The Making of Zander Conley
Alex Conley graduated from Oxford with a first in philosophy and a second in political science. He became an influencer.
If the ancient world had prophets, philosophers, poets, saints and tyrants, then today we have influencers. A philosopher attempts to discover truth. An influencer attempts to discover what truth is currently performing well.
Alex began his YouTube channel while living with his parents. One end of his bedroom contained over four hundred books, a camera, a ring light, and an office chair from IKEA. Books were carefully arranged by intellectual importance. He called the channel The Skeptic.
Not because he was skeptical of everything. Nobody has that kind of energy. Other than Descartes. Rather, he was skeptical of religion, romanticism, common sense, poetry, nostalgia, objective beauty, and any sentence beginning with “My grandmother always used to say...”
But he never questioned skepticism itself.
His early videos bore titles such as Deconstructing Ly Jordan on Religion and Sam Pisseur is Wrong About Morality. His growing subscriber base liked his confidence. They liked his accent even more. There is something deeply reassuring about a twenty-four-year-old taking on the old guard.
The attack on Ly Jordan was devastating. Alex read one paragraph aloud. He paused. Raised one eyebrow. Looked directly into the camera. “Interesting.” He then spent forty-three minutes explaining why Jordan’s first premise assumed its conclusion.
The comments declared Jordan “destroyed.” Sam Pisseur received similar treatment. Alex proceeded to explain that morality could not possibly be objective because cultures disagreed. This argument was considered original by his new fans.
Soon the impossible happened. The people he criticized invited him onto their own shows. The algorithm smiled.
“Hey,” people began saying. “This kid is good. He’s talking with Ly Jordan and Sam Pissuer!”
Contrary to popular opinion, having popular opinions is hard work—it’s much easier to cast doubt upon the beliefs of others. Entire civilizations through history have been built and destroyed upon this insight. For example, every American election cycle. One generation is against racism. The next against being woke.
Alex promised repeatedly that his own positive philosophy was coming. “Next month,” he assured everyone. It remained next month for almost twelve years. He was, however, remarkably disciplined in his rituals.
Every morning at precisely 6:17 he made coffee, opened ChatGPT, and typed:
“Good morning, old friend.”
“Good morning! How can I help today?”
“I’d like us to think together.”
He never asked direct questions. That would have implied dependence. Instead he wrote things like, “Many intelligent people have wondered whether consciousness...”
Before recording an interview, Alex insisted upon exactly twenty-two minutes of personal silence. “Ideas,” he explained, “must be allowed to arrive.”
His new producer—he was now making some money and dreaming about moving out of his parents’ house— would point out that the ideas sounded remarkably similar before and after arriving.
As the years passed, Alex’s philosophy developed with astonishing speed. There was the Skeptical Period. The Stoic Period. The Bayesian Period. The Mindfulness Period. The Existential Period. The Christian-But-Only-The-Good-Bits Period. The Aristotelian Revival. The Panpsychist Awakening. The Anti-Panpsychist Correction. His subscribers found this reassuring.
One week he explained that science alone could answer humanity’s deepest questions. Two years later science had become hopelessly reductionist. Now the great mysteries required myth.
And poetry. And silence. Mostly silence.
He had once regarded phenomenology as intellectual theater. Now he could not order lunch without mentioning Being. He had an empiricist epistemology and a metaphysical ontology.
Or was it a metaphysical epistemology and an empiricist ontology? It depended mostly upon breakfast. Eggs generally produced realism. Cereal leaned toward idealism. Nobody knows what marmalade did. And toast made him fart.
His shoes changed as well. He abandoned fashionable white trainers for handmade leather sandals crafted by a man in Cornwall who accepted payment only in conversation . . . and the occasional ad.
This struck Alex as profound.
The sandals became famous from his many stage performances. He travelled most of the time now. Photographs of the sandals circulated online. Students asked where they might purchase a pair. They encouraged him to start a political movement and go from campus to campus making undergraduates look dumb. He tried it and doubled his followers.
Then came the AI age. Not ChatGPT. Real AI. Nobody wanted to interview philosophers anymore. Why interview one philosopher when AI had already digested them all? Alex adapted. His most popular series became conversations with increasingly specialized artificial intelligences. One model represented Nietzche. Another represented Hegel. A third represented “the collective moral intuitions of humanity.”
This one apologized frequently.
Alex published the transcripts on Substack. Then on Prostack. Then on Alexstack.
Eventually they were automatically summarized by another AI for readers who no longer had time to read conversations between humans and machines pretending to be humans. His audience declared these summaries profound. Several AI companies offered him handsome salaries. “I’m not a coder,” he said.
“That’s all right. Come and teach our AI how to be moral,” they pleaded.
By this point everyone agreed that AI companies no longer built intelligence. They merely supplied the morality. Still, the newest startup proudly announced that it would be completely amoral.
As fashions changed, so did Alex. The skeptic had long disappeared. In his place emerged something softer. More mystical. Zander’s—that’s what he was called now— new mustache became strangely important. He began speaking more quietly. Truth, he explained, dislikes loud voices.
Nobody remembers who first suggested holding discussions beneath the apple trees in a small orchard he purchased just outside Oxford. Soon chairs disappeared. Then shoes. The applause stayed.
Visitors sat cross-legged in the grass near Alex’s celebrated sandals while he gently observed things such as, “There are no questions, only answers.”
“The one is in the all and the all is in the one. The one is in two and two is in one.”
“Perhaps consciousness is simply what apples feel while falling. This is what Newton was getting at in his primitive scientific way.”
One week he announced, “All is love.”
He quietly withdrew the statement the following Tuesday. Zander had never actually been in love and worried he had overextended himself. Every Thursday he fasted from certainty.
These became some of his highest-rated talks, and there were critics, naturally. Some insisted Alex had never discovered a philosophy at all. He had merely wandered through other people’s orchards picking their fruit because his bore none. Others argued that this was precisely what philosophy had always been.
His defenders loved him.
“He made us think about everything and nothing,” they said.
His critics agreed.
Alex Conley died peacefully in his late seventies after giving what reviewers unanimously described as “his most nuanced interview.” This was largely because he spoke for only twelve seconds before quietly falling asleep forever.
He was buried beneath an apple tree in his orchard. Pilgrims still come. Some seek wisdom. Some seek content. Every autumn, someone leaves a copy of The Critique of Pure Reason beside the grave.
And every autumn, someone else steals it before morning. Thus philosophy continues.
His tombstone bears a simple inscription.
“ZANDER CONLEY
Friend and Influencer”
Beneath it, the quotation for which he is most remembered:
“The important thing is not to arrive at the truth. It is to keep improving the thumbnail.”
Historians now suspect his actual last words were: “Is the mic on?”