In addition to the raw time investment, these are also exhausting because they impose on you to remember so much trivia and detail -- what's relevant? -- while

In addition to the raw time investment, these are also exhausting because they impose on you to remember so much trivia and detail -- what's relevant? -- while they are building up to the eventual point. And when you don't know what's ultimately relevant and why you are noting and remembering all this (short term memory, at least), it becomes all the harder to stay on task and focused on / caring about remembering it. I've come to hate the... I won't even call it an essay, because a well-written essay doesn't do this. There's a word for a short-form sort of (auto)-biography, that might apply; it escapes me. Anyway, I've come to hate this form of "news". Even as story-telling, it blows, particularly when it becomes an all-pervasive form.