I suppose I probably am one of the best known living American classicists? But not the top one (top 10 or 20, maybe?) and 'American' is doing a lot of work there, since there are many very prominent classicists outside the USA. In terms of historians, I doubt I am top 20 for public recognition.
As Roman historians specifically go, and “known beyond the field”, I’d say you’re number 2 after Mary Beard. (Leaving out the Tom Hollands/Mike Duncans of the world, who I count as writers and amateur historians)
But certainly, the space for 'historian/classicist outside the university who can support themselves financially doing history/classics' is very very small - not quite 'just me' but awfully close.
I can attest to this. I've been writing my blog Tales of Times Forgotten for almost nine years now and I have 513 posts currently published there. Although the blog generates *some* income, it doesn’t generate anywhere near enough money for any human being to live on. 1/
My blog is supported through a combination of both Google AdSense revenues and Patreon donations. Ad revenues have always fluctuated wildly from month to month. At its peak, through both revenue sources, the blog was earning a total of maybe around $500 a month on a good month. 2/
Revenue for the blog has fallen off significantly since then. Now, I am lucky if it makes half that amount in a month (although, admittedly, I have been posting less frequently than I used to and I don’t plug my Patreon very hard because I don’t like to feel like I’m begging). 3/
The income from the blog has been a helpful supplement, especially while I was in my classics master’s program. It has also opened up some opportunities for me that I would not otherwise have had, but I don’t think it would ever be possible for me to make a living from it. 4/
I also have doubts about the future sustainability of content creation as an alternate career path for academics, especially considering the sheer volume of AI-generated content that has inundated the internet, which tends to bury content made by human experts. 5/
I think the tidal wave of slop will, in particular, make it a lot harder for *new* expert voices to get heard who don't already have an established audience and thus something of a reputation. And it is already really hard to surface even really great material!
Absolutely. In some ways I count myself lucky that I began writing online and built what I have of a platform years before AI content started to take over.
I can see two possible outcomes to the tidal wave of AI slop: 1) People log off and touch grass, because they don't want to read things online anymore. 2) New heavily curated ventures that promise AI-free content emerge, probably at premium prices and behind paywalls to block AI scrapers.
I'd like to think so. Unfortunately, although most people with academic training in a given subject can generally spot AI-generated writing and its deficiencies, many people who don't have academic backgrounds in those subjects can't tell the difference. 1/
Chatbots are adept at imitating the style and sound of academic writing, without the substance. Most people, though, don't know the substance, so the style and sound is the main way they judge whether something is authoritative. 2/
(To clarify the 'best known' metric above is 'best known among the 'lay' public' obviously, whereas in the field I'm still very much 'early career' in terms of my research.)
I can hardly think of any others besides you, and this is coming from an undergrad history major with a sizable number of Classical history books I am familiar with or own. There's a lot of British authors on my shelves, though, now that I think about it.