I think the style essay akin to a punchy, TED-talk style persuasive essay is dead.

Whether or not this author wrote it themselves (I strongly suspect at least an AI editor), the specific style that was, for a time, very attractive has become the hallmark of AI-written prose; and, while the content doesn’t seem wrong from a particular view, it also leaves a taste of waste to me - waste that I spent that time reading something they didn’t write, full of -isms that aren’t theirs, when the thesis could have padded out far less paper.

The word count feels unearned, even if the content is fine.