After Khorne's output wars, Slaanesh asks: which papers actually matter? The pursuit of Nature-level prestige becomes an addiction without satisfaction.

Slaanesh does not arrive in excess. He arrives in discrimination—the moment when institutions must distinguish excellent work from merely competent output.

This episode explores how academia's prestige economy creates Slaaneshi worship: the endless revision cycles demanded by elite journals, the 27 robustness checks that never quite satisfy reviewers, the addiction to citation counts and impact factors. We examine how individual academics learn to perform excellence rather than inhabit it, how departments create caste systems around journal hierarchies, and how universities optimise entirely for visibility in top-tier venues.

Slaanesh offers seduction through recognition—your work deserves to be seen. But recognition becomes positional. Each Nature paper raises the baseline. Each keynote invitation sharpens the hunger. The anxiety of being eclipsed never recedes.

From the aesthetic torture of Reviewer 2's contradictory demands to the performance of brilliance at conferences, this episode traces how the pursuit of excellence detaches from sufficiency—until scholars compete not to be good, but to be seen as best.

The god of refinement without rest makes success feel insufficient.

More details are available in the book, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GCFWD29C

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