Page history

BeforeThe Intellectual Dark Web (IDW) was an informal network of public intellectuals, academics, podcast hosts, and media commentators who gained prominence in the late 2010s through long-form digital media. The term was coined by mathematician and podcast host Eric Weinstein and entered mainstream usage through journalist Bari Weiss's May 2018 New York Times opinion piece, "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web." The network included figures such as Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro, Eric Weinstein, Bret Weinstein, Dave Rubin, and others who shared an emphasis on open …

AfterThe "Intellectual Dark Web" was an informal network of commentators and academics who built large audiences through long-form podcasts and video in the late 2010s. The label was applied in 2018, adopted loosely by some of those it named, and had largely fallen out of use within a few years. Roberts's 2023 monograph is the book-length academic treatment, written after the grouping had dispersed. ## What held it together Not a politics. The people gathered under the label disagreed with each other on most substantive questions, and the disagreements became public and unresolvable — there was …