What does all this mean for domains outside religion? I'm not actually sure, though there's some rather obvious connections you could draw with people's information-consuming habits in other areas.

"Connections you could draw" seems like an understatement. Coming from a family that wasn't religious but was very political I don't see any significant difference between religious apologia and political apologia.

I'm not even sure I see a difference in function between religious apologia and atheist apologia. Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens --the most prominent anti-apologists-- do not optimize for de-conversion. They are/were popular because of their popularity among unbelievers. They probably have a slightly better ratio of agreeing to disagreeing readers than Christian writes. But that is probably just because there are more Christians. They probably are also slightly more successful at converting, but that is probably just because they are right. I'd bet most people buy their books to feel more secure in their worldview and more confident in their intelligence and ability to win arguments. They confirm beliefs and flatter egos and make it easier for their readers to signal positive traits to their social groups. Same goes for most forms of atheist 'activism' honestly.

The appropriate Hansonism is something like "atheism isn't about God not existing".

(Also, Chris: I think you and I are about to be in the same App Academy Cohort-- saw your name in the emails and recognized you here.)