I did a PhD, so not external. Sure one doesn't have to be maximally cynical but a lot of it is self promotion.

And in context: the same can be said about Kaggle, about Youtubers, about music creators etc. Every endeavor is a mix of "pure" promotion of the art and of shameless self promotion and status games. The common factor is humans. My point was, academia is not more pure than the Kaggle guys who fish for industry jobs.