The medium is the message, truly. However, coincidentally, just this morning before hitting HN I was scanning through my emails from substack writers and thinki

The medium is the message, truly. However, coincidentally, just this morning before hitting HN I was scanning through my emails from substack writers and thinking how even though I was putting together material and seriously considering writing a blog, I didn't want to become like them. It's not just Medium, and while I get the sentiment, it's perhaps a bit unfair to single them out. When I wanted to write, I wanted to create the experience of curling up with a good book that changes how you relate to the world after. I don't want to be a part of someones community of subscribers, I want to become someone who has read this thing. That's what books were and represented. Online, there is zero investment in anything we read. It's what people do with wasted time, and in this sense a blog can only be as good as a recycled waste product. There is no value created by investing it in reading a blog, it is not enriching whereas finishing a book made you a kind of steward for that experience and interpretation. This was the difference, this idea of reading and writing as an enriching experience. The largest possible impact a blog post can have is to shift or dent a narrative - but what if you don't value the attention of people whose experience is an artifact of narrative? Only a decade ago, the idea of someone having a conversation about the characters in supermarket tabloids was kind of pitiful, but now we seem to live in a competition where everyone online tries to angle and align themselves to these dramas. It's not Medium, it's the medium, and the whole thing is an inferior substitute to living.