The monetization of the feedback model has begun to seem to me to be perhaps the single most important characteristic of the post-WWII literary and academic culture. ‘Give me a 5-star rating,’ the Zomato food delivery person tells me after thanking me for the tip; ‘I hope you’ll give me an A,’ a student tells me after only a few classes in the semester; ‘Show me some love by giving my book a good rating on Amazon and Goodreads,’ says a writer on their social media; ‘I hope the students don’t give me a poor rating for not praising their essays,’ said a colleague to me on WhatsApp; Are you the Sumana Roy who wrote “Asp72 of Pro-Peptide is an Important pH Sensor in the Zymogen…”? asks Academia.edu; a Paula from somewhere has quoted from some essay I wrote in my last life – if I want to know more, I will have to buy a subscription or pay a membership fee; I get an email from someone whose Gmail signature declares that they are the ‘second-most cited academic in India’.