Secrets of Reality Distortion Fields With Lulu Cheng Meservey

hey guys today we have a real treat because my friend Lully Chang misseri is here to talk to us about how do we

actually create a reality Distortion field and she's probably the best person I know who's able to help people tell their story to advocate for themselves

and for their startups so Lulu thanks for joining thanks for having me where should we start uh I mean reality Distortion fields are rare but sort of necessary

[Music] lators but being able to sort of Tell Your Own Story actually requires like a different mindset doesn't it it does okay well I would say two things one is

sometimes the better of an engineer product person or uh founder you are sometimes the success can actually mask the counterfactual of how much better things could be even beyond that if you

were effectively able to Rally a movement behind what you're doing so number one is just it's worth doing even if things are going really well they could always be going better number two is it's possible so number one it's

worth doing number two it's possible to do and I don't mean reality Distortion as a nefarious thing where you're trying to fool people but everybody's walking around with their interpretation of the

world refracted through the prism of their beliefs and you have a chance to actually have agency over that on a big scale I've been thinking about this as a

group of people is like a complex adaptive system and if you as a founder or anybody who's trying

to influence a group of people can identify what you're trying to achieve then you can extract from that who are the people that you need to reach and what do they need to do and then what do they need to believe in order to do that

now you have a set of goals when you look at that set of goals take a look at that audience you can map out who are the agents in the nodes like who are the real influencers in that audience you you can map out their decision-making heris sixs which is their motivations

their hopes their fears what do they care about what do they believe and then you can map out the influence of where are they getting their information and who are they listening to and once you have a view of that system and you have

a view of the state that you want to impose on that system you can actually really hyper Target the points where to inject your message so that it'll be well received I have a concrete example

of this yes so there's a YC company called Auto GPT uh I think the company is called actually reworked M but I think they have some crazy like tens of thousands of stars on GitHub it's

actually uh an open source project for um an auto GPT so if you had sort of you know you could tell an agent to do something and it'll figure out all the

next steps to do uh and then sort of try to do those things there's sort of this new idea in how you might interact with an llm and they had this open source project but you know how do you Market

something like that they actually created a 30 to 60c animated gift of like the demo of you know you say this and then look it fans out and figures

out how to do all these other things and they figured out that on uh Twitter or X there were dozens of sort of AI influencers who are sort of just

desperate for Content all the time so they just used their they didn't use their company account they used their personal account and they even they sort of even used a domainer technique I feel like they said almost that they were

researchers or like just working on a project it wasn't a startup it wasn't a company they weren't trying to make money they're not chilling yeah exactly they're just literally like hey we built this thing here's this 302nd gift they

practically wrote the tweet for customized for each Ai influencer and then it went super viral they basically sent it to I don't know half a dozen different people and then you know

overnight everyone in the community who cared about large language models were on the site using the open source even using their hosted platform I think one of the big insights there is how do you inject something into that system I

think the default is hey I've got this company I'm trying to get it off the ground would you mind retweeting or would you mind sh yeah that's a very low effort way to do it it is it's also a low output way to do it uh I think easy

to Archive easy to say like oh I get I got these a thousand times yes and also doing favors that favors are not a renewable resource you'll use that and then the chit will be gone the renewable resource is you're interested

in this and I'm interested in this why don't you give me some feedback on my project would love to get your thoughts and then they take ownership of that and then they put it into the system through their like influence networks um in

their own voice advocating from it you know from a place of sincerity as opposed to like doing a favor for a friend that's sort of the how and then I think one of the things that's harder

about it is like what should you even say most people I think are trying to blend in yeah and then the wild thing about this to truly have a reality Distortion field you're trying to stand

out you are so I think the right way to think about this is you have two sets of goals and they feel contradictory one goal is you want to be on offense and you're proactive and you're interesting

and you're edgy in a way that's not just like noise and pum that's adding to the static around us um on the other hand

you're not trying to pick fights and get into culture wars and distract from the actual substance and so how do you reconcile this to I think a good way to

think about it is uh take the set of things that you believe like your deeply held beliefs and then there's things that are relevant to the company to the project and then there's things that

your target audience will support and like and agree with there's going to be plenty of things that you might believe or the company might do that they don't necessarily support but when you overlay all of those three at the center of that

vend diagram is the place where you should just go hard like set guard rails so that you don't kind of spin around wasted motion and pick fights for no

reason but then within that overlap just go hard be spicy and your guardrail will also be the fact that since you've identified what your target audience

will support anybody that you do piss off and you'll you'll piss people off along the way but the people you do piss off are likely to be people you don't

actually need or care about and so it's almost like a very cheap if not Costless way to be opinionated and to make an

important point I think that's probably physically in your body even like really hard to get over like do you ever think about like in high school like you know

you're in front of uh everyone in your class and you sort of say the wrong thing or you know you might get made fun of or people might not like you because of the thing you said I I always get

like put back into that moment so much High School trauma basically embedded in that is that it might upset people actually it might offend them I guess the most

extreme version of this I saw at YC was soilent where I remember they came in you know it was basically insure for adults like insure for Tech Bros I guess

I loved it by the way but like they came in and said look we're you know we want to Pivot the company to this what do you think and I was like do not call it soilent but I was 110% wrong like

basically that was brilliant they got hundreds of millions of dollars of free advertising by by being openly sort of soilent soilent green as people the

Charlton H you know movie it's literally hundreds of millions of dollars of free marketing off of like a cannibalism joke did they never get sued by the movie people I don't think so I mean it's just

a name so and I guess the most visceral version of what you just said was um I remember like Foodies and vegans and sort of anyone who was really into food

they heard about it and were so offended they told everyone in their lives about it and they would sort of just go spread virally but then one in 10 times someone

would be like oh that exists now I'm going to buy it which I mean that's the craziest example of it I I could think of super extra bonus points are if you

can get the people who are mad at you to strice and affect you and then use them as a foil to go and gather a bunch of the people who would be supporting you

that is like the ultimate goal but along the way one thing that is a blocker for Founders is this fear that people will get mad at them and that

it'll be controversial as long as it's the right people great what you don't want to do is make the wrong people mad and like actually alienate your real audience so you and I have talked about

the world is tribal and you have to pick a tribe you don't have to pick like a red or blue tribe people immediately think I'm going to have to pick a tribe where it's like divided down the middle and I'm going to alienate half of my

audience yeah no pick a tribe that's the bad version of it that's the bad version of it you can draw what the tribe is so why don't you just pick a tribe where

your audience is fully in your tribe they can be left right green blue red whatever as long as they're in this thing that you've um drawn the circle

around and then uh go alienate somebody else who doesn't matter to you okay let's say you're starting a soda company get your target soda drinkers behind you and then you can alienate the

not soda drinkers basically for free and the more you do that counterintuitively the more the soda drinkers will want to be part of your Camp I guess the other uh trick that I feel like I use quite a

bit is quite a lot of the internet now is not just purely on Twitter or the social LinkedIn or wherever uh a lot of the real internet is now in group chats

and group chats yeah I guess having that kind of tribe is actually really important because you almost can like trial balloon these things in like a low stress environment yeah and people will

actually just tell you what they really think totally it's sort of like how standup comedians will do their bits in front of their family and sort of like trial it at like dive bars before going

on Netflix so number one good for trial number two these group chats tend to be kind of self- radicalizing I don't say that in a bad way but just people in

there have something in common and then they'll discuss the topics and feel stronger about the topics in the process of discussing them and so when you're you choose the right group chats you can

sort of incept ideas into the group chats not only will you get feedback but also people will sometimes hype themselves around it and then they'll go share again without you having to ask

for a favor yeah I guess that's actually something really cool about the internet is going back to what you said initially right go out and identify the set of

people around M you know a particular idea a particular feeling this has happened like so many different times now for me because I was addicted to

Twitter yeah common malady yeah it's crazy we got to do a wathon one of these days is the hidden illness it really is an illness but on the other hand it's sort of these special groups of people

who believe X where nobody else believes it they're just sort of present to hand like the algorithm will actually serve you up if you just start favoriting the tweets or retweeting them like suddenly

the algorithm itself provides all the other people who are smart have thought about it have fought for it have have debated over it and I feel like the first version of this probably was you

know the startup world and then the second version of this that was sort of dramatic was actually San Francisco politics for me literally I ended up meeting all the people who were very

active in San Francisco politics through that as did I through you because every time I would interact with your stuff I would get to see them it's sort of like biologies Network State meets the

Sorting Hat oh that's for sure right and it like sorts these tribes for you there there's multiple edges to that but I think a big big takeaway here is you

need a number one you need a tribe number two you don't have to choose a pre-existing tribe you can actually

custom mix your tribe and then make it that so there's a lot more agency there than people think yeah I guess the most recent one is which was fascinating I mean I hadn't

even heard of this maybe like 12 months ago or something and now you have the flag I have the sh should have worn the shirt you are the flag ey have the shirt yes I guess where do you think it's going to go I mean it's something that I

think the world really needs it was almost like I really was attracted to it because it was the Matched pair to effective altruism and it actually there was like a little bit of a perfect storm

I mean when you have Sam bankman freed who is willing to do almost anything to get money to you know it's sort of this

basically ends justify the means but the ends are basically like virtue signaling MH I feel like eak was just a bunch of Builders being sort of sick of the

institutional capture of that ideology and that's sort of the ongoing War at some level yeah I think the perfect storm is that the backlash against EA

layered on top of the deep hunger for for just unapologetically being pro technology at a time when a lot of the country is just so knee-jerk

anti-technology like people hate tech people when Silicon Valley Bank went down in in a lot of ways that was and could have been more of a human tragedy it was a sad story it was people who did

their best they made mistakes but people across the country delighted in that delighted and the and the thought that maybe it would have waterfall Cascade effects where it would like ruin other

startups gave them evenly they were hoping for that so that really was an Awakening moment at least that I observed where it just showed how deep

the hatred was for Tech and so I think the desire to just stand up for Tech and be Protek the desire for forward momentum and progress and then the antagonism towards EA created a perfect

storm and I think eak came in and f that also eak was like highly mimetic very unique and memorable had the right amount of Mystique a lot of the press that it got was press articles

explaining what eak is and so that all made it more memetic it fits into a Twitter handle I think you still have it in yours a lot of people taking it out of the handle I think I I see I see that

losing steam which I'm not saying is a good thing I I like when they are movement supporting Tech but I just observing that it's losing steam but it

was like very mimetic very short very catchy at exact perfect time yeah well things are up things are down I had eth in my handle for a while too so you didn't have the laser eyes yeah oh no I

had blue laser eyes at some point what's the blue laser eyes I think it's the ethereum uh tribe so which I still you know still hodling but yeah I'm hodling too I just I didn't do the I didn't do

the laser eyes but you're right there's like these things and they all what they have in common is that they all represent Protech unapologetically supporting this community and I'll be curious to see what the next one is cuz

I do think that there is going to be a major next one in 24 I don't think eak will dominate 24 but I think there'll be another thing cuz all of those other factors are still there just EA is no

longer a really Salient foil yeah well I mean I've met a lot of EA people and they are incredibly well-meaning though yeah SPF is not not exactly that

guy representative yeah yeah but there are definitely other folks who PhD very well-meaning want to save the shrimp and then the the tricky thing for me is like

hey could we just get some outcomes that actually help people that would be great that's all I care about totally I assume good intent and I've also met EA people who are like lovely people who want to

help and this is their way of trying to help I think it got mixed in with other things that might not be so good including the S bankman freed stuff but like the desire to want to make a

difference and to be effective about it yeah I guess what's funny about it is uh this is actually a good example of counter positioning basically it's always synthesis and counter synthesis

and as a startup founder so much of it is actually being able to spot these waves and Trends and I mean the amazing thing is it's just like offered up to you on a platter on the Internet it's

like you don't have to be a part of some special Club it's like you got an internet connection go surf the meme waves man like you know there's a lot of crazy stuff out there yeah that's true

protect yourself um mentally but yes you can serve the mean ways also another takeaway like as we're talking another big takeaway to put in bold is you you

do need a foil you need an antagonist that is what creates urgency and relevance and if you're trying to create something new like if you're a founder and you're trying to bring something new into the world and there's nothing wrong with the world just go get a job like

why are you doing this thing and if you don't have a powerful foil then you don't have urgency for why somebody should go work for you instead of for Google so the whole thing just doesn't work if you don't have the thing that

you have to either overcome or defeat yeah do you spend much time thinking um in this context about Joseph Campbell and you know a hero's journey some yeah

my my version of this is um like an adaptation of a hero's journey I think of it in a in a more simple way which is here's the ideal state of the world but instead of that the world is in this

state that Delta which includes a Delta of understanding so we're going to be misunderstood get ready for that but that Delta is our opportunity for Arbitrage and so come join this company and join this movement because we're the

only people who can take it from here to there and if you don't have that Gap again if you don't have that foil then why should anybody go and do this so you need at least a compressed version of that like the hero's journey for a cause

or a mission or a company I think the hardest thing wrapping your head around like trying to create a social movement though is that very first part where

you're like oh I'm taking some risk here yeah people are not going to like this I might end my career like that's the extreme version but actually what's weird is like the

more I worry about like oh this might be the end of me I think the the strange thing is there's something broken about me where I'm like oh let me find out though and sometimes it's like there's a

victim or there's a problem or there's like a deep wound that needs to be mended I will take that risk this is the thing we were just talking about like developing basically a whole body

callous where once you have that and it doesn't get to you anymore that's incred incredibly powerful there's so much more you can do and unlock and the thing that hasn't made sense to me well we could

probably make sense of it is Founders are so willing to take a risk with building something new and they'll spend like years of their life which is the most precious thing that you could put into something taking a risk on

something new like the early days of coinbase Brian laboring away on this thing when Bitcoin hadn't taken off in anyway like is insane like insane to think about or Palmer lucky once told me

a story where I I think I'm getting this right when he was building the first Oculus in his trailer he didn't have the sophisticated tools to measure um this distance and so he

took a screw oh my God and screwed it until it touched his eye and then measured the screw I mean Founders do crazy like near irrational things for

the company but what I'm getting to is they're often reluctant to take even a small risk for their reputation it's like a it's sort of like left brain right brain where it feels

like intolerable that you would be humiliated and that you would be outcast and a lot of us have been Outcast before and have been unpopular in school and

like we don't want that anymore so I think if Founders were just to have the same level of risk tolerance as they do for their company or product for their reputation and they're willing to put

themselves out there and to propose this thing and maybe it's embarrassing and nobody agrees that would get a lot more done in terms of the second side of building a company which is building the support and the movement enable to that

will enable the company to succeed that bravery is actually why I think you one of the best people in the world at helping people right at the moment when there's like some sort of Crisis because

what normally happens is the founder intuitively actually has a sense for what they need to do like I need to be human In This Moment let me not revert

to sort of like canned PR response uh and then it's some mix of lawyers plus PR professionals who come in and they just water down the message or like oh

we're more worried about the risk than actually trying to you know communicate like a human or like talk to our actual tribe and then as a result like in that moment when you're supposed to say the

thing that actually could make you stronger it just destroys the moment and it's not authentic and it flips it to be exactly the opposite of what it should

be okay in Stephen King pet cemetery there's this very haunting phrase that is sometimes dead is better sometimes getting sued is better

like getting sued is not the worst thing that could happen to you sometimes legal risk is better when you face a crisis usually lawyers come in and they're doing their job like you want lawyers to

be doing this which is telling you the legal risk what ends up happening is that you as a Founder are so outnumbered by that advice that you let that

overcome all your other interests it's like think about the covid response here now I'll get canceled after this but the covid response the reason it was so controversial was all of society was

optimizing for at all costs don't let people Catch Co even if that means not seeing Grandpa before he passes away even if that means not going to bury someone in your family putting off the

wedding having kids fall behind in schools having like trauma build up all of that is worth it as long as we meet this one metric if we were looking at it in a different way which is holistically what is best for

society maybe it's better for society that X more people get covid and that a generation of kids doesn't fall behind a year in school maybe that's what's better for society so the reason I use

that as an example is if you're thinking about the long-term future of the company and you as the founder who is the only person who can take that company to the promis

land maybe the overall well-being of that trajectory is best served by accepting the legal risk and instead

optimizing for trust and credibility and Truth in that moment and I'm not saying it's 100% of the time but it's more than 0% of the time and I would say that most

times crisis gets really really bad is because they're optimizing for the wrong thing and they slightly decrease the legal risk and completely lose all the

trust Lulu Chang Missouri everyone you can find her on here at your house yes yeah you can find me at Lulu

Missouri easy and pretty soon you can find me at rra.com [Music]

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