|
|
|
|
|
|
by getlawgdon
2004 days ago
|
|
|
Comments like yours about "slogging through long form writing" are becoming more common. I find it concerning. Your summary bis quite inadequate to me and misses many points while assuming the one you're clarifying is the point. It isn't. Longer writing has great value; let's give it more room. |
|
|
I usually write them when I feel like an article is grossly disrespecting my time, either by being clickbait, obfuscating the topic at hand, or including ridiculous amounts of useless filler (particularly popular: describing faces, living rooms of interviewees, weather when it isn't relevant to the story, etc.)
In this case, the title is clickbait because "Nuclear device" is usually used to refer to nuclear weapons, to the point where Wikipedia has a redirect from "Nuclear device" to "Nuclear weapon". It implies a Broken Arrow/Empty Quiver incident, not a "yet another lost RTG".
Then the article refuses to reveal what it is about for a long time: The first mention of the actual topic is in the fifth paragraph. Until then, I've been fed background information without having any idea which of it is relevant and how, finding it hard to concentrate because I'm trying to figure out WTF the article is even about in the first place.
Long form articles can be good. One of my favorite articles is https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/inside-el-faro-the-w...
It starts by getting to the point: Ship, hurricane, sank, 32 dead. Within the first five sentences, you know the gist of the story. That not only gives you the information you need to decide whether this is worth your time, it is also a promise: It shows that the author is trying to provide information instead of writing as much prose with as little content as possible. Then it dives deep into the topic. At every moment, you know why the stuff you're reading is there.
The Internet too full of garbage to read several pages just to determine whether something is good or garbage.