Let’s be honest: if I wanted to succeed on YouTube, maybe I should’ve stuck to “5 Ways to Stay Productive Like Aristotle” or “Nietzsche Was Right (Again?)” thumbnails. But no — I had to go and talk about semantic inflation, social trust, and the erosion of meaning in late-stage cognition.
Classic me.
Here’s the pattern (ironic!): whenever I really go deep — not “deep” like fake-enlightenment Instagram captions, but dense, uncomfortable, socially-anchored ideas — people stay. The retention grows. Slowly. Like a fungus. Or maybe like respect.
I’ve published papers in real journals, talked Kant with people who actually read him in German. And for a long time, I tried to play by the rules: clean thumbnails, simpler titles, less jargon. But the truth? The “accessible” stuff flopped. It wasn’t just less dense — it was less mine.
Then I dropped a video on semantic inflation — no compromise, no trimming, just raw thought — and it twitched. Not exploded. Twitched. And somehow that meant more to me than all the “maybe try simplifying your script?” feedback ever did.
So yes, I know this looks like one of those “I’m misunderstood, therefore I must be a genius” rants. But it’s not. It’s worse: it might actually be working.
Fields of Mind: Philosophy Audio Essays
Let’s be honest: if I wanted to succeed on YouTube, maybe I should’ve stuck to “5 Ways to Stay Productive Like Aristotle” or “Nietzsche Was Right (Again?)” thumbnails. But no — I had to go and talk about semantic inflation, social trust, and the erosion of meaning in late-stage cognition.
Classic me.
Here’s the pattern (ironic!): whenever I really go deep — not “deep” like fake-enlightenment Instagram captions, but dense, uncomfortable, socially-anchored ideas — people stay. The retention grows. Slowly. Like a fungus. Or maybe like respect.
I’ve published papers in real journals, talked Kant with people who actually read him in German. And for a long time, I tried to play by the rules: clean thumbnails, simpler titles, less jargon. But the truth? The “accessible” stuff flopped. It wasn’t just less dense — it was less mine.
Then I dropped a video on semantic inflation — no compromise, no trimming, just raw thought — and it twitched. Not exploded. Twitched. And somehow that meant more to me than all the “maybe try simplifying your script?” feedback ever did.
So yes, I know this looks like one of those “I’m misunderstood, therefore I must be a genius” rants. But it’s not. It’s worse: it might actually be working.
And that’s the scary part.
4 months ago | [YT] | 4