I think if you want to be yourself, moving to a city is a really good move. I have seen hundreds of videos and the common sentiment that arises out of it is you become hostage to the perception people have of you. If you are, let’s say, in some community, they will have an impression of you and you will treat it like a self-fulfilling prophecy and keep maintaining that perception. And in cities no one is there to perceive you. No one has the fucking time. Even if you are lying naked on the road, no one gives a fuck. And how do we know this to be true? Well because people complain about cities being very isolating, very community-less. Just now we were complaining about community being a thing that is stopping you from being you, right?

There are certain ventures that require you to be you, such as personal brands. So move to a city if you can, instead of changing yourself, that “Hey, I will be so brave that even if anyone from my current town, my current college, or my current community will say anything, I will be brave enough to not pay any attention to that.” It is so much work. Why don’t you just move to a place where none of that exists and that place doesn’t even care if you do anything? Move to a city, build a personal brand, be yourself, do some great commerce, and you are set

It will be much easier for me to pick up a camera in public and yap away in Mumbai city centre than it is for me to do this in IIM Shillong because I am surrounded by these people and I am going to be surrounded by them for a certain period of time. If they start gossiping, I wouldn’t be very comfortable. So to avoid that I won’t do that. But in the centre of Mumbai I would do that because none of these people are around me to worry about that. I am not even sure if people from IIM Shillong will treat me that way but it’s just a common fear anyone might have.

What’s stopping you right now is how high-stakes everything becomes in your current environment. If you do something, people around you are continuous and persistent, so things going wrong can have long implications, right? In a city even if someone judges you, there is no continuity, there is no persistence. You might never see that person again.

And like I said you maintain the perception that people have of you. When you move to a city and create your own personal brand, whatever community you build will be based on that as a foundation so it is good for you. May be it is even advantageous for you because the perception people have of you, to maintain it, you will keep maintaining the personal brand too.

This is what I would call “tail risks in social scenarios in a tight-knit community”. You are sure about the value you will generate by doing something but the risk that a small embarrassment might keep dragging you down for a long period of time because people might not stop talking about you is the tail risk. That you do something but it becomes an inside joke that lasts for years. That is the tail risk.

This is actually why cities historically have been places where subcultures, art movements, and unconventional identities emerge because the low-stakes environment allows more experimentation, and experimentation is how you find what actually works and who you actually are.

Plus the daily life of the city bro. It’s like even if you want to go from one place to another, there are so many things along the way, so many modes of travel, so many people around you. Like stories just naturally emerge. You don’t have to manufacture content in a city. You just have to document whatever is happening because it is just that amazing. Instead of manufacturing some event in your small community or town, just being a participant in a city makes a lot of events happen to you.