Tuesday, May 20, 2025

age of engagement

The David Perell interview: How to resonate in the “age of engagement”

You no longer need an army of followers to stand out as a writer — “one great piece is all it takes,” says Perell.

Big Think Business and Big Think

May 20

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This essay is an installment of The Long Game, a Big Think Business column focused on the philosophy and practice of long-term thinking by Eric Markowitz, a partner at Nightview Capital. Subscribe to his weekly newsletter, The Nightcrawler, here.

David Perell has a way of making the internet feel small in the best possible sense. A gifted writer and even better connector, he’s built a career not just on publishing great ideas — but on knowing how to share them in a way that actually lands. His work lives at the intersection of writing, community-building, and long-term thinking.

What makes Perell stand out is that he doesn’t chase the typical metrics. He’s not particularly interested in how often you post or how many followers you have. What he really cares about is engagement. Real connection. Resonance. That’s the thing, he argues, that compounds over time.

In this conversation, we talk about how writing has changed — and what it takes to stand out now. Perell explains why we’re moving beyond the “age of distribution” (where winning meant getting your content seen) into something more meaningful: an “age of engagement,” where the real currency is trust and attention from the right people, not just more people.

He shares stories, frameworks, and lessons from teaching thousands of writers, and talks about why writing online is still the most powerful way to build a network. Our discussion explores the ways “going viral” has evolved, as Perell takes a deeper look at how to create things that last — and why being useful, honest, and human is the best long-term strategy there is.

If you’re a writer, thinker, founder, or just curious about where the internet’s heading, this one’s for you.

Eric Markowitz: What made you interested in writing?

David Perell: I’m not even sure it’s writing itself that I’m most interested in. Writing became the prism. It’s how I started understanding the world — and how the world started understanding me. Back in college, I had no clear career path. But I started noticing that people who were writing online, especially on Twitter, were getting all these incredible opportunities. They were meeting interesting people, building communities. So I jumped in.

At first, I was just trying to publish and see what would happen. But quickly, writing turned into a way to clarify my own thinking, and more importantly, to transmit ideas. I started calling it a “serendipity vehicle.” You put out a signal, and it’s as if thousands of little minions, who work 24/7, carry your ideas to people who think like you and are interested in the same things you are. It’s this powerful matching engine.

Eventually people began asking, “Can you teach me how to write?” So I leaned into that, branded myself as The Writing Guy. But really, zooming out, what I care about is helping people crystallize ideas and share them in ways that resonate and attract like-minded people. That’s where the real value is.

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Eric Markowitz: You’ve described writing as a way to build a network. That’s an under-appreciated idea. Can you go deeper?

David Perell: Totally. I read something that stuck with me: as we grow older, it gets harder to meet people who truly resonate with us. That’s just how life works — unless you’re publishing ideas.

The people who put their stories and expertise out there unlock an entirely different game. What you’re really doing is tapping a tuning fork. You send out a narrow frequency, and the internet delivers it to the people most likely to resonate. People decry social media algorithms, but the internet’s ability to match people is one of the modern world’s greatest gifts.

I’ve seen it play out countless times. One story that stands out: I started following this anonymous Twitter account called The Cultural Tutor. He was posting these threads on history and art, and I thought — who is this? I DM’d him. Turns out he was a 24-year-old living with his parents, working at McDonald’s. He’d written a few unpublished novels, read obsessively his whole life, and finally started writing publicly because his friends pushed him to do it.

Polish isn’t persuasive anymore. The best creators admit mistakes. They let people in.

I said, “What would it take for you to do this full-time?” He said, “£30,000 a year.” I had some investor backing at the time, so I offered to fund him. Just one thread a day. And he did — every day for over 500 days. Now he’s got 1.7 million followers, a Penguin Random House book deal, and we’re talking about making a documentary together. All because he had a repository of interesting ideas, which he found the courage to publish instead of keeping them to himself.

Eric Markowitz: For most of history, the hard parts of writing were creation and distribution. But now, with AI, creation is easier than ever.

David Perell: Absolutely. I taught writing for six years, and fear of imperfection was always the big hurdle. But with AI, that fear is greatly reduced. At worst, your writing sounds generic — but it’s not going to be full of typos. Just by using the tools thoughtfully, almost anyone can be a 7 out of 10 writer now.

That said, AI isn’t a panacea. It won’t give you great ideas. You still have to bring the originality, the lived experience. But it’s an incredible tool to help refine, poke holes, reframe. I use it to stress-test my thinking, generate analogies, or even rewrite something in the style of a comedian like Theo Von — just to see it differently.

Still, the real power comes from the person. You need: one, some baseline writing ability (which AI can now help with); two, original thoughts or stories; and three, the courage to put it out there. That last one is still the biggest hurdle for people.

Eric Markowitz: You’ve talked about separating signal from noise. How do you create writing that actually resonates?

David Perell: I always return to two things: personality and perspective. Do you sound like a real person? Are you sharing something that isn’t just consensus? One interesting trick: AI is great at detecting consensus. If ChatGPT agrees with you, that might mean your take is already mainstream. But if it resists — if it won’t validate your idea — that could be a sign you’re onto something original. The real signal is often what AI doesn’t recognize as obvious.

Eric Markowitz: I think more and more companies are realizing they need to act like media companies.

David Perell: Completely. I think more and more companies are realizing they need to fill the vacuum left by legacy media. Meanwhile, individuals and companies are building in-house content machines. They’re telling their stories directly—and often more compellingly—than legacy press ever did.

Even politics is following this shift. Look at the last few election cycles. Politicians who embrace podcasts and long-form interviews are building real trust. It reminds me of FDR’s fireside chats — intimate, unfiltered, human. People have learned to see through teleprompter speeches. They want to see “the real you.” The less polished version that only your friends used to see.

Eric Markowitz: So much of this comes down to trust. You can’t fake it.

David Perell: Exactly. People now see that not all that glitters is gold. Polish isn’t persuasive anymore. The best creators admit mistakes. They let people in. And no, this isn’t about trauma dumping in public, but people do want to feel like they know you. This is one reason why big brand campaigns don’t work like they used to.

Now that every major social media platform has become more like TikTok, the best ideas can spread farther, even from relatively unknown people.

Eric Markowitz: What about format? Are you more focused on long-form or short-form content?

David Perell: Both. I love [investor] Balaji Srinivasan’s line: “The internet increases variance.” You get more long-form and more short-form now. Colin and Samir introduced a concept I love called “memorable views.” Forget raw impressions. What matters is creating something so valuable that someone remembers it, builds a relationship with it, and maybe even with you. That’s leverage.

Eric Markowitz: Let’s talk consistency. You’ve said we’ve shifted from an “age of distribution” to an “age of engagement.” What does that mean?

David Perell: The age of distribution was about getting your work seen. You’d post on social, drive people to a newsletter. Audience growth was slow but sticky, like the revenues of a SaaS company. Consistency was everything. Publish three times a week, grow your list, build over time.

But now? We’re in the age of engagement. If you publish something that pops, it doesn’t matter if you have 100 or 100,000 followers. The algorithm will push it. Even tiny accounts can get millions of impressions because reach is decreasingly about how many followers you have and increasingly about how much people are engaging with what you’ve shared.

Ten years ago, I would’ve taken A+ consistency with B content. But now I’d take A+ content with B consistency.

Eric Markowitz: So you’re optimizing for spikes, not just consistency?

David Perell: If you want to reach top people, it’s all about quality. One of my favorite examples is Leopold Aschenbrenner. He was relatively unknown in the public space, then he wrote an [extended] essay on AI and “situational awareness.” Within 24 hours, every major thinker in Silicon Valley was talking about it. One great piece is all it takes. That’s the age of engagement.

Eric Markowitz: Final question. Is the age of engagement only happening on X, or has it come for other platforms too?

David Perell: TikTok was first, actually. I call its algorithm the NFL RedZone of social media, where the algorithm got way less predictable because of its focus on highlights. People like to bash the algorithms, but their revealed preferences tell a different story. Now that every major social media platform has become more like TikTok, the best ideas can spread farther now, even from relatively unknown people. That’s why you hear so many stories about how some rando teenager in the middle of South Dakota gets famous on TikTok before their parents even know they have a TikTok account.

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