While I find some of the points this article is making to be valid, I also find its deeply cynical take hard to swallow.

I would prefer to look for the nuance, the diamonds in the rough, and not write off a vast body of (in my view) highly valuable content, just because in later years the output quality of the platform deteriorated. (The latter point being one I don't disagree with).

Firstly, too much weight seems to be being given to the "ideas" part of "Ideas worth spreading". The best TED talks are not just about ideas. Many of the most engaging and inspiring talks are retrospectives on what individuals and teams have done. In fact I'd argue that the most valuable TED talks are about conclusions formed from decades of research, or exciting technological advancements made through thousands of hours of deep work and experimentation.

In other words, they are often talks about about consistent, dedicated execution, as much as they are about ideas.

Like all new ideas, some will have potential and continue to develop, others will not. Some things will come to fruition sooner, others will take vastly longer than expected. This is the nature of progress.

The author seems to think that just because someone presents an idea, or some work that they've been doing, that this somehow constitutes some form of "promise" that can be broken or not delivered on in the future. And if that assumed promise is subsequently broken, this invalidates the whole work and renders the originator of that idea a charlatan.

Rather I prefer to think of it like this; we are watching people who are excited and passionate about their work, who have a sense of belief and conviction in the value of what they're doing. Every truly great (and truly bad) idea throughout time has been presented in this way. Some ideas have legs, others don't. As consumers of content, whether books, online talks, articles, we are not meant to be passive and switch off our critical thinking apparatus. When consuming such material, we should be cognisant of the fact that - of course - the speaker, or author is going to be the strongest, most vocal evangelist for their work.

No one would do anything if they didn't believe in what they were doing.

Some specifics from the article:

> Of course, Gates’s popular and well-shared TED talk — viewed millions of times — didn’t alter the course of history. Neither did any of the other “ideas worth spreading”..

I find the writing off of Gates' pandemic talk baffling. Whatever you think of Gates, I don't really understand the conclusion the author is leading us to here. Are we saying that Gates shouldn't have bothered doing such a talk? That the 43M viewers of that talk left it with their thinking about the risk of worldwide pandemics totally unchanged? Perhaps they would have been better off spending that 10 minutes watching American Idol?

> including Monica Lewinsky’s massively viral speech about how to stop online bullying through compassion and empathy

How to stop online bullying through compassion and empathy. Are we suggesting that fewer people talking about this would be better?

> it feels like we are living in a reality that is the exact opposite of the future envisioned that year. A president took office in part because of his talent for online bullying.

In my view, the logic (or lack of) behind this flow of arguments is rather nonsensical.

I think there is some truth in what the author is saying elsewhere in the article, but for me it's marred by the somewhat irrational points like the above, and difficult to therefore take seriously as a whole.

I could say more about why I think we shouldn't write of TED talks fully and unequivocally, but instead, here are some of my all time favourites. Each one of these are superb and well worth watching. The nature of the medium means that the talks can't go deep into their subjects, and are generally a means to introduce people to ideas and concepts that they may want to follow up on and research further, if so inspired.

There are many more than the few listed below.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - "Flow, the secret to happiness"

https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_flow_the_s...

Chris Hadfield - "What I learned from going blind in space"

https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_hadfield_what_i_learned_from...

Martin Seligman - "The new era of positive psychology"

https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_the_new_era_of_pos...

Carol Dweck - "The power of believing that you can improve"

https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing...

Malcolm Gladwell - "Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce"

https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_choice_happiness_...

Tim Urban - "Inside the mind of a master procrastinator"

https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_mas...

Stephen Hawking - "Questioning the universe"

https://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_hawking_questioning_the_un...

Reggie Watts - "Beats that defy boxes"

https://www.ted.com/talks/reggie_watts_beats_that_defy_boxes

Tim Ferriss - "Why you should define your fears instead of your goals"

https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_ferriss_why_you_should_define_...