The Slightly Evil Art of Gigs

Healthy dose of reality

Author

Jason Levin
December 04, 2022

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This week, I had writer Venkatesh Rao on my podcast Cyber Patterns. Rao is an essayist, consultant, and happens to have a PhD in aerospace engineering. He recently released The Art of Gig, an excellent set of essays about the gig economy.

Since reading Be Slightly Evil almost two years ago, I've been a diehard fan of Venkatesh Rao. I'm a paid subscriber to his blog and have read most of his books.

So when he said he was looking to go on podcasts to promote his new book, I jumped at the opportunity. Because I've read so much of his work, I had tons of questions and research ready to roll.

In today's essay, we're gonna look at some of Rao's quotes that will help you win the great online game.

Rao's book Be Slightly Evil: A Playbook for Sociopaths sounds evil. It's not.

The title is 99% clickbait. Most of the book is just witty essays about managing power dynamics in the office. There's 10 pages dedicated to the power dynamics of opening the door for someone. I was laughing my ass off.

The whole idea of "being slightly evil" is that most people claim to be good — especially now in the days of virtue signaling and the current thing. What Rao noticed and what the world is opening up to is that most people who base their identities around being "good" are actually the biggest psychopaths of them all: politicians, priests, etc.

So instead of claiming to be good (which high-intelligence people don't really believe anymore) why not just say you're a little bit evil like the rest of us? I took Rao's quote from above to heart and it's the reason why I'm fine cursing and writing about strategies that many would call Machiavellian. Every creator is using these strategies especially the ones who claim they are above them.

Creators criticize engagement farming while engagement farming themselves. They call "advertisements" in their newsletters "partnerships" because it sounds better. They pretend to be though leaders while have ghostwriters come up with their thoughts. They are wolves in sheep's clothing. It's a fine strategy and I'm friends with some wolves in sheep's clothing, but it's just not the strategy for me.

Listening to Rao's advice, I chose to go the path of the obvious wolf. I curse, I compare startups to war, and I show people how to get access to the rich, powerful, and Twitter-famous. Fortunately, I'm not a lone wolf. There's many obvious wolves out there. Like Ryan Holiday showed readers of Trust Me I'm Lying how to take advantage of the bullshit PR biz, I hope this newsletter helps shows you how to hack the creator economy.

Speaking of bullshit....

The great online game is a game plain and simple.

We're all competing for attention. We're all hooked on dopamine. Twitter has 100% impacted my brain. But instead of choosing to complain, I choose to embrace it.

I choose to monetize my dopamine addiction, make jokes about social media, and hang out with internet friends. In the pursuit of winning the great online game, the ability to see reality for reality is a very valuable skill.

Joshua Steinman was the Senior Director for for Cyber Policy at the White House. In this thread, he breaks down how big companies and founders like Sam Bankman-Fried buy influence in governments. Steinman has a bullshit detector like no other.

When your office is Twitter, you're surrounded by an absurd amount of bullshit. There's people selling courses about how to sell courses. There's Twitter celebs who ghost you, hit you up when they need something, and then ghost you again. And then there's just Twitter friends who say they'll help you out but never do.

A few more examples of reality spotters I think you will enjoy:

When the internet is your office, building trust is crucial.

Sometimes it's as simple as DMs back and forth for a few days. Other times, it takes months of phone calls and building relationships.

Rao highlights a few ways that have been extremely helpful for him:

Readership

Tbh, I'm not sure what Rao means by "mediated readership" v. "direct readership" so I'm just going to count both of those as "readership".

I have clients who have been fans of my work for 6+ months. They know that every week, I show up and press publish. Every essay may not be a viral banger, but every week, I'm here putting in work. I show up.

At the end of the day, that's what good clients want. They're realistic. They know not all of our work together will go viral or get them 10,000 followers. But, they do want someone they can trust and who will be there every week.

Referrals

I knew life was getting good when I started getting DMs saying "hey X referred me".

Referrals are powerful. Hell, Silicon Valley runs on referrals. Every time someone introduces someone to me, they're risking their reputation if I fuck up.

So needless to say, I take referrals very seriously and so should you. Don't just refer anybody to anybody. Be selective. Don't risk you reputation for a dumbass friend.

If I'm willing to refer you to a person or company, that's an honor. So act like it.

Subcontracting

Working as a free agent is eye-opening.

When you're working with 5-7 companies at any time, you're going to meet cool people. It's like the cool shit law I talk about.

So not only are you meeting more cool people (which is one of the best parts of life), you're going to build lasting relationships that will compound over time. If that was the only reason to become a free agent (which it's not), that's a damn good reason by itself.

On that note, I think I need to write an essay about the free agent lifestyle. Expect that coming soon!