Best-case scenario, you want a field that talks to itself enough that you get status for impressing other experts with your expertise, not for impressing the public with demagoguery.
But if you talk to yourself too much, you risk becoming completely self-referential, falling into loops of weird internal status-signaling.
Honestly, this kind of involution is already thoroughly discussed within a lot of creative fields (which Alexander admits he hasn’t read, so this is likely still downstream of Moldbug). It’s just that when a poet says something like this, they usually aren’t attributing it to a gigantic 75-year-old New Deal octopus. (Alexander himself leaves it to his commenters to blame socialism.)
I looked into this one a while back—I’m pretty sure it’s the explanation Scott launders in “Whither Tartaria?”. Moldbug (2007):
Alexander (2021):
Honestly, this kind of involution is already thoroughly discussed within a lot of creative fields (which Alexander admits he hasn’t read, so this is likely still downstream of Moldbug). It’s just that when a poet says something like this, they usually aren’t attributing it to a gigantic 75-year-old New Deal octopus. (Alexander himself leaves it to his commenters to blame socialism.)