A frequent recent experience has been: I’ll think of something I read or write “recently” and if will turn out to be from like 5 years ago. Like this post on bureaucratic heroism which I though I read only a couple of years ago is actually from 2013 nplusonemag.com/online-only/on
Conversation
I thought it was just aging, but it’s a sharp cliff around 2015, with the great weirding and the beginnings of a discourse desert. There’s almost no good commentary on anything besides the culture wars, Trump etc starting ~2015. So my referential frame has stalled around then.
2
15
The reasons my premium mediocre post (2017) has been the biggest hit of my career are:
5%: It’s actually good
20%: I’ve written very little like that since 2015
75%: I posted it during discourse desert, with nothing but culture war/Trump dreariness, where it came as a relief
