tpot

tpot

1."This part of Twitter": the loose constellation of postrat, tech-adjacent mutuals who share memes, meditation takes, and contrarian threads. There is no membership list, and if you think you're in it, you are not actually in it. Hope that helps.

He insists he's not in tpot, which is the single most tpot sentence a person can produce.

01Origin

The cluster formed around the COVID lockdown out of the "postrat" (post-rationalist) diaspora: people who had passed through the Rationalist and Effective Altruism movements and came out the other side interested in vibes, spirituality, and posting. "This part of Twitter" was the only name vague enough to survive, precisely because the community is not an organization but a mesh of mutuals; no coiner is attributed.

By the mid-2020s tpot had become a real SF-adjacent social scene with meetups, group houses, and festivals, covered by everyone from LessWrong ("Explaining the Twitter Postrat Scene") to Know Your Meme, which files it as a subculture. It survived the platform's rename to X, various discourse cycles, and a partial migration to Bluesky, none of which produced a better name.

The definitional joke is load-bearing: since "this part" is indexical, every reader stands somewhere different, and the timeline periodically relitigates whether tpot means this part or that part of Twitter. It is the rare SF-ism that names a place with no coordinates, unlike Peter Thiel's hot tub, which has coordinates nobody will give you. Declaring things anti signal is a popular tpot pastime.

02Notable sightings

Tony Wang · @TonyW · view on X
What does TPOT mean? From what I understand (but feel free to add), it stands for This Part Of Twitter and it’s a reference to decentralized communities of people who talk about similar areas of interest on Twitter now X. Topics are often less mainstream subjects adjacent to technology, health, science and history. The discourse around shape rotators or wordcels is an example of some older TPOT discussions. I’m not sure how or when it started though. I’ve always known the best of Twitter to be the place where these discussions get to play out asynchronously. Here’s Grok’s explanation: TPOT on Twitter stands for "This Part Of Twitter." It refers to a loosely connected community of Twitter (now often referred to as X) users known for their interest in intellectual, technology, and science-related topics, alongside a penchant for memes and humor. This group often includes individuals who were once part of or adjacent to the Rationalist and Effective Altruism movements but have since embraced a more "post-rationalist" perspective, which might include discussions on spirituality, the occult, and conspiracy theories among other subjects not traditionally associated with strict rationalism. The community is not formally organized but rather a network of mutual followers and similar interests, often characterized by a playful and sometimes ironic approach to online interaction. The term "TPOT" has also been used to describe similar clusters on other social platforms like Bluesky, indicating its broader cultural significance beyond just Twitter. This understanding is based on various web sources discussing the meaning and context of TPOT, as well as posts on X that reference the acronym.

ark · @howwardroark · view on X
tpot could mean both this part of twitter and that part of twitter. if you think you’re in tpot, you are not actually in tpot. hope that helps

More sightings on X →

03Spread the ism

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01Origin

02Notable sightings

03Spread the ism

04See also