Joe Weisenthal's 'AI Orality and the Golden Age of Grift' — why shameless grift is a feature of oral internet culture
Aug 20, 2025
Key Points
- Social media's oral culture has collapsed the distinction between merit and virality, allowing shameless grift to operate openly alongside legitimate business because both are judged solely by wealth and attention.
- Without written reference material and formal reasoning, oral cultures default to 'do this to get rich' over 'do this because it's right,' erasing moral categories and making bad behavior acceptable if it succeeds.
- Serial failures by figures like Chamath Palihapitiya still attract capital because the oral culture treats outcome as the only metric; the question of whether one success justifies repeated attempts dissolves in continuous back-and-forth commentary.
Summary
Joe Weisenthal argues that oral internet culture, where meaning exists in rolling conversations that appear and disappear instantly, has fundamentally altered what counts as legitimate success. This shift enables what he calls a golden age of grift, where shameless fraud operates openly alongside genuine enterprise.
Oral cultures prioritize one-upmanship and combativeness over analytical thought, according to Walter Ong's "Orality and Literacy." They package information as memorable, repeatable, viral units rather than comprehensive arguments. Writing enabled abstraction, definition, and systematic moral reasoning. But social platforms have reverted us to orality, where everything becomes bidirectional commentary: people fave, repost, quote, and dunk in real time.
This shift has erased the distinction between merit and virality. Wealthy people are asked for expertise in domains they know nothing about simply because they succeeded in one. The concept of "selling out" peaked around 2008 and has since vanished. Products now market themselves as "viral," treating a temporary moment of attention as a permanent product attribute, even though virality by definition burns out.
Without written reference material and formal reasoning, oral cultures struggle to discuss abstract moral categories. Moral instruction becomes "do this to get rich" rather than "do this because it's right." In ancient Greece, Havelock's reading of Plato identifies this problem: younger generations learn that reputation and material reward matter more than actual virtue. Bad behavior becomes acceptable if it achieves good outcomes. The result is cynicism baked into the system.
If success is the only benchmark that matters, what distinguishes a semiconductor company from a crypto pump-and-dump? Both make investors rich. Oral culture defaults to "they're equally valid" because the energy cost of distinguishing them exceeds the reward in a medium that prizes immediate combat and one-upmanship.
Counterarguments exist. Market crashes and shorter cycles may eventually restore focus on fundamental business value, and serious investors could become heroes again. Chamath Palihapitiya's track record suggests shamelessness may not be cost-free: SoFi recovered, but Opendoor, Clover Health, and Virgin Galactic failed badly. Yet Chamath can still raise $250 million for another SPAC because he has skills and connections. The question becomes whether one success out of ten justifies repeated attempts, or whether that itself is the oral culture's answer: outcome as the only metric that matters.
In oral culture, contradictions coexist. Grift is visible. Legitimacy is visible. Both are judged by virality and wealth alone. The written-word attempt to separate them dissolves in the speed and noise of continuous back-and-forth commentary.