why crypto I think is a sea change or will be a sea change. Basically, the thesis or the gist of the story is the United States defaults on all its debts, then China, Russia, and some other actors try to create a new reserve currency that's backed by hard goods like commodities like oil and copper and cobalt and stuff like that, and the US rejects that, um, and just starts hoarding gold. And it's basically the degradation of society when the financial system, uh, which is very precarious at the moment, just collapses. It is really, really, really good. And then again, I'm not, not through it yet, but basically this young precocious kid, it's his story of how he like, amidst this crazy environment, um, tries to like claw back at his family's fortune and like get a way out. I highly recommend it. The subtext on the front, which is really sweet, is "In God We Trusted." If you think about that line, obviously, the dollar, "In God We Trust," but you can't trust the dollar. You really can't trust the dollar because it's symbolic, and it's backed up by oil that we increasingly don't have. And a lot of other things. So I highly recommend it. And then all like the best books, I think I've sent this page to you a couple of times. I send it to everyone, but like I have a bookshelf on my site, tomwhitenoise.com/bookshelf. And it's like the top 2% of books that I've read throughout my life. So I'm a huge nerd, big reader, insatiably curious.

Facts, facts, same here. Um, where's your head at about crypto, NFTs? I know you're collecting, uh, what are you— where's your head at right now?

Um, I, I think when in doubt, zoom out. Um, I wrote this like recent thing. My— the game that I'm playing, candidly, Jason, is I am investing for the long term. I'm not trying to flip. I'm trying to invest in those projects, those protocols, those people, those tokens that I think will persist in like 5 or 10 years. I'll make a ton of mistakes, everyone does. I mean, if I have a 50% hit rate, I'll be lucky, but I think this is necessary, this is good because like Sean Perry wrote this and I really liked it, which is like when bad weather arrives, and this has obviously been tough sledding as of late, the, the tourists leave and the locals stay. I mean, someone also— I think my friend Nick De Wilde wrote in 2018, I, uh, he's like, I made the mistake of leaving crypto. Hey, I thought it was over, this is fun while it lasted. But like, had you kept your head down and kept building, imagine where you'd be. I mean, so I, I fundamentally believe it's a technological sea change because of the the importance of decentralization and disintermediation. Those are the two big things for me.

100%. Yeah, it's, it's pretty cool to be here now. I, I had crypto in 2017, didn't get too involved with the ecosystem. Yeah. And, uh, you know, kind of wish I did, but I haven't— having a fun time now. And, you know, just keep on building, um, keep on building for the future. It's, it's exciting. Um, it's— I, I feel like The only people having fun in crypto right now are the people actually in it and building and buying. Like, I know my stepdad's all pissed off because he owns crypto and all he cares about is up or down. Yeah, you know, he cares about the mission, but the people having fun, like, I mean, NFT NYC was a blast. Like, we're all having a good time.

So it was, it was indeed. I was there and, um, it's pandemonium, but the good kind.

Yeah, 100%. Dude, this has been a great combo. I am, uh, Heading down to Virginia today, so I'm gonna try to get on the road.

Amazing, absolutely awesome. I hope this was good and enjoyable. Um, and, um, yeah, let me know when it's published, where it's published, and I'll probably link to it in like my newsletter and then like Twitter and LinkedIn, everything like that.

100%, bro. Let's talk soon.

Totally, man. Have a great one.

You too. Bye.