[ravenstine]

I've slowly come to the same conclusion, though partially in the sense of audiobooks. When someone makes a book, even if it's a relatively short one, that usually means they know enough about the subject and have something valuable enough to say, regardless of whether one agrees with or enjoys the content for its entertainment value.

Although there can be good long-ish form content on the internet, there's simply too much incentive to spew loosely connected ideas that aren't fully formed and serve mostly to get attention. And a lot of it really is just chum to get clicks, however nicely it's presented.

The way I see it, written content on the internet went the way of TED talks. I remember a time when TED was popular, at least in my social class, and now it's pretty widely mocked not only for being vapid but by lowering the barrier to entry via TEDx. Medium is a perfect example of this phenomenon.