"The Internet of Beefs" (January 2020) is Rao's most widely read external publication and the clearest demonstration of his concept-coinage at its most powerful. Published on ribbonfarm in January 2020 and subsequently cross-posted to berggruen-institute's journal Noema, this essay reached both Ribbonfarm's established readership and a broader academic and policy audience. It names a phenomenon that vast numbers of online users recognized but could not articulate: the structure of perpetual conflict that social media platforms produce.
The Core Framework
The essay's central argument is that social media has created a specific and describable social structure: the internet of beefs (IoB). In this structure, public discourse is organized around ongoing conflict between "knights" — high-status actors who define the terms of fight — and their "knaves" — follower-participants who engage in combat on their behalf. "Chumps" are actors who wander into beefs without understanding the structure and are consumed by it.
The framework is notable for several reasons. First, it describes the structure without reducing it to individual pathology — the IoB is not primarily caused by bad actors but by platform architectures that reward conflict and punish nuance. Second, it identifies the knight/knave relationship as the load-bearing social structure: the appearance of mass conflict is actually managed by a relatively small number of knights who frame the fights. Third, it explains why "just ignore it" fails as individual strategy — the IoB is not reducible to individual choices.
The internet-of-beefs concept draws on Rao's earlier organizational sociology work (the Sociopath/Clueless/Loser framework from gervais-principle-series) and his interest in how adversarial dynamics produce emergent social structures. The essay applies the framework that the-boydian-dialectic developed for military strategy to social media conflict at scale.
Publication Significance
The choice to publish in Noema rather than ribbonfarm reflects a shift in Rao's ambitions during the cozyweb-turn era. Noema is the berggruen-institute's flagship journal, oriented toward a global, interdisciplinary intellectual audience. The essay's placement there signals that Rao was seeking to reach beyond his existing readership into policy and academic circles.
The essay was published in January 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic transformed online dynamics further. Its diagnosis of social media conflict structures became more pointed after March 2020, as political conflict migrated almost entirely online. This timing contributed to the essay's sustained circulation in 2020 and 2021.
Reception and Cultural Adoption
"Internet of beefs" achieved the rare status of entering common usage as a descriptor. Technology writers, social media researchers, and general commentators adopted the term without always citing Rao — a sign of successful concept coinage. The essay was widely shared in the specific circles (tech Twitter, "rationalist" adjacent spaces, political journalists) most attentive to online conflict dynamics.
The reception also illustrates a recurring pattern in Rao's work: a framework that names something widely experienced but poorly described achieves rapid adoption, with the specific Rao content often getting lost as the term detaches from its original analytical framework.