people aren't archetypes

the box is a copout 🪤

we tend to reach for the box before we reach for the person.

a few signals come in upon first impression. we characterize the vibe, the type, the red flag we read about somewhere, and then file them away and call it understanding. you can’t get any true understanding at a first glance.

somewhere along the way, every introduction has become a swipe. a face, a guess, a verdict .. and then accept, reject, next. but a wrinkled collar is not a person. a single hobby is not a person. a coffee order isn’t a person either. human connection isn’t a gamified dating app swip.

everyone is walking around with more substance and more quiet magic than you could ever read off the surface of them.

and we’ve theorized the wonder right out of it. the tiktok talking heads and their ridiculous “rules” (the three-month theory, the texting laws, whatever the feed is selling this week). they hand you social certainty so you never have to sit in the not-knowing. but this not-knowing was the whole gift. judgment borrowed from strangers online is just a softer way of refusing to find out for yourself. overarchetyping is a copout.

the fruit of a connection is never in the first impression. it’s in growing together, the slow discovery of where two people fit, and the small frictions worn smooth by conversation and time. that’s the point is to get it wrong and to learn.

i believe in casting a wide net of connection, and leaving the verdict for later. the people worth knowing almost never fit the box you’d have folded them into on day one.

today’s drops 🔎

• happy hour event in san francisco next tuesday

• software engineering internship @ ramp

• $100k in prizes for this ai hackathon in sf this friday