[ianstormtaylor]

I can't help but feel that this article was written in a format that is the textual equivalent of thin desires…

Every sentence is separated into its own paragraph, like each one is supposed to be revelatory (or maybe tweet-worthy). It's pretty common design knowledge that if you try to emphasize everything, you end up emphasizing nothing. The result is that reading the article feels choppy, and weirdly unsatisfying, since the larger arc of each point is constantly being interrupted.

Why choose such an antithetical form, to what is otherwise an important and deep message?

The only answer that comes to mind is that the author's livelihood, or at least their internal gauge of success, is tied to manipulating readers' thin desires.

[tobyjsullivan]

Reading, I knew someone would comment on it. I actually prefer the style - maybe because my attention span is shot. But I think it’s more because the author made sure each sentence was content heavy. No verbose paragraphs. And paragraphs made of dense sentences are themselves dense and become harder to read.

Reflect on the structure of your own comment. I suspect you were not intentionally trying to be ironic.

Edit: revisiting the article, I’ll allow that the author may have over-done it in some parts. But I think the bias was in the right direction.

[ablob]

A paragraph is a feature designed to help the reader understand the writer's intentions. If it is used all the time, just like here, then it ceases to be helpful in marking breaks in trains of thought; or anything for that matter.

Consider the following excerpt of the post:

  The thick life doesn't scale.

  That's the whole point.

  So: bake bread.

There is absolutely no information there that would warrant three full stops. I also don't know the author nearly well enough to consider pondering its meaning: To my eyes there is only a need to stop and ponder at most once. It is essentially just noise.

There is something to be gained from the text, but it is overblown in size due to what appears to be a lack of time or skill of the author.

PS: If some context is missing in the excerpt: Well to bad that there is no natural marker signifying that a train of thought has concluded (or started).

[unyttigfjelltol]

The prose is self-consciously different, makes the reader work a little harder. One can almost feel a literary water ripple or pebble garden, stillness and simplicity.

Consider an analogy: the writer knows that a reader readily digests concepts in C++ and purposely pivots to something obscure like Pony. The reader says "this is inconvenient, I need to change my process to digest your work" and the author says "that's the point."

[aoeusnth1]

In what way were the sentences content heavy? It's quite repetitive, and often the meaning of a section of it will be split into individual fragments.

I get it.

One sentence pragraphs feel punchy.

It feels like you're writing copy for an Apple ad.

..but it only works when it's in another medium, in a shorter format. In this form, it's just exhausting.

[markburns]

> Reflect on the structure of your own comment

Could you clarify, are you comparing the parent comment to the article?

[0928374082]

> "my attention span is shot"

Maybe you like being restricted to reading in the ad-copy register, in which case go ahead and make virtue of vice, but otherwise: this lack is well within your power to remedy.

[levocardia]

Same reaction - I could immediately tell this person had learned to write on Twitter (or Linkedin), not real meaty writing. I had an English professor who wrote "FORM = CONTENT" on the chalkboard; this article would send him into a fury.

[neuralkoi]

It's not just you. I've read this person's stuff before. Every sentence comes off as if they are presenting the results of a major epiphany.

You can write things which sound pretty. It's the equivalent of wordy sugar. It's much harder to to write things you've learned from life experience or thought deeply about.

Subject your beliefs to the Socratic method. If they've survived your own criticism to the fullest extent and can be validated by your own lived experience, then maybe they've got an inkling of truth and they're worth writing about.

[ghostie_plz]

I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, but not this:

> then maybe they've got an inkling of truth and they're worth writing about.

Ideas don't have to be infallible to be worth writing about. It's a slippery slope to not writing at all.

[velcrovan]

Robin Sloan has called this “ventilated prose”, a phrase I love. (I seem to recall “aerated prose” having also been deployed)

See, e.g., the end of https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/platform-reality/

[fallinditch]

This type of layout - short or 1 sentence paragraphs - has been around since the early days of the web.

An early proponent was the BBC news website, and you can see they still adopt this style.

The BBC found that breaking up text in this way made it easier to read on a web page.

[nostrademons]

News is the ultimate in thin writing, by definition.

I think the article would've been improved by varying sentence structure and paragraph length. There is a time and place for short paragraphs, and they do make things easier to read. However, the whole point the article is making is that many things that are worth doing are not easy, and many things that are easy are not worth doing. It's explicitly advocating for people to engage with the world around them, even if that means they have to face the possibility of changing themselves.

Long-form paragraphs are exactly that: harder to read, but they invite you to grapple with the material that's being written.

[xiaomai]

I think it makes sense to write like this if you're intended audience is already used to consuming "thin" desire media.

[ianstormtaylor]

I agree with you to a degree. I considered that as a reason as well, and "meeting people where they are" in communication design is something I think about a lot.

But if using an approachable format to deliver an alternative message was the strategy, I think we'd see a few places where the author tried to stretch the format slightly, to give a few core ideas more chance to resonate. In which case it could have been a masterful use of an antithetical format, to prove and point and enrich the message.

Instead, since the entire post conforms, it feels much more like an internalized autopilot, or purposefully manipulative technique.

[bee_rider]

Hah, that’s a good point. It’s always interesting to see somebody find a clever little bit of redemption for a widely disliked aspect in an article—nice.

[wagwang]

Also the ideas are just reframing the old maxim of "its not the destination, its the journey".

[nrhrjrjrjtntbt]

It is that but more than that. There are companies trying to profit by selling instant gratificaton.

[aeve890]

>The only answer that comes to mind is that the author's livelihood, or at least their internal gauge of success, is tied to manipulating readers' thin desires.

From the about page:

>Free subscribers get previews of these essays and occasional full posts. Paid subscribers get all essays, the most useful ideas, conversations, and community access.

So maybe you're right.

[luxuryballs]

I really don’t like this new feeling of not knowing if what I’m reading is from a person or a machine but I can’t quantify why it bothers me. I wonder if it will be a temporary thing like in 5 years nobody will ever care again even though the chance of it being a machine might be higher.

[mapontosevenths]

When I was young my parents were scared that the MTV generation couldn't focus long enough to watch the "real news".

Not long ago I feared that twitters short form content was shortening peoples attention spans so much that they would stop being able to appreciate nuance at all... Then came TikTok.

I don't know what comes next, but I promise you it will be worse. Either way, it's a race to the bottom and we're not there yet.

Maybe it will be Max Headroom's blipverts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekg45ub8bsk

[nicbou]

It sounds like a Ted Talk with unnecessarily long poses to let sentences sink in. For some reason I just can't digest this sort of writing.

[lionkor]

Yeah, this feels very much like one of those sites with random quotes that seem deep but aren't, like wisdom.spark.pink.

[micromacrofoot]

It's basically the sort of rot writing that proliferates on linkedin

[throwaway_2494]

I disagree. I feel there is a genuine insight at the core of it.

[peanut-walrus]

Is the message deep and important or was the article attempting to manipulate you into thinking it is?

[poemxo]

Your need to quip about the article's presentation instead of its meaning is a thin desire.

[peanut-walrus]

Presentation and context are important to understand the meaning of a text.

[grvdrm]

I've seen this author's work elsewhere like Substack/Threads.

Good article, good writer.

But this whole post reminds me of a series of 1 or 2-line tweets. And I think that's the point. It's almost written as a series of scheduled posts that dribble out once a day for the next X days. Write once, re-purpose many times.

[Voklen]

I quite like that this is a more unique writing style and in fact would encourage people to write "unusually".

[oggadog]

I immediately stopped reading after I saw the format. Absolutely hate this linkedin style 'everything is deep' posting. It's crap

[testermelon]

In my perspective, this is a style of writing that emphasizes the poetic side of speech. The thin paragraphs you see is a result of a rhythmic decision to make it short burst.

More than anything it seems to make sense to read it out loud in a theatrical performance.

[andai]

So that the people with the most rotted brains -- those caught fully in the thick of thin things! -- stand a chance of reading it.

Source: I talk to zoomers. (Some of them couldn't make it through an article of this length...)

[memonkey]

Didn't really come off as design-y or antithetical form and definitely not manipulating lol, maybe a little poetic or artsy fartsy. Agree that it's important and deep.

[godelski]

Same. It looks like the author is playing with poetry to me. They're clearly playing with the stanza with the similar lines and the contrasting lines. Yeah, it's amateur, but who cares? It tracks with the message.

If anything I think the GP's comment is an example of a thin desire. Being nitpicky/petty to justify internalizing and actually reading the post. There's no lines to read between here, it's plain as day. We are addicted to dismissing things because it's gratifying and easy. It's trivial to find errors or complaints about anything, but it's difficult to actually critique. I'd argue in our thin desires we've conflated the two. It's cargo cult intellectualism. Complaints look similar to critiques in form but they lack the substance, the depth.

[Kholin]

It's like some kind of meta writing, the writing style is proving what it's talking about.

[dynamite-ready]

That's not always the intention behind that style of writing.

Often, when I'm communicating with someone who is either dyslexic, or uses English as a second (or even third or fourth) language, then I make an effort to shorten sentences, and almost make bullet points of them.

It's actually a good exercise for the person writing too. Less can indeed be more.

[chairmansteve]

Still.... the message has value.

[mplewis]

Not really.

[viraptor]

It matches the way she speaks in the videos.

I don't mind that.

It's a vibe.

[megamix]

Sure, but can you at least appreciate the underlying meaning (soul) of the text?

[reincarnate0x14]

It's almost like anti-poetry.

[HPsquared]

"Thin Paragraphs"

[OGEnthusiast]

Possibly AI-generated?