How to be a person on the Internet, with Visakan Veerasamy

Or, why friendly ambitious nerds will change the world

Li Jin

Nathan Baschez

Sep 2, 2020 · 1 min readUpdated Feb 8, 2026

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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”