4 ms·
Here's the thing: many people here had no trouble comprehending the blog post. We understood the author's intent just fine, despite living in the same "engageme
by lapcat 3y ago
Here's the thing: many people here had no trouble comprehending the blog post. We understood the author's intent just fine, despite living in the same "engagement-driven information economy" as everyone else.
Most blog posts are unpaid labor. It's not blogger's job to explain everything to everyone, because blogging is not their job. As a frequent blogger myself, if I had to dumb down my blog posts for the dumbest, most inattentive readers, then that in itself would be a good reason not to blog at all. I'm just not interested in that crap. I write for an "intelligent" audience, and I don't care if that sounds elitist.
If you paid for a product, then you have the right to complain. But with blog posts, you're consuming text for free. You can choose not to consume it fully, and that's fine, but pedantically telling bloggers to change their writing style is stepping over the line. Bloggers have no obligation whatsoever to cater to the inattentive, or whomever you believe they need to cater to.
If everyone was missing the point of a blog post, that would indicate a problem with the writing. But that's not the case here.
- haswell 3y agoI agree with almost everything you wrote here, and as a blogger, I'm sensitive to the same things you're calling out. I just argued something similar re: 'don't complain if you didn't pay' in an unrelated thread. I shared a piece of feedback earlier in the thread based on what I saw to be the source of confusion. I'm not arguing that bloggers have to explain everything to everyone. I'm not arguing that bloggers have an obligation to cater to the lowest common denominator. And I'm not arguing that everyone is missing the point. To bring this back to where I started, in a meta-discussion about people getting confused about the meaning of the words written, the only point I was trying to make was that this is happening for an understandable reason, and this reason goes away entirely with a slight reframing without fundamentally changing anything. I'm not even arguing that my specific reframing is the best way to do it or that the author must go change anything. I think my perspective may make more sense if you imagine that I'm trying to understand why people are misunderstanding, and that I find it interesting to explore those reasons. I find this interesting for admittedly selfish reasons: like most bloggers, I want people who care enough to read my stuff to understand the words I write. Discussions like this help clarify where the pitfalls exist. In a post about writing blog posts, such an exploration seems appropriate.
- lapcat 3y ago> this is happening for an understandable reason, I agree. > and this reason goes away entirely with a slight reframing without fundamentally changing anything. I disagree, because I disagree with your diagnosis of why it's happening.