Announcement!

First, a quick announcement:

Remember Means of Creation, my talk show about the passion economy with Li Jin?

Well, the show is all grown up, and moved into a place of its own! That’s right, Divinations is now an empty nester 😆

If you want to follow along with our exploration of de-commodified labor platforms, what New Yorker writer Adam Davidson called “the biggest shift in the economy since the industrial revolution,” then you’ll need to head over to your account page and check the box next to “Means of Creation.”

Ok! With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, let’s do this one last time!

This week on Means of Creation… 🥁

Visakan Veerasamy!!!

<Audience: Cheers! Hooray!>

You know how sci-fi movies are always shot in Singapore because it feels like the future there? Well, this week’s guest on Means of Creation hails from Singapore, and I suspect it’s no coincidence that his writing and career feel like the future, too.

Visakan Veerasamy (a.k.a. “Visa”) has become one of my intellectual heroes over the past few years. He uses Twitter as a sort of second brain, organizing his ideas in an ever-expanding corpus of interlinked threads. He’s written several books that he sells directly to his fans on Gumroad, and, this year, he’s focusing on growing his YouTube channel.

So, we’re thrilled to talk to Visa about life as a creator in 2020, and get his perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of various platforms.

But, also, the substance of Visa’s thinking is incredibly useful to creators in the passion economy and anyone who wants to be a better person on the internet. He’s created a tripartite framework of values that I love, which he calls “friendly ambitious nerds”

Here’s a roadmap for our conversation with Visa:

• His journey to being a creator
• How he conceptualized his target audience — the “friendly ambitious nerd”
• What software tools he uses
• How he monetizes, and why

• His take on:

  • Substack
  • Patreon
  • Gumroad
  • Youtube
  • Ebooks vs Courses

Join us live on Zoom

We’re talking to Visa this Friday, September 4th, at 9:15am pacific, 12:15pm eastern! Join us, and bring your questions :)