Writing for outlets isn't worth it anymore - by Erik Hoel
Writing for outlets isn’t worth it anymore - by Erik Hoel
Section titled “Writing for outlets isn’t worth it anymore - by Erik Hoel”Writing for outlets isn’t worth it anymore
Metadata
Section titled “Metadata”- Author: Erik Hoel
- Full Title: Writing for outlets isn’t worth it anymore - by Erik Hoel Writing for outlets isn’t worth it anymore
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/writing-for-outlets-isnt-worth-it?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Highlights
Section titled “Highlights”- Why write essays online like this? The truth is most people wake up and the first thing they do is look at their phone and read. What they read is not a book. Neither fiction nor nonfiction tomes, nor poetry nor autobiography, no, nothing like that at all. They’ll read social media posts, they’ll read news articles, their emails, sports summaries, they’ll browse Instagram posts or go through comment threads. But they’ll also read an essay. Right away, right with their head still on the pillow. Do you know how powerful—really powerful—that is? This fact is somehow both common knowledge yet woefully unacknowledged. The essay is the native written artform of the internet. At its best an essay is varied, ranging, authoritative but amateurish, stylish, concise but unhurried. It creates the most civilized online discourse due to the context provided by its length, and since communities of voluntary readers are appropriately siloed from each other. The essay is a rare chance to break free from the straitjackets put upon thought by academia and capitalism’s incentive toward hyper-specialization.