The rise of the unintellectual dark web

The “intellectual dark web” first came about as a joke told by investor Eric Weinstein. He used the term to categorize a group of academics and commentators who dared to push back against the mainstream left-wing narrative through the use of alternative digital media: figures such as Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

In her 2018 article for the New York Times, “Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web,” Bari Weiss described the intellectual dark web as “a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation … that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now.”