The Learny Workins Show

by Derek Brewington

Nature

Again?

I'm not going to say his name. 20250220_2028

Nope. Not gonna do it. We live in an attention economy. We don't need to pay attention to the man behind the curtain. He's an emperor with no clothes. A powerful one, but his nudity will soon become self-evident.

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Profile Picture

It's me!

I know I look like I'm straight outta Illinois, but it turns out I'm from Missouri. A lot of people from Missouri look like me.

I don't really look like this. It's my LinkedIn profile picture. To the extent that anyone's LinkedIn profile picture is their authentic self, then I guess it's me. To paraphrase Hans-Georg Moeller, it's an image of my profilitic self. Online, profilicity is what defines my "self".

On the one hand, Friedrich Nietzsche questioned notions of causality and originality, arguing the "self" is a fiction emerging from social interpretations rather than authentic agency. Derrida dismantled the "metaphysics of presence," showing signs derive meaning from relational differences rather than fixed origins. Baudrillard analyzed hyperreality, where signs circulate independently of original referents — mirroring how profiles operate through social validation rather than authentic selfhood.

I recognize the contrast between first-order observation (authenticity) vs second-order observation (profilicity). Read Moeller's full paper "Beyond Originality: The Birth of Profilicity from the Spirit of Postmodernity" here