Chad Aaron Hall

What weaknesses have I missed in my writing? Ask ChatGPT for progressively harsher critiques of your writing. That can be unpleasant, but that’s how you find and fix your blind spots, without the shame.

It explains why so many young men have lost themselves in video games, and are no longer in employment or relationships. The false signals they’re getting from video game progress, combined with the sexual reward of online porn, are convincing their dopamine pathways that they’re winning in life, even as their minds and futures atrophy.

The bulk of the work is researching—collecting stories, anecdotes, and data to marshal your argument. The writing is stringing those pieces together. I’ve found stuff I’ve used in in-flight magazines, discovered snippets on social media, even heard things mentioned on TV. As Shelby Foote put it in an interview with The Paris Review : “I can’t begin... See more

If you write a bad post it won’t get shared and no one will see it. If you write a great post and it goes viral, everyone on the internet thinks you’re a genius. Since content is shared organically, your best work gets way more exposure than your worst. The incentive in these situations is to ramp up variance and do the most interesting writing you... See more

But what I keep in mind is that the works that have influenced me most are the classics. The works that were obviously inspired by an internal commitment to depth, and not an external fulfillment of timely expectations. If I want to create something that I’m truly proud of, then I know that this type of commitment is a pre-requisite, not an option.

It was inevitable that a rift would emerge between the enlightened critics and the unwashed masses who, as it turned out, would rather not undergo mandatory DEI training every time they turn on the television. The one-two punches of #MeToo followed by BLM only widened it.