http://conatusnews.com/rise-intellectual-dark-web/
edit:
I made a thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16189120
http://conatusnews.com/rise-intellectual-dark-web/
edit:
I made a thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16189120
YouTube debates held by self-made moderators are a sort of spectator sport where differing schools of thought are battling it out rhetorically. The audiences are people who are honed by online debate groups and have experience in one-liner Tweets and trolling to prove a point.
When you think about it, it's not all that new of a concept -- the classical philosophers had their "schools" but they weren't like formal institutions with faculty. Philosophers had their followers or acolytes, not matriculated registered students. Maybe the more calcified academic structures we see starting to break down are the aberration rather than the norm.