can someone explain varn to me? what’s his deal? Every time I try to figure it out my eyes glaze over and I fall into a deep slumber
IIRC I tried to watch one of his “nailing it down” videos and it felt like, well, the opposite of that, very conceptual to the point of being meaningless, and it felt like it was largely due to his presentation, not the material itself
I listen to him as background noise while working sometimes. Sometimes there are interesting tidbits, but God damn can it be meandering and unfocused.
I wish he cited better in the notes, because I don’t want to go searching through three hours of audio to find the one book he mumbled out
Overall, he seems like a guy who would be more interesting to talk to then listen to lol
Yeah this kinda mirrors my experience but I stopped listening to him quickly because I have hangups about doing the “background noise” thing, except with more entertainment-focused content that I don’t feel like I have to take at all seriously. I usually really want to get something out of the things I listen to, and Varn’s output has been… very low density on that front, to the point of boredom? Idk. Maybe I’m too judgemental but I don’t want to spend oodles of time listening to “just some guy who reads a lot” talk about stuff, I want them to be able to condense it, synthesize it in novel ways, or at least just regurgitate the content in another form without losing comprehensibility and meaning (so that I can choose to listen rather than read for example, when the occasion calls for it)
Idk exactly what his deal is, but I know he would disagree with many of the hivemijd Hexbear takes, though often in a reasoned and well-read way. At the same time I find his presentation to often be opaque, especially when he’s solo.
Yeah, he clearly reads a lot but he really doesn’t seem to put a lot of thought into making himself comprehensible. He would benefit from like, doing some scripting and editing to be more concise rather than putting out hours a day of content (I added up a random month from this spring, 26 hours of youtube video uploaded in 1 month.)
I found the videos that I tried to listen to previously, it was the Cybernetics/Viable Systems Model one. Seemingly interesting content (to me at least) but he has like, the incomprehensibility of a dense philosophy book, without the richness of content and specificity, and ability to read and re-read until it makes sense.
I’m going to try the Byung Chul Han episode because I’ve actually read that book.
The Byung Chul Han episode was pretty dull actually. He picked a random, very short chapter from the book, nitpicked his way through it, and then talked about it in a way that offered few real insights besides what one would already get from the book (and idk how clear those would have been if I didn’t have a copy handy that I’d already read to follow along with). His conclusions were fine I guess (basically just that he agrees with the chapter of the book but wishes it elaborated in certain spots and was structured differently). The most interesting thing I got from the video was actually his off hand meta comment on being wary of the “ecstasy in theory”, making sure that what you read doesn’t just feel profound, but actually corresponds with reality,
His interview with Steve Grumbine on the Macro & Cheese podcast is excellent. I think his own podcast is unfocused and meandering as other people have said but I do think he understands theory pretty well. I think he would do a lot better with a different format i.e. a podcast with 1 or 2 other hosts he has good chemistry with.
I have no idea what it is but someone here compared it to Red Scare and that’s all I needed to know to never click on it.
Uhhhhh aren’t they basically like catholic conservatives now or some shit? He isn’t that, at least
He seems like “just some guy” who reads a lot of theory, and pumps out many hours of content a month, but is not very good at presenting the ideas therein
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