Comment by HeinzStuckeIt 12 hours ago
Social media might be getting less attractive for that, though. Compare Reddit now to ten years ago, and you can see that even on more serious subreddits, everyone’s comments have become very short, often little more than a single line. If one posts a couple of solid paragraphs as a reply, one looks like an autistic weirdo info-bombing.
> This is not primary content
In a forum, the discussion IS primary content. That's the problem: Reddit has shifted away from being a discussion forum toward an endless-scroll content feed.
> Here we're all nobodies to everyone else. For my part I try to remember that fact - and get to the point.
Kind of an odd turn of logic. If being a nobody devalues your anecdotes or tangents, then it equally devalues your point. If, conversely, your point can be valuable in and of itself, then your anecdotes and tangents can be valuable in and of themselves too.
> Yes, here we can scroll past it, but [...] This is not primary content (that's at the top).
Incidentally, you don't have to scroll past anything to reach the content at the top of the page. It's at the top of the page.
My point is that the primary content at the top of the page has a byline. It's already vouched for, somewhat, by the reputation of the domain, or publication, or author. We have an idea of whether to spend our time investigating further. By contrast my rando comment (or yours) has nothing to recommend it but some opaque username. That's why I (and I'm betting most people) will scroll right past the "autistic weirdo"'s wall of text. And why I personally choose to try not to write that text.
There's certainly a general trend towards shorter. At my last company, I was involved with our content folks (and created a fair bit myself). In the course of my time there, longer (say 3,000 word) whitepapers basically went away and most of the other content such as video almost universally got shorter based on monitoring what content people viewed/read and for how long.
>If one posts a couple of solid paragraphs as a reply, one looks like an autistic weirdo info-bombing.
As one should. The rando who spams a discussion thread with an impenetrable wall of text is like that guy who uses their "question" at the end of an in-person panel discussion to ramble incoherently for three minutes. Yes, here we can scroll past it, but it's still presumptious and annoying. This is not primary content (that's at the top). Here we're all nobodies to everyone else. For my part I try to remember that fact - and get to the point.