I was listening to an Adam Buxton podcast — Emma Diddy, as it happened — and she used a phrase that was slightly coarse and completely right. Something you’d only say to someone you were comfortable with. Unselfconscious. Accurate. Funny because of that.
And I thought: that’s the version of a conversation I actually want.
Not the polished one. Not the one where both people are presenting their considered selves, choosing words carefully, performing a version of who they are at their most appropriate.
The one where somebody drops the register because they’ve assessed the room and decided it’s safe.
🎭 The Abstraction Layer
There’s a concept in software development called an abstraction layer. It sits between the user and the actual underlying system. It simplifies the interface, hides complexity, makes things presentable.
Most people have one of these for social situations.
The abstraction layer is polite, well-presented, carefully modulated. It’s not dishonest — it’s real, just edited. And in certain contexts it’s entirely appropriate. Job interviews. First meetings. Professional settings where the full version of you would be premature or misread.
The problem is when the abstraction layer becomes the default. When it runs 80% of the time instead of 20. When the edited version is what most people see most of the time, and the real version is a pressure valve that only releases around a small number of people.
The inverse should be true. The edited version for the contexts that require it. The real one everywhere else.
🔒 Why We Keep It On
There’s a fear underneath the maintained abstraction that’s worth naming.
If I drop this and people see the actual version — the informal one, the ranty one, the one that makes jokes in bad taste and interrupts too quickly and uses the phrase that’s slightly coarse because it’s exactly right — they won’t like it. Or they’ll think less of me. Or it’ll be misconstrued.
And sometimes that’s true. Some people genuinely prefer the abstraction layer version. They find the real version too much.
But those aren’t the people you’re trying to connect with. Those are the people you’ll spend years performing for without ever building anything real with, which is its own kind of lonely.
The people you actually want in your life — the ones where the connection has genuine warmth and depth and that particular quality that makes you leave a conversation feeling better than when it started — those people need the real version to show up before the connection can form.
You can’t have the connection without the visibility.
⏱️ The Timing Question
There is a real question about timing. Not whether to drop the abstraction layer, but when.
The honest answer is: sooner than you think, later than your instinct.
Most people err in one of two directions. Either they maintain the layer indefinitely — polite, pleasant, perfectly managed, and never getting past surface depth. Or they drop it too fast, in the first conversation, before there’s been enough exchange to establish trust and shared register.
The sweet spot is a calibrated read of the room. Is this person able to receive the real version? Are they offering some version of their own? Is the energy mutual?
When the answer is yes — even provisionally — let the register drop. The conversation that follows is usually the one worth having.
🌊 What This Has to Do With Creative Work
Everything, actually.
The creative voice that resonates — in writing, in painting, in teaching — is always the real one. The edited version produces technically competent work that doesn’t make anyone feel anything. The real one is unguarded enough to let the reader or viewer in.
The posts and articles I’ve written that people respond to most aren’t the ones where I wrote carefully. They’re the ones where I wrote honestly. Where I said the thing that felt slightly too exposed to say, and said it anyway, and it turned out to be the thing other people hadn’t been able to say themselves.
Your voice — your actual one — is the differentiator. Not the abstraction layer version. Everyone has one of those. Yours is the one underneath.