It’s a Publish or Perish World

Disclaimer:

I’m not invested in securing tenure at a university, yet I do feel that my time working on my Master’s in Rhetoric was worthwhile. While my job as a mid-level manager at a community college doesn’t require that level of education, expending the effort to work full time and study was a way to stay engaged and keep my brain active.

Background:

I developed a sort of discipline that sitting in front of a computer most days rewards. I read a lot; I watch documentary films and various YouTube clips a lot. And as I sort of meandered my way through understanding the larger world as presented to me via the web, I, as predicted or delivered by the algorithm on YouTube, became exposed to a broader variety of opinions (Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, The Ruben Report, Bret Weinstein) than my online circle of poet and progressive friends held or posted about on other social media platforms. It lead me to the NYTimes piece on the Intellectual Dark Web.

From there it was a quick jump into reading articles posted on new-to-me web publications like Quillette and Medium. In fact, I stopped regularly engaging with Salon and the Daily Beast on a daily basis in search of writing that seemed to have more heft to support my increasingly nuanced world view. Yet, my progressive viewpoint is not something I was willing to disavow so, simultaneously, I was consuming the NY Times, and watching “liberal” YouTube (Peter Coffin, Contrapoints, Philosophy Tube, etc.). It all lead to a…