> "Enthusiast" undersells for sure, but is still a true statement.

It's like calling Steve Jobs "a computing enthusiast" — it's ridiculous by omission (unless Palmer's Wikipedia entry is wrong). Clearly he was designing for the mass market, and in his roles as creator and designer was a proxy for that market.

There's the notion of "What hat am I wearing". If you are a CTO or whatever but just want to talk tech with your people, put on the "tech enthusiast" hat & take off the "I run this shit" hat. The roles we assume are fluid & sometimes our most defining aspects are not the best descriptions of our current speaking role, especially if everyone already knows it's Steve Jobs/Palmer Luckey.

What hat do you think Palmer was wearing here?

Hats is an internal motivational thinking device. Publicly, he'll always be the founder of Oculus, and his comments filtered through that lense. For better or worse he doesn't get the luxury of taking that "hat" off so whatever hat he's thinks he's wearing, it's the founder of Oculus hat, with all the acclaim, but also baggage that brings along.

Other people always only being able to interpret your through a single lens is other people's weakness and greatly to their detriment. What real authority they're using is an active question we should, as audiences, be considering.

Having it be explicitly swappable in internal use is a huge benefit. But all external communication also implicitly has hats. Whether we are smart enough to perceive that or too blunted to see.

> What hat do you think Palmer was wearing here?

Product creator and designer, since I believe those are the lenses through which he views potential Oculus killers. What hat do you think he was wearing?

Fair enough!

"Promoter" is my sly but real take; he's promoting his own industry & legacy here. "Industry Insider Enthusiast" might be a nicer take, a fittingly general hat to toot from here.