🦆 Brancaleone's blog

Please write it, do not stream it

I cannot help but notice an even stronger trend of content creators abandoning any written expression, in favour of untamed video or audio streams. One guy had a very cool blog about FIRE and abandoned it completely to devote himself to video streams and become an entertainer; a week ago, a software engineering blogger started focusing on a podcast and I'm afraid it will end up the same way.

Writing forces you to organise your thoughts, divide them up logically and tell a coherent story. Ideas become condensed and accessible. Also easier to discuss, update and comment. Usually, you can go back and re-read at any time, streamed content seems doomed to be a one-off.

Of course reading is cognitively more demanding, but it is also the better option for learning and memory recognition. Not advocating against low-attention means of communication, but if the content is supposed to be educational, written content should be the default (possibly complemented by other mediums).

One annoying thing is the asymmetrical nature of time between creator and listener. When you write an article, you invest X time in writing it, but it only takes ~X/10 time to read it. It takes effort, but it pays off in terms of quality, while providing the best time-to-content ratio for the reader. On the other hand, producing a video stream requires little effort and takes about the same time as the stream itself, but forces the watcher to invest much more time, while retaining less information.

While I cannot deny the power of videos to reach a wider audience, I wish they would more often consider the old-fashioned, forum-nostalgic boomers. These folks like to read ideas summarised in nice blog articles :)

P.S.: This article could have been a 20 minute video on YouTube or a 30 minute podcast, shall I switch?