Late to the Michael Hobbes Party

I am so very late to awareness of Michael Hobbes. I first heard about him from Daughter Number Three-Point-One because of his role in the podcast You're Wrong About. By the time I caught on, he was leaving it.

I've been following him on Twitter for about six months, I think. 

Here are two related examples of why he's great:

• An essay from October 2021 called The Methods of Moral Panic Journalism. It starts with the famous case of the too-hot McDonald's coffee (which was also the subject of a You're Wrong About podcast), and then proceeds to set out the defining characteristics of stories about moral panics. At the time Hobbes wrote, the Atlantic had just published article that was getting a lot of attention, but which Hobbes showed fit the description of moral panic journalism.
• More recently, he created what I think is his first video, called Is Cancel Culture Really a Threat to America? It takes the approach that "cancel culture" is just another moral panic, and examines how it fits the criteria he has outlined.

He's a thorough researcher and a good writer, and now an entertaining maker of at least one video.

I am happy to finally have caught on.

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(I just realized this is a Media Goodness post about Media Weirdness.)