I see people's CVs that have an enormous imbalance between conference papers and publications. They will have gone to 3 or 4 conferences a year, while not having a proportionate number of published articles. I see this in our graduate students all the time.
So the conference paper, instead of being a spur to publishing your research, becomes an easier alternative to publishing. If you can write 4 papers in a year, that's 36 pages. That should be an article or two. Ideally, the ratio should be 1/1. Every conference paper should be the germ of a book chapter or article. You should put the extra work into publishing the paper in expanded form. You might even think of having more articles than presented papers on your cv.
Conferences are fine, but I'd rather see you go to a couple a year, at most, and have two articles that year, than have you go to 5 and have 0 or 1 article.
I see this as a direct opportunity cost of a conference. It takes time to write the paper, to travel to the site, to stay there a few days. This is time taken out of the research basket. The benefits are few, in some cases. You get to talk for 20 minutes to 8 people who may or may not be interested. You might get some feedback, but sometimes you won't. Especially at a conference organized for and by graduate students, you might not make any significant professional contacts.
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Where it starts is needing to go to the MLA to interview, so needing to get a paper in because you don't have enough open credit to just go without funding, so coming up with a paper that WILL get in, which is then a distraction from actual research if you had to go off program to come up with a paper that fits the MLA divisions' current themes.
In my case, also, the point of going to excessive conferences is so as to experience a non-hostile professional atmosphere and to be in the presence of people who do serious research. Just a few days of remembering what it can be like, why one came here in the first place, can make me feel so well that I don't call suicide prevention or anything like that for at least a month afterwards. So that is my reason.
In sum: I don't think people who do what you criticize, do it as a professional strategy but as a survival strategy at the level of daily life. I went to a conference last weekend, although I wasn't in it and didn't go to papers, just went to see people (it was nearby). I should have stayed home and finished an article but I had been beaten up at work all week and had I stayed home, I don't think I'd have finished, but sunk into the wounds somehow.
...Ah, and it's also: conferences aren't an alternative to publishing, they're just better than not publishing AND not going to conferences. It's: at least you got out, at least you had some thoughts, at least you heard papers and talked to people, at least you saw current books. Because the step after you quit the conference circuit is quitting organizations, not having current journal subscriptions (library databases are embargoed 18 months, you know, and library doesn't have subscriptions of its own), not reading current stuff. The result is not giving current courses and not being equipped to even talk to current people.
...And so, once again, what I say about academic advice is: we know these things from graduate school. If we had the situations our professors in graduate school had, we would be doing these things. When we had such situations, we did such things. When we don't, we become the kinds of academics our own institutions are forming us into. We begin to respond to local needs. This does have certain kinds of results, that we, too, regret. But it is not for not knowing how things should be. You can condescend all you want, the rest of us must be so blind and ignorant, but there is no academic who does not know you should publish your conference papers and also not put conference papers ahead of your core research program.
I don't publish my conference talks. I tried and it's just not how my brain works. For me, the ideal strategy is to submit an article for publication and while it's being reviewed go to a conference with part of it as a talk. It's just easier for me this way.
Yes, I like that better, too. The point of being at the conference is to be there, hear other talks. And be seen. I find using it to start an article is dangerous -- I then need to make sure I start, and then have to continue, it's an interruption. And it's nice to present on something you've finished.
But I've really changed my ideas on what conferences are for, living in the sticks. I used to be against graduate student conferences but they are *important* for students in small programs -- they really need to get out and see more people, as well as more professors. And I went to graduate school at a place that had a lot of symposia and so on, and didn't need to travel to them. But now I do. And I've brought a lot of speakers, held a lot of symposia, and it's a huge job and thankless -- I'd rather just go to a good conference. I was awestruck in 2017 at ACLA and ERIP, there was so much good work, and so exciting and inspiring to see. I feel so out of place and out of sorts so much of the time, and I so miss high-level academic atmospheres and the chance to see cutting-edge work being worked out. Yes you can read but the energy of seeing something presented is a different thing, and I like it. Of course travel and schlepping are a drag, but --.
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