Hey ,

2020 has been a difficult time for many of us and I hope you're doing well. It's been a long time since my newsletter because I've been struggling to balance law school with creating content. A large part of it stemmed from being overly ambitious - I always wanted to have written something each time I sent out an email. That was always difficult, which led me to put off sending my newsletter. Moving forward, I intend to send this out newsletter every fortnight, so expect to see me in your inbox twice a month.

The Principles of Persuasion Used by Influencers

The Myth and Magic of Influencers: If you think that there are too many influencers today, you might want to take a deep breath. 1 out of 3 kids from the ages of 8-12 want to become a YouTuber or vlogger when they grow up, and there are plenty of professionals who are micro influencers even as they spend the majority of their time on their careers. There has never been a greater premium placed on the ability to persuade, so check this out if you want to figure out the main principles that influencers rely on.

Other Cool Ideas

Founding Stories are Myths: If you want to start a company, don't listen to what successful founders say they should do. My friend Trevor McKendrick wrote a great story on how the public stories of founders starting their companies isn't accurate, and what you should do instead. Check out his newsletter as well - there's a lot of great stuff in it.

The Importance of Being Earnest: Earnestness isn't a trait that we commonly think should be cultivated, but Paul Graham argues in this essay that it's what leads to difficult problems being solved.

Mimetic Violence: A lot has been said about Twitter and Facebooks' recent ban of Donald Trump from their platform. Luke Burgis has another point of view to all this - there's more psychology than politics here. He analyses this event through the lens of Rene Girard's theory of mimetic desire, and uses this as a springboard to discuss how each of us might respond to what we commonly deem affronts or aggression in everyday life.

An Idea I'm Playing With

Check out the tweet here and follow me for more of such (half-baked) thoughts.

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As usual, let me know what you think.

Cheers,

Louis