The success of Scott Alexander (AKA Scott Siskind) seems unlikely. He’s done everything we’re told you shouldn’t do when writing on the internet. His essays are frighteningly long. His language is not simple. And he doesn’t have a personal brand, exactly. He does cluster around a few subjects repeatedly—psychiatry and political philosophy, for example—but he also does whatever the fuck he wants to. When his whim dictates, he’ll pen surreal stories about psychedelic cacti, dole out advice to Republicans, or tackle tricky philosophical questions with comic dialogues.
This feels sort of mean to say, but when Scott started posting the book reviews by his readers, the biggest thing that stood out to me about the reviews by far was how much worse written they all were than Scott's stuff. I kept thinking "this sounds like a fascinating book but I wish Scott had written this review and not whoever you are." Really made me appreciate even more so than before how good his writing is.
A good intro! I’m pretty convinced that most of what people learn about “writing”, especially in high school and on the internet, is dead wrong. It’s both very contextual and dependent on the topic and very complicated and unique to the writer, and all sorts of fashions and options and poorly thought out rules and useless structural ideas get taken as good advice.
This feels sort of mean to say, but when Scott started posting the book reviews by his readers, the biggest thing that stood out to me about the reviews by far was how much worse written they all were than Scott's stuff. I kept thinking "this sounds like a fascinating book but I wish Scott had written this review and not whoever you are." Really made me appreciate even more so than before how good his writing is.
A good intro! I’m pretty convinced that most of what people learn about “writing”, especially in high school and on the internet, is dead wrong. It’s both very contextual and dependent on the topic and very complicated and unique to the writer, and all sorts of fashions and options and poorly thought out rules and useless structural ideas get taken as good advice.