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Good read. Someone I’m surprised wasn’t brought up here is Freddie Deboer. The interesting thing with him is that he has wide appeal across the normie-autist spectrum. He obviously has left wing populist politics, but isn’t afraid to loudly buck the current trends among that group. He writes a lot of apolitical personal stories as well, and there’s something to be said about his willingness to spill his guts out on the page. Although his struggles with mental illness illness are a big theme in his work, it took me binge reading a few of his pieces before I learned how that was a major part of his story. The most important thing he has is that he’s just a *really fucking good* writer. You can have an amazing story and a willingness to put it all to paper, but if you don’t work to develop yourself in the craft of putting words on the page then you’re good as useless. I’m a musician, and people all the time will say things like “I have such good ideas for beats in my head, I come up with Melodies all the time, I’d be so good as a producer”, being completely ignorant to the Grand Canyon sized gap between ideas an execution when you’ve never even touched music production software. A writer like Freddie is able to take a cliche premise like losing his virginity and turn it into an engaging reflection on growing older for the same reason you can hand Stevie Ray Vaughan a thrift store guitar with missing strings and hed still make that thing sing.

I guess the point here is that no matter how good AI gets at writing pop songs or drafting legal documents, there will always be a market for writers like Freddie Deboer and guitarist like Stevie Ray Vaughn. People connect to their work because of the humanness of it. Young writers and guitarists doing it for their own sake will look to them as an example of what humans are capable of when hard work, natural talent, and consistency meet. And other humans will continue to read/listen for the same reason.

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After reading Hanania for a year or so, It's clear to me he has not succumbed to audience capture.

His take on modern art is spot on: most of it is garbage.

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Apr 5, 2023·edited Apr 5, 2023

For what it's worth, I like some of the people you have summarized for very different reasons than you summarized, which makes me think there might be more to their popularity.

Scott Alexander understands much of the useful parts of rationalism, is not above doing some science, and is willing to present his results clearly and artfully. Unlike the rest of LessWrong, he is readable and fun to read. Due to his honesty, he comes up with politically inopportune conclusions, which makes reading him a lot more exciting, even though I'd probably know him either way. And the readiness to generalize (all while honestly admitting the speculativeness of such) and to use everything as a metaphor makes him more intellectually stimulating than the typical blogger. "Pouring his heart out" is not what I'd associate him with, a blogger who rose to fame anonymously.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a genuine talent at packing up ideas in memorable metaphors and bringing them into the mainstream (fat tails, turkey illusion, SITG, convexity as a metaphor), and more importantly, a willingness to oppose the spreadsheeet rationalists and technocrats from a modern, pragmatic point of view (as opposed to a religious or postmodern one). I'm surprised at how few authors are doing this, even though everyone knows NNT and many respect him for exactly this. IMHO he is at his worst when he merely throws shit at people on Twitter, as it is repetitive and often thoughtless. I'm disappointed by his views on COVID, which are much closer to the technocrats he despises (with the same lame pseudo-rational abuse of the precautionary principle and risk avoidance über alles) than to what I'd expect an intellectual pirate like him to think.

I'm confused by Curtis Yarvin. Quite a few of his posts are really good up until the point they segue into a plea for monarchy, which typically begs the question of how monarchy would prevent the problems discussed hitherto. Is his writing to be judged as art? Probably, as he is clearly a more artistic mind than most of your list, but I think (I hope...) his readers have a different reason to be reading him. (Mine was his "self-licking napalm ice cream cone" post, which is still among the best on the subject and should probably be in any anthology on the origins of COVID. Unfortunately, I have not seen him approach that level of insight and readability ever since...)

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I think engagement with the commentariat is a huge difference maker. It's not just about jumping into the comments with us mouth-breathers. Stuff like your follow-up article about crime in El Salvador was top notch. We asked and you answered.

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Apr 5, 2023·edited Apr 5, 2023

Richard I think you need to distinguish between substack Vs Twitter following. Noone subscribes to you or any other substack cos the writer is someone who would be awkward and weird at a party. They subscribe cos the *ideas & arguments* are interesting and smart in their own right. No doubt you get some people who follow you on Twitter cos of your quirky antics (and ofc the retweets boost the numbers who find out about your substack).

But you once said that you think people take certain negative traits and try to falsely rebrand them as positives crucial to their success, and that this is just cope. That they are successful in spite of those negatives for other good qualities. I think this is what you and lots of dissident right people do with autism. It's good to be independent minded. But it's better to be independent minded and also have good emotional and social skills (like Rob Henderson).

If anything autism is harmful to public discourse. Cos it taints contrarian thinking by association.

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You do not mention having any kind of expertise.

Most successful intellectuals launch their careers with a focus on a single topic they know something about (e.g. linguistics for Pinker) and then branch out.

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Is the goal truth, likes, or lucre? Truth is perhaps the least rewarding. In the short term, it’s very hard to know that you were right. Being vindicated by history after you are dead is hardly edifying.

Lucre has its attractions but is a rather masochistic goal for an author. For every Sullivan or Yglesias, there are probably hundreds of authors who are just as smart who make a pittance. If you want money, find a more profitable career.

The only realistic goal for most aspiring authors is likes. Richard has gotten engagement on a mass scale, and I respect that.

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Great post, yet missing one key ingredient.

Quantity.

All the successful independent folk write stuff pretty often, at usually more than an 80% level of quality / interest. Most write in a one-pager medium short <5 min read side.

Surprised you don't mention Glenn at Instapundit, tho only recently joining substack.

Still disagree on conservatives having low IQs, I'm pretty sure at any 85, 80, or 75 IQ level, there will be more who vote Democrat than vote Republican, tho this is influenced by the 90% of Blacks voting Democrat. Since most college educated folk vote Dem, the Dem avg might be higher.

Of course, in the long 9k word essay, you disclaim:

"if you’re talking about the bottom 80% of the population or so in political knowledge, the two sides are going to be pretty similar." with the Dem reading vs Rep TV watching.

"my analysis generally makes liberals look smarter and more honest than conservatives." You go on about smart, but generally fail to discuss honesty much. And generally smarter folk are more able to lie to themselves, and believe the lie, like the H. Biden laptop being Russian dis-info.

The whole section on types of lying is interesting but inaccurate as in excusing liberals.

>>"Yet these are lies (or more usually, kinds of self-delusion) that you would expect from people who’ve adopted crazy ideological commitments: the blank slate theory of human nature, an aversion towards “blaming the victim,” championing minority sexual identities as normative ideals, and a worldview where the problems of the poor can always be blamed on their oppressors." "<<

In policy fact, these self-delusion lies are the heart of the intellectual Republicans' complaints about Democrats, and the willingness of most Reps to accept a populist who opposes those lies, even one who himself is willing to make many, less consequential untrue statements.

But my own complaints about your arguments do show why I, like many, find you so interesting -- you seem to be willing to write most of what you honestly feel is true, with reasons to explain your thinking, allowing many of us "fans of Hanania" to often disagree.

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TL;DR: Spout right wing opinions as if they were new, contrarian ideas that no one has ever expressed before. (Even though this schtick is basically the norm now—especially on the better-financed platforms, because of course the moneyed interests like to sponsor mostly conservative and reactionary propaganda.)

And also—this seems to be very important—be male.

But if you absolutely must be female, at least be an antifeminist woman. There are always a few openings in “the game” for an antifeminist woman, an anti-LGBTQ LGBTQ person, and a self-hating or self-sabotaging member of any other minority group. (Except for white males; because white male pride is “in”. It’s the brave new contrarian stance, dontcha know.). /s

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Great RH. So true.

Conventional wierdo

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This encourages me to plough on, with the post-ideology sensemaking project that is Rarely Certain. It currently pays for half of my food, so there seems to be a market for playing outside of any existing group.

Your 'formula' of equal parts inspiration & infuriation is reliably inspiring.

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So what do you regard as the mainstream on immigration

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The beginning of this was laugh-out-loud hysterical. And the rest was instructive. Nice work.

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Perfectly timed motivational piece. Articles containing potentially incriminating personal information and perspectives, incoming. Thank you.

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Great post

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