Malcolm Ceyune is here. He is a writer, a cultural critic, a Twitter provocateur, a Marxist, I think, a Swede.

Yeah, I've been hearing rumors to that effect, at least.

There you go.

And just generally a very interesting guy.

You can find his working...

We're complimenting right out the bat.

You can find his work in Compact, Unheard, and City Journal, among other places. Today we're going to

discuss the new Gnostics, Malcolm's article for the autumn issue of City Journal's print magazine.

The piece examines the new quasi-religions, as Malcolm calls them, that are taking shape on the internet.

It's hard to overstate Malcolm writes,

how full today's internet is with itinerant profits,

holy fools, hustlers, fraudsters, and soothsayers.

We're going to pick apart the implications of that intriguing statement.

And then I hope to get his thoughts on a few other topics.

Welcome listeners to the Tech Policy Podcast.

I'm Corbyn Barthold. Malcolm, you're already launching us off hot.

It's good to have you here.

Yeah, it's good to be here.

Thanks so much for the invite.

I think that this particular essay of mine obviously garnered a lot of attention and a lot of it quite negative. I didn't intend this to be a, how do I put it, like a takedown or a

polemic against like these, these environments on the internet, just something to sort of

describe what's going on to, I guess you would say normal people in the US and elsewhere.

...