| This is purely my experience but the difference between reading a good book vs consuming any other kind of media has been night vs day. I don't think any long article has thoroughly altered my perception about something important in my life. Certainly no Instagram reel has. Short form has been mostly useless, long form has sometimes been useful. But multiple books have had a life-changing impact on me over the course of my life. I read a lot of books in my 20s. Many were forgettable, but a couple totally realigned my view of reality and what was possible and I went off to create a highly unconventional life because of them. I then stopped reading books in my 30s - that time mostly got spent reading web articles and social media instead. This was a stagnant period of my life in many ways. In my 40s I started to wonder if there might be a connection and I started making a conscious effort to start reading books again. Surprise surprise, a few years later I'm experiencing one of the most creative and productive periods of my life. A great book will take a big idea and expound on it from multiple angles. It'll build both a logical and an emotional case for looking at the world differently. For me at least this type of shift in thinking takes reading multiple chapters worth of good arguments get it fully embedded in my brain. Remember, the author of a great book may spend _years_ researching it before he even gets started on the writing part. The best books are next level stuff and I feel no other medium compares. There will of course be many books that don't have this impact and end up being throwaways. I will buy them and if they aren't hooking me I simply don't finish them. I think this all applies equally to fiction and non-fiction. I think there might be some people out there who've experienced this degree of personal change from interacting with certain online communities. That's the only analogue I can think of. For me though it's books. |