Structure 006: Mental Models and Frameworks

Welcome to this week's issue of Structure. As always, one topic, with the goal of providing you some extra insight into the themes you see online. If you enjoyed feel free to subscribe below!

The nature of the content machine online is that when a specific type of post, article, or thread yields strong engagement results, the rest of the internet will adapt their own content to fit the trend. The algorithms that drive social media sites don’t leave creators with a lot of options. If you want the engagement, you often have to play by their rules. Similar to a popular meme online or a popular Snapchat filter, these trends come and go taking us all along for the ride.

Some trends last longer than others. If you keep your ear to the ground in anything related to business, marketing, VC, and startups online you’ve surely been exposed to the recent trend I will label as Mental Models and Frameworks.

We’ll dive more into these mental models specifically in a minute, but an overarching theme here is to think critically about what you consume online. I’m all for having fun on the internet and love to mindlessly scroll like anyone else. However, it’s been a net positive habit for me to really think about some of the trends or posts I see continuously and ponder why I react to certain things the way I do. Doing so helps me keep my brain active online and allows me to have a higher degree of control over what I consume online as opposed to mindlessly taking in everything on my timeline.

Or

Maybe I’m being too serious about the internet, either or.

Now, to the topic at hand.

The Whole World in the Palm of Your Hand (a Few Bullet Points)

The long and the short of this trend is taking key information, whether it be from a business, marketing, investing, fitness, or mental perspective, and slimming it down to a few actionable points that travel well. The trending engagement aspect of it often comes from catchy / clickbait-esque headlines or initial tweets to get users interested. A few examples:

Insert some crazy story of company X making $$M in revenue + Here’s how they did it

Rich guy #6543 made $$$$ last year + Here’s how he starts his mornings

This crazy wacky concept is increasing in popularity recently + Here are the benefits

There are also the summaries of famous (or less famous) books / papers that are often converted into the below format:

This book changed 5M lives last year, I read it all so you don’t have to + Here are the main points

You get the picture. Posts of that nature are rampant on Twitter and have even made their way to Instagram / Reels. It’s been pretty interesting to watch this trend start and evolve to where it is now. Here’s how it played out in the past couple years from my POV (bias warning):

• Threads began gaining popularity, typically well written with lots of information from respected accounts

• Threads reached a pretty significant level of popularity, could be referenced similar to a podcast (”oh yeah I saw that on Sahil’s thread the other day”). Typically still came from users with larger audiences.

• Recycled threads and stolen threads began to pick up steam. Not at all uncommon to see the same thread slightly tweaked 5x a day. This also led to a more negative association with threads online due to the sharp decrease in quality and massive increase in quantity.

• Mental models and frameworks era began as shorter, more concise threads seemed to have success from an engagement perspective. Instead of 25 Tweet libraries, users would stick to ~5-10 Tweets.

• Thread-ification of everything. Anything can be turned into a mental model or framework. You can climb Mt. Everest tomorrow if you find the right thread (You are here).

What’s the Problem?

There isn’t a problem really. It’s just interesting to consider why this format has gained popularity recently. My answer (potential for being correct ~30%) is that, similar to a lot of what we consume online, these threads help us picture a life different than our own.

Instagram has the reputation for being the least realistic picture of someone online. Each picture is posed, edited, and often filtered to provide the perfect image. Perfect images of life, relationships, careers, and more all live on Instagram. The app lives on your phone, in your pocket at all times. People follow influencers who simply post about the perfect life that most of us will never get to live, but since you follow them online it feels like maybe you can. Maybe you can attain this picturesque life that some influencer has the very rare opportunity to live. This one way mirror into an ideal life becomes a pathway mentally. Instead of actually living that life, we can buy the same clothes, eat the same food, and shop at the same stores without actually making a lifestyle change. No real action required, but you can feel one step closer to that perfect image of life.

Twitter to some extent (from my POV) has been resistant over time to that fake, edited atmosphere we see on Instagram. Likely due to the fact pictures are less prevalent and not the focus of the platform. This could be a hot take, but these mental models and frameworks are an interesting evolution of this phenomena brought to life in words rather than images. Rather than scroll by pictures of an influencer by the beach, what gets engagement on Twitter is a 6 tweet thread, summing up how the breakfast routine of a billionaire ties into their overall success. This quick, actionable advice (that is usually positive, sensible, and executable to some extent) allows us to mentally level the playing field. It won’t make you any more money, but if you’re eating the same breakfast as an ultra-successful millionaire then surely success is coming your way right?

The Problem

As I said above, there is no real problem, just some observations. These threads are not all bad by any means. I’ve seen some great, informative, or entertaining content amongst all of the bad. Some people do social media right and then the rest of the internet tries to replicate it (usually poorly). Lots of great advice can be found on Twitter, but it is interesting how one of the highest engaging trends I’ve seen on the platform long term seems to be rooted in the same nature of content you’d expect on Instagram.

It has an air of slight misinformation to it. Slimming success down to 4-5 tweets makes it seem so achievable and easy when that is very rarely the full picture. The idea of preaching from the rooftops that changing a routine, waking up earlier, or thinking differently can break all barriers between a person and success seems iffy to me at best. I don’t necessarily think anyone believes things are as simple as these threads make them seem, but then I wonder why they engage so well.

Unsure, lots of other factors in play and this is just one way to look at it.

Twitter typically gets a better rep than the soul-sucking platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, but at the end of the day maybe it can be more similar than initially expected. There was a few weeks where these threads were all I could find on my timeline and that was the closest Twitter has ever felt to Instagram personally. Let’s hope it doesn’t get worse.

Thanks for making it through another rant on social media, I may be finding a niche here.

Cheers.

Song of the Week

As a thank you for checking out this week's edition of Structure here's a song I've been listening to lately:

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