In Mensa events, one annoying character (generally ok person but annoying with an emphasis on the G) sometimes comes up to me and starts talking about my ‘influencer’ career and how I’m ‘influencing’ people in a presumptuous fashion, acting as if suddenly he is the be all and end all of ‘influence’. Well, he is not and he is lovably mediocre as far as I know so I’m not too concerned about that, but I think it’s certainly an interesting concept to explore. The concept of an ‘influencer’ is so interesting. In purely technical terms, an influencer influences, and the derivational morphology is inescapable; to be an influencer, you must surely influence. But the question naturally arises: What kind of influence do we mean here? After all, there are so many kinds, which the world almost invariably collapses into a few different and well defined stereotypes. The comedic genius who specializes in fun, short, but stupid skits? The dancing girl thirst trap using every single part of her body to try to get you to click the ‘follow’ button and oh by the way buy some lipstick with a 10% discount code and 15% commission? The travel blogger cum exercise guru here to teach you the vastness of Borobudur on a diet of tempeh and budu budu? There are so many kinds out there, all valid and all cool in their own way – the internet is a wonderful place with lots of incredible and talented people, after all, here to persuade you and to make their fortunes in ways inconceivable at the dawn of humanity and even now to members of an older generation who cannot deal with that idea in any way except to infantilize or look down upon it. To be fair, it is not entirely the older generation’s fault that they think that way, because many such […]

Many people in this world consider themselves what we call ‘nice guys’. I do not. I may have tried to convey myself as a nice guy at an earlier point, to act as if I happen to be a nice guy, to think about ‘what other people think’ to the point of neurosis… But I would not really consider myself a nice guy. What this DOESN’T mean is that I go around attacking people needlessly or getting into fights I don’t need to get into, fight against my actual interests – rage against the machine like a two bit two hundred kilogram behemoth of a manchild on a warpath to destroy the known and seen universe. But what this DOES mean, is that I will express what I think without fear, without favor, without the sense that “OOPS SOMEONE’S OUT TO GET ME” because if I see a dude who needs to get scolded, I am going to scold that dude, think about how to more efficiently scold the dude, and even think about how I’m going to use people to further my own goals. If that sounds bad, it probably is – but that’s just another aspect of me – I have certain goals in this universe that can only be attained through changing the ways that people think, believe, and ideate in this world on small and large scales… Which means I cannot ever avoid conflict. …But that’s just as well though? Conflict is how stories move forward. Conflict is how main characters turn from unknown troglodytes in the gonadic expression of a whelp into world changers, the hero in the demon king story. If a nice guy ceases to be a nice guy the moment he goes out there and starts fighting with people, then it is clear: I am most certainly not one of those ‘nice guys’. […]

Today, I want to talk about articulation. It’s a word that’s used a lot in the English language in many different contexts, all of which are dear to me. In music, it’s used to describe the way someone plays an instrument. On the cello, it is how the bow glides, pressure is applied, and weight is distributed in accordance with the needs of the music. In a pure linguistic and sound sense, it is how air interacts with the tongue, mouth, and vocal cords to produce sound. In the parlance of the English language, it is how one communicates one’s ideas, structures them, and brings them out from the depths of thought into the seen world, where they will influence others. I think articulation is a deeply incredible skill. Throughout history, the greatest articulators have never been able to articulate. The greatest articulators have been the most successful political leaders, the most influential statesmen, the finest executives of their era—merely by playing on the power of phrases that their minds constructed, in turn pulling out the feelings of entire generations, summoning them to the causes of the speakers in every instance. And it is no wonder that speech and language are rich and wonderful, yet they are only minute and poor representations of our deep inner thoughts. Used in the wrong way and in an unfocused manner, words will only inspire vagueness, boredom, and the mere hints of attention before the listener falls asleep. Summoned rightly, though, and they, in turn, will inspire from the still depths the uproarious fountain of joy, sadness, hatred, and love in every which direction. As the heart is activated and the mind primed for more, you say that these are forces that seem outside the scope of an English class. They are not things to be concerned with or trifled with. How can mere words, […]

To almost anyone who knows anything about me, it might seem strange that I’m taking such an interest in politics recently – I transitioned so suddenly from Pathways To Excellence to suddenly talking about so many different controversial topics and ideas that somehow your feed is now filled with a range of YouTube videos that hopefully are a little bit legible. I get it – you feel like I’ve changed as a person. You know what? I probably have – but maybe not in the way that you might have expected. I think I was always interested in politics, for one thing, and that somehow meeting the smartest people of my generation and of the next generation was the way that I managed to allay my discomfort with Malaysia – a systematically broken, thoroughly divided society when you look at it beyond the enclaves and the confines of everyday reality; it was somehow easier to fill up the hole in my heart whenever I thought about this place and how I had my lot connected to it with the feeling that somehow, even if the place were to be a dumpster fire, at least we had all of these talented people. But soon, this bandaid, had to be taken off, as all bandaids eventually have to be – and so it was, as I faced reality, with a single and enduring rip. At some point, I realized that talent on an individual level is not the solution to this country’s problems, and moreover that it is not necessary for me to solve them – but only to play to my internal conscience. It was I think at that point I saw Malaysia for what it really was, and what I would create from then on out.