"networking is effective: most good opportunities come from personal connections."

"There is a solution: be famous. You lose the ability to filter out who you want to talk to, but at least everyone starts the conversation with some context; you’re outsourcing the extroversion to them."

"Microfame is the best kind of fame, because it combines an easier task (be famous to fewer people) with a better outcome (be famous to the right people)."

"a side effect of the writing-as-networking strategy is that writing about your other interests gets other people interested. You’re not just identifying neighbors in your intellectual ghetto; you’re recruiting more."

"I’m fairly introverted (which should be no surprise; introverts are way overrepresented on the text-only parts of the Internet), and I’m pathologically bad at recognizing faces."

"If you’re trying to calibrate how hard it is to achieve micro-fame, focus on the micro, not the fame. Micro-fame just means your friends-of-friends have a nonzero chance of knowing who you are, and striking up a conversation with you about something mutually interesting."

"You don’t have to introduce yourself to anyone."

"You don’t have to conversationally grope around for something to talk about."

"Your conversational partners are pre-selected for having shared obscure interests."

"But a side effect of the writing-as-networking strategy is that writing about your other interests gets other people interested. You’re not just identifying neighbors in your intellectual ghetto; you’re recruiting more. If more of your friends do it, you get exposed to more ideas."

"As it turns out, “shameless personal networker” is just another one of those jobs being eaten by software."