4 ms·
Nothing too revelatory here, but I can certainly agree with the ideas presented. So many of us are used to a constant, reliable dopamine drip while reading thin
by jihadjihad 8y ago
Nothing too revelatory here, but I can certainly agree with the ideas presented. So many of us are used to a constant, reliable dopamine drip while reading things on the internet that larger texts bore us. The conclusion at the end of the piece is right, though--it just takes willpower.
Choosing delayed gratification in the form of good, rich, long-form writing is a lot like choosing a balanced diet. The benefits of traipsing through difficult texts may not be readily apparent but doing so invariably pays dividends for years to come.
- rayiner 8y agoI find the new trend of long form articles infuriating. Just get to the point, without all the rigamarole! Is there an actual benefit? Or is it just something people say?
- kornakiewicz 8y agoNew trend?
- tjr 8y agoI enjoyed long articles from the ye olde early days of the world wide web, when long articles were long because the author had a lot of interesting things to say. Now, too many articles are long just for the sake of being long. And often peppered with animated / video advertisements for products I do not want.
- SilasX 8y agoAnd giant floating headers, and autoplay, and making me look at it through blinds on mobile.
- tartrate 8y agoI heard that for SEO purposes you want to reach >2000 words. If it's true, for now, you'll be seeing articles around this word count for the same reason you see YouTube videos slightly longer than 10 minutes. Try paying for something that's behind a hard paywall and you'll see shorter articles.
- bitwize 8y agoLong articles are fine but -- remember five-paragraph essays from grade/primary school? Good, because many online journalists seem to have forgotten them. The thing about the five-paragraph essay is its structure scales well to longer articles. You state your main idea up front, then spend a bit of time elaborating on that main idea, then you wrap up. Online articles are like -- they pick a source, say, a college professor or someone with a new book out. Then they spend half the article or more talking about their source's early childhood, failed marriage and/or relationship with their dog, anything that might have a loose tenuous relationship with the main idea. THEN they hit you with the main idea, then they pad out their essay with quotes from the source, whom by now you have "gotten to know". It's infuriating, but I guess the idea is to tease a main idea with the headline, then keep you slogging through barely relevant detail long enough to show you quite a few ads before wrapping up with stuff that relates what was teased to you, even if the body doesn't justify the headline. Clickbait, in other words.
- SilasX 8y agoI agree -- I wouldn't mind long articles as much if they got the main points upfront. But the New Yorkers of the world don't do that. They're obsessed with starting in media res with some anecdote that gives painstaking details about the subject's mannerisms or appearance or fashion sense. When I want people to summarize links they post, it's not because I have a short attention span or categorically refuse to read them. It's because I want to know the broad sketches of what it's claiming so that I know whether I need the extra detail (sorry, "color") it provides vs. whether it's citing a study or argument I'm already familiar with (or is even a relevant point to make).
- technofiend 8y agoWell that and scanning text for fast insight combined with your current knowledge is a kind of skill. I can't tell you how many P1s I've solved with 5-10 mins of googling and a gut check.