Top all-time · #5124
Kevin Munger
Personal blog · kevinmunger.substack.comaiculture
Kevin Munger writes Never Met a Science, a personal blog at kevinmunger.substack.com about ai and culture. Since 2020, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 24 times, most often “In the belly of the MrBeast”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-09, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Kevin Munger's Substack for media theory and critiques of YouTube and MrBeast, the attention economy, academic metrics and academic careers. The comments mostly cite or link the posts as sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
literally how can we understand what the internet is doing to us.
Most-linked posts?
- In the belly of the MrBeast4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-01-14
- Sympathy for the Wordcel3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-02-04
- Elon Musk Drove ~1/3 of Women Off Twitter2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-11-25
- Experiments as Performance Art2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-26
What Hacker News says?
"At this point, we have to accept that younger generations—precisely the people who have been raised on quantified audience feedback for their every creative gesture—have an unrecognizable conception of authenticity."[0] [0] https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/in-the-belly-of-the-mrbea...
Comment linking /p/in-the-belly-of-the-mrbeast
on “TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday”Submitted In the belly of the MrBeast as a story · 511 points
HN discussionOP here -- I like Baudrillard and McLuhan but the media theorist who best captures the present IMO is Flusser: https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/the-discourse-is-the-cybe...
Comment linking /p/the-discourse-is-the-cybernetic-event
on “In the belly of the MrBeast”Submitted Facebook is other people as a story · 223 points
HN discussionRe: interpellation [0]. This was highlighted in a recent article about Mr. Beast [1]. Hadn’t considered this being a truth for her channel, but I can see what you mean. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpellation_(philosophy) [1] https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/in-the-belly-of-the-mrbea...
Comment linking /p/in-the-belly-of-the-mrbeast
on “I'm starting to suspect my work is incompatible with a full-time academic job”Submitted The Tragedy of Stafford Beer (2023) as a story · 57 points
HN discussionYeah, Kevin Munger's book skillfully dissects what he calls "The YouTube Apparatus" [0] The creators aren't really tuning their output based on consumer feedback, they're actually optimizing for the platform's metrics, so it's the (algorithmic) machine incentivizing humans to essentially feed it money. [0] https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/in-the-belly-of-the-mrbea...
Comment linking /p/in-the-belly-of-the-mrbeast
on “The Death of the Web (2024)”Submitted Academia as a d-index measuring contest as a story · 30 points
HN discussionhttps://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/a-confession-i-p-hacked-t... author here -- the follow-up post explains the point...it's an existence proof, that a metric exists which ranks me first....which doesn't mean that we have to care about that metric, but it does mean that we shouldn't be taking any metrics for granted as "real"
Comment linking /p/a-confession-i-p-hacked-the-k-index
on “Academia as a d-index measuring contest”Submitted Elon Musk Drove ~1/3 of Women Off Twitter as a story · 13 points
HN discussionSubmitted Elon Musk Drove ~1/3 of Women Off Twitter as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted Boomer Ballast and the inevitability of intergenerational conflict as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Experiments as Performance Art as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted An Experiment in AI Peer Review as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Experiments as Performance Art as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Scientists should not use LLMs to torture simulated agents as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Sympathy for the Wordcel as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted GPT-3: Informational Hyper-Inflation as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted I still don't think you need to vacuum every week as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Everything Was Rational and Nothing Vibed as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Data is the new oil and we're the dinosaurs as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Sympathy for the Wordcel (2022) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Sympathy for the Wordcel as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why TikTok Is Incompatible with Human Dignity as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
