I am a dilettante. I am eclectic. I listen to some episodes of some podcasts. I have listened to some Bob Dylan songs (I even owned one of his albums on CD: Blonde on Blonde). Most things I am exposed to come from a combination of non-systematic searches and playing. That's not to say I never go for depth. When I do, however, I usually can't shut up about it, like Shakespeare or the Daodejing.
With the disclaimer out of the way, I will now explore the question of why so many assume by default that when someone mentions anything they are therefore a fanatic of that thing. Here are 6 ideas
1/ Many people have exceedingly poor idea/information diets, and this fact has grown to be common knowledge.
There is an analogy to this and our current crisis of obesity. There are just so many things that aren't very nourishing but still quite appealing. So it is with food, and so it is with information. In both cases, the situation arose because if there was any way to hack into desire centers, capitalism was going to find it, and once any hack was found, it would be be replicated to the breaking point, -- and past it, unless acted upon by an outside force.
Because of this, any information more complex than informational junk food that somehow breaks through probably represents a huge portion of someone's intellectual pie chart. It's not just that the person in question might prefer to have fewer ideas, they simple don't have other ideas. Still, that brings us to . . .
2/ Many people prefer to have fewer ideas.
In the eternal struggle of fox and hedgehog, hedgehog is winning. For one thing, most people like to conserve mental energy. While some freaks like myself don't, it is often quite mal-adaptive. Also, many of the best mental junk food hacks to desire are through identity, giving psycho-social incentives to be a fanatic for a small set of easily definable ideas. Combining signaling with mental laziness means many people will endorse ideas they haven't even explored for themselves, once they see whose side it is on. These people are more than happy to prop up the game that we are all devoted to anything we mention.
3/ Fanatical endorsement is a mode of American salesmanship.
This mode is clearly related to all those smiling faces and the often pointed-out (near?) orgasm in advertisements for every product. You can't just like wine, you are now a wine freak. Everything is "the best." And there are existential stakes to this "bestness" . . . every time. That these people are lying con artists doesn't stop their effectiveness, particularly in the aggregate -- meaning, they need to get as many people doing it as possible. Why can't you just be more confident? After all, it's very important to learn how to sale yourself. And any small scrap of something you consume is now a part of you . . . ergo sale that with complete confidence. QED.
(Another case where I have found it to be true that winning is for losers.)
4/ It makes for an easy attack.
In the maelstrom of the identity wars, the modern consumer of indignity on the go is always looking for easy (ie low mental effort) ways to make bad faith arguments. Guilt by association fits the bill. This pattern of attack is also asymmetrical, here meaning it takes more time and energy to defend against the attack than to make it. (Online meme warfare is all about these types of asymmetries. Cp "Okay, Boomer").
5/ We live in the information age.
Thus we feel that a whole body of work is readily available. Though we now live in a post- "The Corporations and Governments Strike Back" world (see), and therefore this might now entail considerable expense to collect, it is convenient to continue assuming everything is easy to track down, especially when combined with some combination of the other reasons listed.
6/ The stunning mission-creep of academia leaves the impression that that everything is academia.
Thus, everyone is an expert and everything needs a highly specific citation, if not a footnote. With that said, like most things in the era of appearances, this is a show. Many academics still fall prey to what I listed above: 1) poor info diet 2) hedgehoging 3) signaling 4) bad faith attacks and 5) placing undue burdens based on techno utopianism. (While I'm at it, keep bragging about all the books you haven't read, you philistines. It wouldn't be that interesting to your gathering if they weren't also assholes). But let's all be fake experts, shall we?
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Because of the reasons #5 and #6, I have started more and more to cite many things more loosely. Most of the greatest essays were written by people not under a system of publish or perish, and so they just gestured towards other works, assuming either you've read the text, will read it (if interesting enough), or will take the author's word that they are doing justice to the idea so we can all just move on. It feels better to write that and lets me sticking to the ideologies of the system.
This is a strong argument for a bibliography at the end rather than a footnote aligned to a specific claim. A bibliography says "if you want to know all I know, read these books. Otherwise, take what I'm saying as a starting point since you haven't done your work in the field yet." Whereas a citation aligned to every claim exists in academia because it is expected that enough background knowledge exists on the part of the reader to get into granular sub-debates. Anyone who has spent any amount of time online arguing with people should see how ridiculous that assumption is.
