I enjoy and appreciate Venkatesh’s Ribbonfarm writings, and other writings like his. While the cultural situations he’s writing about may be obvious, I appreciate his discovery and naming (‘jargon’) of the patterns he finds. You could look at it as developing an intellectual framework. I consider it a sort of contemporary philosophy, which tries to be both conceptual and actionable. Some of his essays have made me rethink major outlooks on my own life, and make important decisions. I think it’s important writing for our time.
Often his essays are essentially experiments in structures and definitions, a kind of ‘what if we looked at things this way?’ methodology. In answer to your question of jargon/jokes, yes, that’s his methodology. There’s a lot of serious stuff in there too, but he likes to have fun with the ideas, as well as try to integrate his words into modern (online) culture in useful ways.
Venkatesh wrote a related article a couple of years ago: ‘A Quick (Battle) Field Guide to the New Culture Wars’ (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/03/06/a-quick-battle-field-g...). He essentially proposes that the only way to understand the the culture wars is to see them as actual wars, fought using the logic of warfare, not of, say, diplomacy or social rationalism. This essay has been extraordinarily useful to me, and has helped me develop very different political stances and associated actions.
As this article itself suggests, I enjoy an information diet in moderation — some short, some medium, some long. Ribbonfarm is part of the medium/long diet, and I feel much better having read there.
Often his essays are essentially experiments in structures and definitions, a kind of ‘what if we looked at things this way?’ methodology. In answer to your question of jargon/jokes, yes, that’s his methodology. There’s a lot of serious stuff in there too, but he likes to have fun with the ideas, as well as try to integrate his words into modern (online) culture in useful ways.
Venkatesh wrote a related article a couple of years ago: ‘A Quick (Battle) Field Guide to the New Culture Wars’ (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/03/06/a-quick-battle-field-g...). He essentially proposes that the only way to understand the the culture wars is to see them as actual wars, fought using the logic of warfare, not of, say, diplomacy or social rationalism. This essay has been extraordinarily useful to me, and has helped me develop very different political stances and associated actions.
As this article itself suggests, I enjoy an information diet in moderation — some short, some medium, some long. Ribbonfarm is part of the medium/long diet, and I feel much better having read there.
EDIT: removed unnecessary criticism of parent]