At some point over the last two years, self-improvement stopped looking merely like protein powder and cold plunges and started looking like a bedside stack of heavily annotated philosophy paperbacks. The aspirational internet figure is no longer the startup founder optimizing his morning routine from a standing desk, but the person publicly reading Homer and building an elaborate “self-curated curriculum” online. Across TikTok, Substack, YouTube, and Instagram, intellectualism has become aestheticised into a new form of social capital. Knowledge, or at least the visible performance of it, is the new clout.