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To me, it feels like Gary Vee's cancerous idea of 'there is never enough content, post everywhere, all the time' has infiltrated culture - people have realized that they can stay popular and receive the many perks that come with it, from simply posting 'content' that barely has any actual content in it :) I couldn't comprehend why anybody would watch daily videos from a guy/gal who does nothing but films him/herself filming shit (Casey Neistat being the first I believe), but I think I've figured it out. It's like having an internet friend - if they like you, it no longer matters what you do, the same way you aren't having deep conversations with your friends, you're just 'hanging out'. Sam Altman is doing the daily video version of hanging out, except he does it in blog format because he's an 'intellectual' or maybe just camera shy and the frequency seems to be a week or two apart. It used to be that people would actually provide some value - a blog would at least aggregate interesting news stories (Daring Fireball) and provide some insight, but people have realized that doing all that work of actually reading, thinking and providing insight, is optional - you just need others to want to consume whatever you're providing and the bar has turned out to be far lower than any intelligent person can readily comprehend. There's also a great deal of 'ignorance is bliss' when it comes to people like Paul Graham. His posts on Twitter strike me as him sharing what he considers to be insightful or interesting. It's revealing that rather than actually studying people who've come before him and devoted their life to contemplation, he's perfectly content to have 'insights' about his children's latest quip. You can't fault someone for it and I don't think Paul has ever claimed to be an intellectual, so it is perfectly good that he gets to have his simple fun of re-discovering the tried and true, rather than working hard on attempting to discover the novel. It's when he generalizes his personal little joys into theories about the rest of the world without any felt need for diligence (besides editing) or response to feedback, that his simple-mindedness is revealed and catches people who haven't lived a while, off-guard. Sam Altman may fall into this category. |
Mark Twain I think said: That man can pack the smallest ideas into the most words of any man I know.
Personal Hate: Essays that follow the NPR style of layering vast amounts of extraneous sub-anecdotes before getting to the point.