{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "Reading that NYT article on the intellectual dark web everyone is talking about.\n Does it make sense to say that, abstracting...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/173730952313/", "html": "<p><a href=\"/post/173730750058/\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">kontextmaschine</a>:</p><blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https://slatestarscratchpad.tumblr.com/post/173730453386/reading-that-nyt-article-on-the-intellectual-dark\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">slatestarscratchpad</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Reading that NYT article on the <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.html\" target=\"_blank\">intellectual dark web</a> everyone is talking about.</p>\n<p>Does it make sense to say that, abstracting out the opinions of these people, they\u2019re also unique in their business model? IE mostly unaffiliated with normal institutions/media companies, doing podcast-like things, getting money on Patreon-type-stuff, and also being really successful / having big personality cults around them?</p>\n<p>Does anyone know of anyone like this either on the left or the more conventional non-taboo National-Review-reading right? Am I right to think it\u2019s at least pretty rare? I can\u2019t think of anything, but I don\u2019t know whether that\u2019s just my limited perspective or a real fact about society.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://tmblr.co/mbvjWWRK9nFEaGrgtU7ErLA\" target=\"_blank\">@kontextmaschine</a>, maybe?<br/></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>My 2:30 am response is to point out that National Review <a href=\"https://www.nationalreview.com/2005/01/big-sister-watching-you-whittaker-chambers/amp/\" target=\"_blank\">reviewed Ayn Rand\u2019s Atlas Shrugged as raw untutored bullshit</a> unhelpful to the mid-20th century conservative cause, and even with Michael B Dougherty on board and getting past the NeverTrump stuff I wouldn\u2019t look to them to divine where popular energy is going until after the fact</p>\n</blockquote><p>I remember reading them (sometimes on paper!) in the late \u201890s, and noticing that everyone was trying to pull this fake Buckley voice of writing like an upper-class British ponce, with the exception of John Derbyshire, who confident in the knowledge he <i>was</i> an upper-class British ponce allowed himself a personality</p><p>Then The Corner really was an innovation in group blogging (after the Budapest suck.com ex-expats at Reason) and Jonah Goldberg and them used it to backslap over shit Simpsons jokes</p>"}