🍏 Creation of Knowledge

An original autobiographical fiction, 6th November 2025

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Hi Scholar,

This is the third and final instalment of the autobiographical fiction we began in October (read Part 1 and Part 2 here. Out of all the parts of this story, this one contains the least autobiography and the most fiction, because most of the story has not been lived yet. I am aware that these days, happy endings have become rather cliché and unfashionable. However, commentary about academia in any form, is often negative, I felt that this story deserved an optimistic conclusion.

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Creation of Knowledge (A Scholars Quest Part 3)

-Written by The Tatler

Monday, August 28th, 2023

Content

Sitting in his home office, Richard was passing those awkward few minutes before an online meeting starts. It was too early, and if he joined now, he might be the first one there. He checked the time: 8:56 a.m.

He had been surprised when Anne had told him about the PhD creators she was following on Instagram. Who would have thought that on social media there would be an academic niche? He had been even more surprised to stumble upon the social media page for Intellect - a part of one of the world’s largest publishing companies that, in addition to its portfolio of traditional journals, was expanding into blogs, podcasts, and social media content.

So when he had seen - via their Instagram story - that Intellect was looking for temporary scriptwriters and producers for social media content, he had applied, reasoning it was probably better than churning out special issues at Open Horizons Press and waiting to be laid off.

08:59 a.m.

In addition to the usual CV and cover letter, applicants had to pitch a script for a ninety-second Reel. Intellect’s in-house content writers would select scripts they liked and help the applicants polish them before a PhD student, who worked part-time as Intellect’s “on-camera talent”, would deliver them to the camera and post them online. Instead of an interview, the contract would be awarded based on the performance of the video. Richard’s submission, on the retraction crisis in academic publishing, had required significant input from one of the more seasoned writers, but it had also performed well and got him the contract.

09:01 a.m.

A notification appeared on his screen. Meeting “Intellect Weekly Content Planning” was started by host. Richard didn’t move, he’d give it another minute just to be sure.

In truth, he had never created content for social media before, and he still couldn’t be sure if a piece of content would “pop” or not. As the months had gone by, however, he was learning that simple, funny, or shocking content usually performed better than, say, the discovery of a new species of frog. If content must be about a frog, the frog had better glow in the dark, or be so poisonous that you died a horrible death from touching it.

At 09:03 a.m., he clicked “Join Meeting.”

“…a sixty-three percent increase in accounts reached compared to last week,” a balding man with a moustache was saying, “driven primarily by the piece on how Taylor Swift’s accent has evolved over her career and the podcast clip about researchers slipping AI prompts into their papers in case reviewers run them through AI models. What ideas do we have this week, team?”

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