I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how the ways in which we communicate over the internet have affected the content of that communication as a whole.

Within my lifetime, I’ve observed a trend toward faster, shorter, more disposable communication. Compare email, message boards, and blogs to Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Most forums had message length minimums; Twitter famously has a maximum. You could even compare the way Facebook was used when it first became popular to the way it’s used now. Remember Facebook notes? People used to write and read whole paragraphs on Facebook.

The far end of the spectrum is already here, and it isn’t pretty: look at Twitch chat. Then quickly look away. If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

I think we’ve stumbled on some biological glitch in the way our brains process information and are unintentionally exploiting it. There’s some cycle of “see information, understand information, feel good, find next information” that we’ve managed to distill down into seconds. More and more of the popular websites and apps have extremely short “units” of interaction. It takes only a couple seconds to read a tweet, like an Instagram photo, or look at and upvote something on Reddit. I think part of the reason those clickbait list articles pioneered by Buzzfeed are so successful is that they seem like longer content, but “20 things you won’t believe about [blank]” is actually 20 interactions, not one article. “15 cute animals doing [activity]” gives your brain that little reward 15 times, not just once. There’s no over-arching analysis or wider point. Have you ever seen a Buzzfeed article like “10 things only 90s kids will get, and what this implies about that generation” ? I doubt it; the latter part would have far too slow of a payoff.

A few years ago, I started noticing in myself a decreasing ability to focus on one thing for longer than ten or fifteen minutes or so. I think this phenomenon is pretty common among a number of people I’ve talked to, and the consensus seems to be that the internet and new forms of communication like these are mostly to blame. I make a conscious effort now to consume media that is longer than average and requires focus (thank you based longform.org) and that kind of helps, but it’s still hard. As a concrete example, I find /r/youtubehaiku much more addictive than /r/videos, but I think the content I get from /r/videos is much more worthwhile.

Here’s the kicker: I think all of this is Very Bad. It greatly lowers the standard for discussion. There’s no room for subtlety or a complex argument in any of these new platforms. And yet, people are discussing important things on them. Feminism is one example of a topic that I think suffers greatly from this degradation of communication media. It’s a difficult topic that requires a great deal of sensitivity, but I just don’t think there’s a popular platform out there that’s appropriate. The whole gamergate thing was probably the clearest example of this in my mind. I thought both sides of the issue came out looking pretty terrible, because the majority of it happened on Twitter, Reddit, and 4chan. It consisted largely of knee-jerk emotional responses drowning out anyone trying to reach common ground. Even the longer, more nuanced articles were required to have some sort of inflammatory title in order to get any attention at all. I don’t think the discussion as a whole would have proceeded nearly the same way via email, and certainly not in person. Another example of a topic that has been prominent in online discourse more recently is Islam, due to the attack on Charlie Hebdo and following events. Do you think you have a decently well-thought-out opinion about Islam and its role in terrorism? Do you think you could convey it in 140 characters? The fundamental idea of a lot of these technologies is the “wisdom of the masses” - that if everyone has a a very small say, the overall “right” message will come out of that - but this rarely pans out. Mob mentality and emotional responses tend to dominate.

Another effect of these changes in how we communicate is that it’s very easy to reinforce already-held beliefs and further insulate and radicalize yourself. If you’re online, going through the instant gratification loop, there’s no effort required to ignore things you don’t already agree with. Someone posted a link to an article whose headline you don’t like? Just downvote and move on. Contrast this to reading a book, a magazine, or even just three paragraphs. In that case, you’ve invested time and energy to get to the point that you don’t instantly agree with. You’ve got some stake in the game, and I think it makes you more likely to give the opinion a fair shake. It also gives the author more leeway to make a convincing argument. Nobody has ever changed a political opinion with a one-sentence link title; plenty of opinions have been changed by long, thought-out, convincing articles.

I think there’s a need for a new communication platform that addresses these issues. Medium has been getting some traction lately, but frankly I think that’s more because people like the UI. I also see it commonly used as just a hosting platform, with the links to the content on medium getting shared on other platforms, so it’s just as susceptible to the issue of distilling things into link titles. I wonder what would happen if there was a platform that made the opposite restrictions that Twitter, Snapchat, and such make: what if there was a content length minimum, and you could only post once a week, and nothing you posted could ever be deleted? What would you post? Would you want to read what others posted on such a platform?

I don’t know if intellectual backlash can actually beat the monkey-brain feedback loop, and I don’t know what kind of communication channel that would require. But I hope the demand is there, and I hope something good meets it soon.