The other day, I was wondering: hey, I am alienated by Bay Area culture. But that’s odd because it’s all so different. Rationalists, EAs, hippies, poly sex nerds, AI accelerationists and doomers, California spirituality. Some opposed to each other, all giving me the same sensation: I find many of the people adorable, but dislike the general spirit wafting off the groups. Then Clara Collier made it all shockingly clear to me when she said something like: “Oh what unites them is they’re all low-irony and high-sincerity.”

This is a better distillation than I could’ve come up with. It really clarifies the tradeoffs of West coast culture, especially the Bay. Irony protects you against brain worms but it can also blind you to the possibility of new things that genuinely matter. Many of the stupid things on the West coast would never get started in NYC, but also some of the great things.

I am high-irony and high-sincerity, which makes me a weird East/West coast hybrid. My natural friend group is people who meditate in New York and Toronto.