[ghaff]

>I think a lot of what used to go onto blogs now goes elsewhere

That's been true of me. A paragraph or three that I would once have done as a blog now slip neatly and easily into social media of various sorts. Going to try to do something about that next year but this year ended up crazy for various reasons.

[HeinzStuckeIt]

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.

[bluebarbet]

>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.

[bccdee]

> 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.

[bluebarbet]

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.

[bccdee]

If I see a wall of text, I just read the first couple lines. It's usually not hard to tell whether it interests you or not.

[walterbell]

> nothing to recommend it but some opaque username

Persistent usernames enable history of community contribution and reception.

[HeinzStuckeIt]

Two ordinary paragraphs like one would find in any serious publication, are now enough to make an “impenetrable wall of text”?

You also overlook the fact that many Reddit posts are not links to content. For example, they could be text-post questions posed to a community in order for the OP to receive guidance. This recent culture discouraging substantial discussion about things that are complex and can’t be abbreviated, makes the site less useful that way.

[ghaff]

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.