In Paul Fussell’s book on class (I think), he says that people are really worried about differentiating themselves from the class immediately below them, but largely ignorant of the customs and sometimes even existence of the classes above them. When I found SSC, and then The Motte, and stuff like TLP, I was astonished to find a tier of the internet I had had no idea even existed. The quality of discourse here is . . . usually . . . of the kind that “high brow” (by internet standards) websites THINK they are having, but when you see the best stuff here you realize that those clowns are just flattering themselves. My question is, who is rightly saying the same thing about us? Of what intellectual internet class am I ignorant now? Or does onlineness impose some kind of ceiling on things, and the real galaxy brains are at the equivalent of Davos somewhere?
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Notes -
IMHO
Real life: university-adjacent organizations; engaged so thoroughly in their career that they don’t want to spend any spare time online; such an enjoyable social life that they hardly have non-private communications.
Tweeting out to the abyss. I was surprised that plugging in a medical related keyword and sorting by new took me to world class experts tweeting to no one in particular. Had I an account, and posed a good question, I could have had a discussion with some of the most relevant academics researching a niche subject matter. This is likely only limited to academia
Very small niche forums. Had a chat with an Australian academic studying the mnemonic potential of aboriginal songlines the other way.
Engaging in random vices. Very smart people still waste time on Reddit and Tik Tok and play video games.
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