Vibe signaling externalities and the people-to-places pipeline

KatjaGrace
Thu, 30 Apr 2026 23:10:50 GMT

People are sending signals all the time, and those signals are to my knowledge usually about themselves: they are smart, or kind, or attractive, or not naive, or have their shit together, or care about Palestine, or care about you, or are friendly, or artsy, or professional, or relatively in the know about the cultural currents of TikTok or DC.

People are also taking in signals all the time, and these signals are often about other people, and often even closely related to the signals being intentionally sent: Alice is trying to seem friendly, and Bob perceives her as friendly. But also a lot of signals people take in are about places. People read places as safe or dangerous, lighthearted or depressing, silly or serious, asking them to know more, or get more power, or do more. Suggesting they laugh drunkenly under the moonlight, or get up at 5 and pray. Encouraging submission or rebellion.

These signals that make the world feel one way or another make a big difference to people. They make one neighborhood nice to live in and another feel off, one workplace energizing and another deflating. But they are—to my knowledge—almost entirely unintentional side effects of the ways people behave for other reasons. People don’t dress nicely to collaborate in making you feel like you are in a thriving part of town. They dress nicely to make someone think something about them. And someone probably does, but then the signal is left there for everyone else to sweep into their average perception of the vibe in this part of town.

A lot of ways people behave that affect the vibe are probably not intended as signaling at all—for instance, perhaps I grow roses in my front garden because I love roses, and it nonetheless affects people’s read of the vibe. Or perhaps I keep piles of scrap metal there because I want them for something, and that has a different effect.

But an interesting dynamic to me is that a lot of efforts are going into sending signals about people, and those signals are being read as messages about places. Because places can’t send their own signals, but vibes are a very big part of how people experience places, and place vibes are heavily influenced by people’s attempts to paint themselves as one thing or another.

People try to look not-to-be-messed-with and strangers read the street as dangerous. People try to look generative and strangers read the neighborhood as wealthy enough to have time for this. People try to look rich and people read the area as safe. People try to look beautiful and people read the scene as shallow. People try to look smart, and people read the office as unwelcoming.

In sum I posit that there are massive externalities in vibes, and especially in the vibes of places, and there is a particular path of causality from signaling about people to unintentional signals about places.

(I’m not very confident about all this—I was just thinking about it this evening, arriving in and mildly exploring New York City. I think there’s a lot to be said about organizations’ roles in this that I haven’t gone into—for instance in a bar or restaurant or stand up comedy club, people are trying directly to make you experience a vibe. These are small places where the vibe of the place has been mostly internalized—someone owns it.)

Discuss