A few days ago, @wenhaocha1 made an interesting point in our community: Twitter followers might be a much better signal than Google Scholar citations. I’ve been thinking about it over and over these past few days, and I think he’s right. People building AI applications won’t necessarily have a Google Scholar profile. Academic citations can become a kind of intellectual comfort zone, a boundary we draw around ourselves. Sometimes, it’s a way of avoiding the world beyond it. We risk boxing ourselves into a narrow circle, acting as if AI is all about code and math, while LLMs are already transforming industries far beyond our own. The people who truly know how to use AI tools may never publish a paper or accumulate citations. But they’re out there, sharing what they learn and building on X. It’s time to step outside our bubble and embrace the disruption happening beyond it.