Critical thinkers didn't disappear, they just got out-marketed. In a culture that rewards charisma and confidence over credibility, those with knowledge but without algorithm-friendly personalities or desirable appearance became easy to overlook.
But there was a time when substance came first. A time when saying something real, researched, uncomfortable and unpopular was enough to command attention.
It didn’t need to be carefully packaged for virality and there was no need to add controversy to spice things up.
In 1993, Toni Morrison stood before the Swedish Academy to deliver her Nobel Lecture. It wasn't designed for clips, it was layered and unapologetically complex and yet people still had the attention span to listen to it all.
She spoke of language as power, both weapon and cure. She warned that when language is stripped down, aestheticised, or drained of meaning, it becomes complicit in oppression. Her message was simple: language that refuses complexity is dangerous.
Thirty years later, you’d be forgiven for thinking public intellectuals had vanished. We’ve traded lecture halls for algorithm-friendly content and essays for aesthetically packaged expertise that often blurs into entertainment.
I'm not here to judge anyone, this is simply the reality we're in. Like many, I chased trends, rebranded endlessly and tried to play the game. It took time to find the balance between performance, authenticity, expertise and the right visibility.
As a former journalist and B2B sales lead turned media and brand strategist, I've spent time looking at how this social shift is changing not just culture but business marketing and branding. From COVID's impact on consumer behaviour to why Gen Z performs curated vulnerability instead of genuine authenticity.
And today's question is: What happened to deep thinking? To expertise that doesn't apologise for being complex? To leaders who are willing to be misunderstood in the short term if it means saying something real?
I believe the critical thinkers never disappeared, they just got crowded out.
The Great Displacement: Expert vs. Influencer
A completely made-up scenario that probably happened somewhere: A virologist with 20 years of research experience posts a nuanced thread about vaccine efficacy, complete with peer-reviewed citations and careful caveats. The same day, a wellness influencer with 500K followers posts "3 immune boosters Big Pharma doesn't want you to know!" The influencer gets 50,000 shares, the virologist gets 50.
While experts focused on being right, others focused on being heard and that's where they lost the battle for a long time. They continued to believe that "good work will speak for itself"….wrong.
Of course, these aren't binary roles, many influencers bring deep expertise, and many experts are charismatic. But the point remains: distribution often favours confidence over credibility.
Being right still matters! Accuracy is non-negotiable when you're dealing with public health, financial advice, or any domain where bad information causes real harm. But being right without being heard is a luxury we can't afford in a world where misinformation spreads faster than facts.
The tragedy isn't that experts were wrong, it's that they were right but irrelevant at the time.
They spent years never building their personal brand, so when it came time for their voices to be heard, they were diluted. They published in peer-reviewed journals while conspiracy theories went viral on TikTok, spoke in measured language while others made bold, simple claims and waited for institutional validation while influencers built direct relationships with audiences hungry for certainty.
The experts who succeeded during this period didn't abandon research/expertise, they learned to communicate it effectively. They realised that being right and being heard aren't opposing forces: they're complementary skills. You can maintain intellectual honesty while also understanding that people need information delivered in ways they can actually absorb and act on.
For a long time, even the experts who adapted felt like they were shouting into the void. When you're competing against "day in my life as a 6-figure dropshipper" or "my morning routine that changed everything," even well-packaged expertise struggled to break through the noise of fantasy and aspiration.
The audience was trained to scroll past anything that felt like work, including learning.
But today, that fatigue with surface-level content is giving them new traction, not everywhere, but in the right places. While legacy media deprioritised long-form due to ad pressures, platforms like Substack, Patreon and podcasts created new homes where depth isn’t just viable, it’s rewarded
If you've been holding back from thought leadership because it felt like your expertise had no place online, that's changing. Your thinking has value again and economic pressures are forcing audiences to seek depth.
The question is whether you're ready to claim that space.
What Changed and Why Deep Thinkers Got Out-marketed
This isn't another 'let's blame social media' essay, though platforms played their part. Experts lost their power due to multiple factors that converged at once.
(As a side note: I know there are brilliant experts across finance, law, and so forth who built incredible platforms way before infotainers became a thing, but I think experts are the new sexy influencers and it's becoming more accepted due to the below)
First, the money dried up: US and UK newspaper newsroom employment fell by 48% between 2008 and 2020, according to Pew Research. Meanwhile, over 75% of digital ad spend now goes to Google, Facebook and Amazon combined, squeezing legacy media budgets, especially for investigative work that takes months to produce. This matters because long-form content, while still valuable, is increasingly deprioritised by media outlets with shrinking budgets. Producing it takes time and resources and in a time driven by ad impressions and SEO clicks, many publishers have shifted focus to faster, more clickable content.
At the same time, we became comfortable with compression: TikTok's internal data shows completion rates for videos under 30 seconds are 150% higher than longer content. Our brains have been rewired for distraction, jumping from topic to topic and AI doesn’t help either.
These two forces fed each other: shorter attention spans made long-form content harder to monetise, whilst budget cuts made quick, cheap content more attractive.
When social media didn't exist and there was just radio, people had to listen attentively at the right time to avoid missing news forever. Same with newspapers, once they were taken off the rails by midday, there was no second chance unless you could afford a TV. But abundance bred impatience. We're now so spoilt for choice that we've lost the ability to focus.
As a former investigations journalist, I watched this firsthand. I'd spend months on a story about corruption, only to see it get fewer reads than a celebrity gossip piece written in an hour. And I’ve seen how expertise loses when it doesn’t know how to market itself
Third, the gatekeepers lost their power, which to be honest depending what day you ask me is a good and bad thing. It meant more access but it also meant quality control disappeared. Studies show that during early COVID, misinformation on Facebook generated 4x more engagement than content from credible health authorities.
TikTok was booming and some of these professionals were still just figuring out Instagram. Those who could market and sell dominated social media.
Without these curators, quality got drowned in noise. Everyone became their own publisher but few consumers had the judgement to separate insight from opinion.
Audiences rewarded simplicity over nuance and many experts, unwilling or unable to adapt to new formats, left the “arena” altogether.
The Algorithm Paradox
But I have to say, algorithms don't only reward the shallow, some reward depth, but only when it's paired with good packaging. The real tension isn't between smart and stupid content, it's between those who understand modern distribution and those who don't.
But here's what I've witnessed firsthand: many of my clients, brilliant leaders I now support with thought leadership, spent years actively resisting this reality. They didn't want to know about social media or brand building.
"That's not what I do," they'd say. "I'm a surgeon, not an influencer." "I'm a financial analyst, not a content creator." There was, and still is, a cultural resistance among many experts to what they see as the commodification of knowledge. They viewed personal branding as beneath them, social media as a distraction, and content creation as something for people who couldn't do "real work."
Packaging yourself used to mean aspirational lifestyle content and curated aesthetics. But in the age of “authenticity” (the latest buzz word), you can now package your expertise simply as yourself, your personality, your story, your honest perspective becomes the wrapper around your knowledge.
The algorithm rewards personal brands that feel real and relatable. But here's the catch, it still doesn’t automatically reward expertise. It rewards those who know how to perform authenticity convincingly.
I understand this resistance. When you've spent decades building expertise through rigorous study and practice, it can feel demeaning to reduce complex ideas to bite-sized posts optimised for engagement. But this perspective, while understandable, became a disadvantage. While they maintained their intellectual “purity”, others were building the distribution channels that would determine whose ideas actually influenced the world. Peer-reviewed work remains importance but relying solely on institutional validation in a direct-to-audience world is no longer enough.
The Attempted Adaptation: How Smart People Tried to Survive
Faced with this new reality, our brightest minds attempted to adapt. Some tried to play the engagement game, gaining followers but losing intellectual credibility. Their expertise became watered down, their arguments simplified beyond recognition.
Others retreated into academic obscurity, continuing to produce rigorous work but only for audiences that already agreed with them. They wrote papers that twelve people would read rather than risk having their nuanced positions misunderstood by the masses.
But a smaller group managed to do both successfully. Think Emily Oster bringing data literacy to parenting decisions. She understood that adaptation didn't mean abandoning expertise; it meant finding better ways to package and deliver it.
It's not about choosing between short-form and long-form content, it's about refusing to trade depth for reach. You can be engaging and intellectually rigorous. It's about not allowing algorithmic changes to lead to shallow thinking.
For example, a fintech founder I worked with could probably triple his reach with LinkedIn growth hacks, engagement pods and viral hooks. But his current 2,000 subscribers include the exact regulators, VCs, and founders who matter for his business goals. His audience wants depth and evidence-based content that educates them. Compromising this for quick reach would be a big mistake.
The question facing every expert trying to build authority: do you optimise for reach or relevance? There's no universal right answer, but there is a right answer for your specific objectives.
Smart is the New Sexy: The Renaissance Hidden in Plain Sight
Believe it or not! Being “smart” is sexy again. Again, I feel it's important to say this doesn't mean we should return to some elitist golden age where only certain voices mattered. The democratisation of publishing has given us brilliant insights from people who would never have been heard in traditional systems. The goal isn't fewer voices, it's better carefully considered curation.
So, why is it cool to do breakdowns, video essays and long form content again?
Economic pressures have created new platforms for depth: Substack surpassed 2 million paid subscriptions in 2023, allowing writers to earn money from intellectual work directly. Patreon enables creators to build sustainable businesses around specialised knowledge, with creator revenue growing over 40% year-on-year since 2021. These platforms reward depth over breadth, expertise over entertainment.
Content fatigue is driving demand for real expertise: After years of being misled by confident incompetents, audiences are beginning to crave actual knowledge again. Edison Research shows 60% of U.S. adults now listen to podcasts, with long-form shows over 60 minutes growing 15% annually. People are willing to pay for newsletters from experts, to sit through hour-long conversations, to engage with complex ideas.
Facebook users share 1.7 million pieces of content and YouTube users upload 500 hours of video every minute in 2025. This information overload directly relates to widespread content fatigue especially if the content is designed to do the same thing…please the algorithm.
About 73% of Gen Z report feeling digitally exhausted despite spending 7.2 hours daily consuming online content, while 70% of consumers unsubscribed from brands in the last three months due to overwhelming messaging.
The median open rate for newsletters in Q1 2025 was 49.3%, significantly higher than typical marketing emails, showing audiences actively seek curated, thoughtful content when they trust the source
Political homelessness has created space for nuanced thinking: As traditional political categories break down, there's room for intellectuals who don't fit neat ideological boxes. Thinkers who can hold complex positions without partisan allegiance are finding audiences hungry for alternatives to binary thinking.
Of course, these platforms aren't perfect. Substack doesn't guarantee reach, podcasts can reward personalities over preparation and algorithmic discovery still tilts towards controversy over nuance but what they do offer is a fighting chance, something the old institutions stopped giving.
What This Means for Leaders Today
As someone who works with executives trying to build thought leadership, I see the implications daily. The old rule book, write a book, get media coverage, speak at conferences, still works, but it's no longer sufficient.
Authority now requires direct audience building. You can't always rely on traditional media to amplify your expertise. I don't think it's dead, I think it's still useful more than ever, but you need to cultivate your own platform, whether that's a newsletter, podcast, or video series. The gatekeepers are gone, which means both more opportunity and more responsibility.
Nuance is becoming a competitive advantage. In a world drowning in hot takes, complexity isn't just refreshing - it's what will set you apart. Edelman's research shows 54% of B2B buyers say thoughtful, expert-driven content directly influences purchasing decisions. The audience hungry for depth is smaller but more valuable - they're decision-makers, not just consumers.
Consistency trumps virality. The leaders building lasting authority are those who maintain principled positions over time, even when it's unpopular. Content Marketing Institute found that steady output builds 3x more trust than viral but inconsistent content. They're playing a different game than the engagement chasers - they're building trust, not just reach.
Another client, a CEO of a marketing agency, started a monthly deep-dive newsletter analysing marketing and pop culture across different markets. Seven months in, she was invited to Substack HQ and featured on their platforms and now she's at 1k+ subscribers. Quality over quantity isn't just a nice ideal, it's a business strategy.
The Opportunity:
We're not in a battle for attention, we're in a battle for the right kind of attention. The goal isn't to reach everyone; it's to reach the people who matter for your specific objectives.
Instead of trying to break through mainstream noise, build directly in the spaces where thoughtful discourse is valued. Start a newsletter, launch a podcast, create in-depth content for platforms that reward substance.
Authority isn't built through clever growth hacks or viral moments. It's built through consistent demonstration of expertise over time. Your goal should be to change minds through sustained, principled argument.
As short-form content floods every platform, long-form thinking becomes more precious. As everyone adopts the same growth tactics, authentic expertise stands out.
After years of charisma outperforming credibility, the pendulum is swinging back.
The critical thinkers are returning, not because the system changed, but because they learned to compete in it.
They’re showing up not on morning TV or opinion pages, but in newsletters, podcasts, breakdowns, and direct-to-audience platforms.
They’re not chasing virality, they’re building authority that lasts beyond the algorithm.
I may have missed a few points so please let me know what I missed:
Wow, first of all, beautiful writing.
I love myself a piece that’s both well-crafted and packed with research, where ideas build on each other.
I couldn’t be happier if smart is back to being the new sexy, though it’s hard to see that on most platforms. In this extended bubble that we live in together, though, it does feel true. Too much content is bland, and no matter how much help you get from AI, it’s easy to spot when there’s no real substance.
Good packaging & marketing will always be king. I remember reading somewhere in a newsletter a long time ago that most people who do have something to say are too busy doing that, but a lot of those who do have free time and not much to say, are out there changing views without well.. much to say. I still remember that because I resonated with it so much at the moment, in my multiple failed attempts to speak more publicly on LinkedIn. Glad I overcame that here, though I wouldn’t have thought. But leaving me and my own experience aside, that’s still the case for so many amazing people having something to say. Packaging and consistency do matter. I guess the competitive advantage is not just being smart, but being able to bridge the gap between depth and accessibility + building something that lasts, not just play the "hot take" game.
Good job, great writing :) It's a must read....