Maybe you shouldn’t open with such provocative statements if you are already aware they’re not fair?
Posting flamebate and expecting people to read until the footnotes isn’t going to get you favourable feedback.
Posting flamebate and expecting people to read until the footnotes isn’t going to get you favourable feedback.
I didn’t get as far as the footnotes because the article glossed over so much nuance at the start that it felt like I was reading something from a 20-something fresh out of college. And by your own admission, you have to read to the footnotes to get to the nuance. Maybe it does get better towards the end, but then that’s a failure of the writing if you have to read the first 90% before you finally get to anything insightful.
Plus it’s not just me that disagreed with the premise of the article. Reading the comments afterwards, others have taken away the same thing I had.
I’m sure you’re a competent author and your other submissions demonstrate more thoughtful insights. But unfortunately this one misses the mark. It’s just far too reductive for far too much of the article.
I do this weird "tell people stuff up front" thing where I don't like clickbait titles, don't prefer the simple thing to the true thing, use opening paragraphs as actual theses - or close to it. If you read the first paragraph, you got the gist. The footnotes are footnotes because having interspersed aside text isn't convenient to write.