Who's Scott Alexander? He's a blogger. He has real-life credentials but they're not direct reasons for his success as a blogger.
Out of everyone in the world Scott Alexander is the best at getting a particular kind of adulation that I want. He's phenomenal at getting a "you've convinced me" out of very powerful people. Some agreed already, some moved towards his viewpoints, but they say it. And they talk about him with the preeminence of a genius, as if the fact that he wrote something gives it some extra credibility.
(If he got stupider over time, it would take a while to notice.)
When I imagine what success feels like, that's what I imagine. It's the same thing that many stupid people and Thought Leaders imagine. I've hardcoded myself to feel very negative about people who want the exact same things I want. Like, make no mistake, the mental health effects I'm experiencing come from being ignored and treated like an idiot for thirty years. I do myself no favors by treating it as grift and narcissism, even though I share the fears and insecurities that motivate grifters and narcissists.
When I look at my prose I feel like the writer is flailing on the page. I see the teenage kid I was ten years ago, dying without being able to make his point. If I wrote exactly like I do now and got a Scott-sized response each time, I'd hate my writing less and myself less too.
That's not an ideal solution to my problem, but to my starving ass it sure does seem like one.
Let me switch back from fantasy to reality. My most common experience when I write is that people latch onto things I said that weren't my point, interpret me in bizarre and frivolous ways, or outright ignore me. My expectation is that when you scroll down to the end of this post you will see an upvoted comment from someone who ignored everything else to go reply with a link to David Gerard's Twitter thread about why Scott Alexander is a bigot.
(Such a comment will have ignored the obvious, which I'm footnoting now: I agonize over him because I don't like him.)
So I guess I want to get better at writing. At this point I've put a lot of points into "being right" and it hasn't gotten anywhere. How do I put points into "being more convincing?" Is there a place where I can go buy a cult following? Or are these unchangeable parts of being an autistic adult on the internet? I hope not.
There are people here who write well. Some of you are even professionals. You can read my post history here if you want to rip into what I'm doing wrong. The broad question: what the hell am I supposed to be doing?
This post is kind of invective, but I'm increasingly tempted to just open up my Google drafts folder so people can hint me in a better direction.
I don't know precisely what, you want, and I never will. It was practical advice about writing grounded in an analogy, mostly because they are two things I like. If it's not helpful, you are free to not, internalize it.
Ok.