Against Credentialism

"How do you know who's trustworthy when it hasn't been vetted by a publication?"

There was a period of about a month where I was sending back-to-back Substack posts to two friends of mine in a group chat. I’m sure it was very annoying from their perspective, and I have since stopped doing that. After a certain number of shared posts, one of my friends asked me this:

I actually have wanted to ask you how you vet Substack articles. I don’t think I’ve ever found one independently, but I’m assuming there’s probably a lot of bullshit from randoms? How do you know who’s trustworthy when it hasn’t been vetted by a publication? I feel like whenever I read a Substack article, there is at least one grammatical error.

This question really triggered me, I’ll be honest, and it made me think about how fundamentally differently I view the world compared to my friend. I’d like to piece this apart — more for my sanity than anything else — and see if I can actually articulate why I find this line of questioning so bothersome.

“How do you vet Substack articles?”

Well, first I start by reading things that seem interesting to me. There’s a lot out there and my time is limited, so I use something called judgement. I judge the title, I judge the subtitle, I judge the cover art, and I judge the author, assuming I know who they are. If the post passes all the checks, I read it. Sometimes the subject is already something I’m interested in. Sometimes the picture they used grips my attention. Sometimes they managed to hook me with an angle that I’ve never before considered, or maybe they titled their piece How Murdering All Men Is Good, Actually and I have to at least open the damn thing to find out if it’s just rage bait. Sometimes the author is someone who has consistently put out stuff I’ve found interesting or entertaining, so the likelihood that their new stuff is also worth reading is pretty high.

It’s not a perfect heuristic, don’t get me wrong, but it gets the job done. I skim a lot of posts. I skip a lot of posts. A lot gets put into an archive I’ll never read through. My question in return is “How is this any different from reading The Atlantic or the NYT?” I mean, surely the only reason you’re reading anything from anywhere is for the exact same judgement calls I laid out above.

You like David Brooks, you read David Brooks. David Brooks publishes a piece on something you don’t care about? You might skip that David Brooks piece. You don’t have time to read the latest David Brooks piece? I guess you’ll have to leave it as a pinned tab that’ll get deleted three months from know.

If you’re asking me how I decide whether the post I’ve just read is worth sharing with you, it’s also the exact same process you’d use for sharing articles from the New Yorker or the Washington Post. Do I think you’ll find it interesting? Have we talked about this subject before? Is this relevant to you? Do I want to engage with you in conversation on a new topic? This isn’t rocket science.

See, my friend isn’t really asking that, is she? What she’s really asking is “How do you know that the things they wrote are true and accurate?” Which leads us directly to her next question.

“I’m assuming there’s probably a lot of bullshit from randoms?”

There sure is, let me tell ya what. I share a tiny fraction of all the posts I read on here, dude. You’re getting the best of the best, the crème de la crème, the curated selection, you know what I’m sayin’? This is a Drunk Wisconsin special delivery, and you’re about to read something worthwhile.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, isn’t there a lot of bullshit from randoms in All The Right Places too? You know what I’m talking about. The New York Times types of publications. The ones where the randoms are supposed to be Serious People and the bullshit they write isn’t bullshit, it’s Correct Opinions on Important Subjects. I can open up the NYT opinion section for the past month and see all sorts weird stuff that was written by all sorts of strange people. Who are they? Why are we supposed to listen to them?

I’m getting the impression that the issue here is both the platform and the people. I’m starting to think that the issue with the Substack posts I send isn’t that they’re bad takes on a subject you care about or mediocre takes on topics that are irrelevant or that they’re factually wrong on something you know a lot about or just plain bad writing. I’m starting to think that the issue here is a fundamental belief that Good Opinions on the Right Subjects must be handed down from High Places where the Gods reside, and that’s not something I believe in.

How do you know who’s trustworthy when it hasn’t been vetted by a publication?

Now we’re getting to the meat of the issue. I don’t know who’s trustworthy and I don’t expect vetting of any kind. I am open to reading anything by anyone, assuming it meets the criteria I laid out above. If the person has a take that resonates with me and I don’t see any glaring issues, I’m perfectly happy walking away from giving that piece of writing some of my time. I like checking comments and shares because often the people who have something to say are ones who disagree. Through those comments and the online discussion that surrounds the piece, I can gain additional perspectives. Some of them are contradictory to the original piece, some provide clarification, some point out glaring issues like gaps in logic or false statistics, and some call the author retarded. By combining all of that along with — stick with me here — my own judgement, I can come to a more robust opinion on what I just read.

Is it possible that what I’ve just read was written by a deranged lunatic living in a dugout canoe somewhere in the mountains of Idaho who accessed the internet after he broke into a cabin that’s being rented out via Vrbo to a nice family from California who had to scramble to get the kids into their Range Rover to get away? Yes, though I’d like to think that my judgement would be able to pick up on the fact that what’s being written is dumb because it’s being written by a person who’s dumb, and dumb people write dumb things.

The reason David Brooks is interesting to you as a writer and thinker isn’t because he’s being published in All The Right Places or because he’s been anointed One Who Speaks And Who Shall Be Listened To. No, it’s because David Brooks is a smart guy and a good writer who says things you like. Why is that not possible on Substack? Why do we need a middleman in between you, the reader, and the author with the good take? What if the homeless man who chased away that family and stole their laptop to write a post on Substack is right? What if the things he wrote resonate with you? What if you read that post and come away with your whole worldview absolutely shattered? What if he revealed some core truth about the nature of human existence in his writing? Are you really telling me you’ll discard all that because it didn’t go through an editorial process? Is his lack of a PhD somehow preventing him from arriving at a good conclusion about the nature of the universe?

Don’t get me wrong, of course blogging allows for anyone to say anything on the internet. Yes, it’s totally possible that the post I just shared has a factual inaccuracy that would’ve been caught had it been vetted as you expect. I will totally admit that the access to monetary and non-monetary resources that those big publications have decrease the probability that you’re being misled. But it doesn’t complete eliminate the possibility of a mistake or a lie. How many times have all those big publications been caught publishing misleading headlines and allowing factual errors? How many controversial edits — snuck in without notice or posted as an editor’s note at the bottom — have we seen over the years? How many times have those big publications been criticized for refusing to publish alternative opinions that don’t perfectly align with their editorializing?

In my opinion, the best argument for the NYT and all the rest is that they are good curators. They’re doing the job I’m doing for you when I decide which Substack posts to share. They pick and choose perspectives and authors they think will be interesting and relevant to their readers, and often try to publish provocative takes to drive engagement. The reason you should read those big publications isn’t because every word they publish is gospel, it’s because they’ve managed to collect a roster of really unique voices who consistently write unique takes on relevant subjects. You’re not supposed to take them at their word, either. You’re still supposed to use your judgement. That part never changes, I hope we’re all in agreement.

Against Credentialism

One of the things the other friend on the group chat brough up during this discussion is that he liked what he was reading in a post by

Cathy Reisenwitz

I shared until he got to the end and saw that Cathy had an Only Fans. What’s weird is that, despite the fact that I think Cathy having an Only Fans is icky and gross, I never allowed that to detract anything from her take on the topic she wrote about. Who cares if she has an Only Fans? Is she right about the topic at hand? Or is the fact that she has an Only Fans somehow serving as a reverse-PhD that sucks away her credibility on any subject other than posting nudes on the internet?

Matthew Yglesias was a blogger for many years before he co-founded Vox with Ezra Klein. So if we take the position that blogging is bad because it has no vetting, then by that logic all of Matt’s takes should be totally discarded right up until he starts up Vox — A Serious Publication — and suddenly we should pay attention to everything he says. How does that make any sense? I am certain Matt’s takes were about the same level of quality in every conceivable way throughout that time, with the only exception being that he became a better writer through practice and changed his opinions as he aged and gained life experience. And look at where he is now — back to blogging! Should we start dismissing everything he says again?

Smart people write smart things. The smart things smart people write get noticed because smart things resonate with audiences. While it’s true that there’s a weird incestuous bubble in American intelligentsia where they all have dinner parties together and know each other and marry each other, the real reason Matthew Yglesias and David Brooks got to be published in All The Right Places is because they were smart people with smart things to say. That’s also the reason a total nobody that’s entirely disconnected from that bubble can break through into that world — especially because of blogging on the internet.

Scott Alexander, for example, was totally anonymous and led a very popular and successful blog until he was outed as, like, a guy. A smart guy, sure, but we knew that already because we could tell he was smart from the smart things he wrote in his blog. If the NYT suddenly invited Scott Alexander to have a regular column or he wrote an opinion piece for them, the reason that could happen is because he’s proven himself through blogging. So is he not a Serious Person with Good Opinions when he publishes anonymously and only becomes someone whose articles we should share when they get published in the NYT or maybe we should just share anything that’s good with each other, regardless of whether it’s anonymously published on Substack or officially vetted by The Atlantic?

If it’s credentials we’re worried about more than the actual platform, then I’d like to point to someone like

Darby Saxbe

, a literal professor with an actual PhD. She writes things on Substack, much like I do, and some of those things are more relevant to her field of study and some are entirely irrelevant (outside of the fact that this proves my smart people write smart things hypothesis). So when she engages in a discussion with Elena Bridgers and Cartoons Hate Her on feminism, are we only supposed to take professor Saxbe’s opinion seriously because she’s the only one who has a PhD (that we know of, I assume CHH is a secret Lorelai Gilmore type who comes from a family of PhDs)? But Darby’s PhD isn’t in feminism, so should we dismiss her opinion as well?

I think all three women mentioned have the right to post hot takes on this subject and any other subject they want to cover, regardless of whether they have any professional degree of any relevance. I will judge their takes on the merits of their takes, even if their posts have grammatical errors.

If we are talking about a subject like psychology, then I would still read both a post by someone without a PhD in psychology and a counterargument from Darby Saxbe. There is nothing preventing a layperson from being right, even if they are missing the credentials. Is it likely that a totally random dude can annihilate a professor of psychology in her area of expertise? Of course not! She would cite thirty-three and a half papers and completely destroy him, but that wouldn’t happen because her PhD gives her a superpower. To put it another way, it’s not the PhD that allows someone the ability to have a strong argument on a subject, someone’s ability to formulate a strong argument on a subject is the reason they have a PhD. The reason Darby Saxbe has good takes on subjects other than psychology is because she uses her brain — the one that allowed her to become a professor of psychology — and smart people write smart things.

“Why does this bother you so much, DW?”

I’ll be honest, my friend’s comments bothered me on a personal level because I publish anonymously on Substack and I think I have some interesting things to say. Not everything, but some. The same friend who asked me those questions really liked my piece on parenting, for example. No one vetted that! I bet I have a grammatical error or two in there. So what? Does my argument track? Am I right on the actual question? Do you agree or disagree?

The entire reason I started writing long-form posts on Substack is because Tim Snyder, a professor and author of many influential books, made a claim so wrong that I couldn’t stay quiet. You know what happened next?

Jeremy Morris

, also a professor and published author, thought my essay was correct and reposted it on his own blog. So did I suddenly gain legitimacy because I was endorsed by someone with the right credentials? Or was I right on the merits of the question and the facts were in my favor, which is why another smart person recognized my writing and give it a platform?

The thing is, the entire intellectual space works exactly the same way. CHH starts out as an anonymous Twitter account and ends up published on Matthew Yglesias’ Slow Boring Substack publication. Yglesias co-founded Vox with NYT superstar Ezra Klein, who wrote the influential Abundance book with Derek Thompson. Derek Thompson recently left The Atlantic to start his own Substack. Where is the distinction between “vetted” and “unvetted?” At what point should we suddenly put on our skeptic glasses and start questioning every sentence the author writes? The reason it’s messy is because there is no clear line on one side of which are Serious People and on the other side are “randoms” who can’t be trusted.

The fundamentally different view of the world that I referenced at the beginning is one that is often found in left-of-center political circles in the US. A deference to “experts” and an inclination to trust authority, whether it be a media or government institutions. This is not the right place for me to retread all the difficult lessons learned over the past few years regarding trust in authority figures who get to decide what is and what isn’t acceptable thought, but it is a place for me to simply complain that this type of thinking doesn’t lead to any productive place. The Truth is not something that is passed down from Up High by the Right People who have undergone rigorous trials that prove they are Ones To Be Trusted. Truth is discovered by all sorts of weird accidents, sometimes by the most unexpected people, and the more complex the truth, the more we need constant debate and discussion in intellectual spaces between every available person who has something worthwhile to say. That’s the throughline between a good NYT article and a good Substack post — they are worthwhile. They have something important to say, they are scratching at the surface of a deeper truth.

The mistake that I think my friend is making is believing that there is some core difference between those people that publish valuable thoughts in important places and the rest of us. That is not the case. There is not difference between myself, my friend, and any of the writers I’ve mentioned in this piece. Every single one of us has an equal right to both have opinions and share those opinions, and we’re very lucky to live in an age that allows us a platform to share those opinions and engage with lots of other people who are also interested in engaging with us. I do not believe I will ever be published in the New York Times, but I also think that I could, assuming I had a strong enough piece of writing that managed to make it to the desk of the right person.

I don’t want to deanonymize myself and start to try to become a Serious Person who gets published in All The Right Places, but there is nothing fundamentally different between me and the person who decided they did want that in college, and started writing a blog under their real name and tried really hard to break through and applied to job openings. If that person manages to make it, so to speak, it’s possible the reason was because they had well-connected parents who paid for their multi-year unemployed existence in New York City, but it’s mainly because they finally connected with the right people and found their voice and carved out a niche for themselves.

As a matter of fact, I am absolutely certain that my friend herself could’ve been that person, considering that she is highly intelligent, opinionated in all the right ways, and has a knack for writing — and it’s kind of disappointing that she seems to have a mental block that separates those people whose articles she reads in The Atlantic and herself. I’m not saying she could make a living off being a journalist or become the biggest podcaster of all time. I’m saying that she could easily write and write and write until suddenly she has a hit piece that gets recognized by someone who has a larger audience. It’s not guaranteed by any means, but seeing that way undermines this false premise that elevates some publications and some people onto a pedestal which must be revered and recognized lest we foolishly allow ourselves to descend into the realm of “bullshit from randoms” whose writing hasn’t been vetted.