Hobbyist Academia #29

I tried to embrace “learning in public” as much as I could. In addition to writing blog posts and tweeting, I created a bunch of other artifacts, like conference talks (developer conferences are a thing, which was new for me!), interviews, a podcast series, and lists published as GitHub repositories.

If this all sounds overly theoretical and not at all applicable to your lived experience, then fine. But how often have you gone back to read an old edition of your favorite newsletter? Why bother when you’ll have a new one tomorrow?

Without the academic formality and pressure to uphold institutional reputation, experts now share their knowledge in ways that are decidedly more engaging and even non-academic — say, humorous memes or storytelling devices to explain concepts — across podcast episodes, newsletters, YouTube videos, TikTok clips, and Twitter threads.

The entire ecosystem of filmmaking blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels was recycling news and churning out half-baked content at a remarkable pace. From my perch atop the ecosystem, I could watch a story break, then spread from one aggregator to the next, eventually blanketing our entire corner of the internet in a thick smog of mediocrity.