I don’t like how writing online is talked about right now.
It makes me uncomfortable.
It’s focused on making writing more easily digestible and understood. Simple words. Direct language. Short sentences. Lots of white space.
There’s a sense in which the idea should shine through the words like light through a pane of glass. Any complicated sentence structure or style or adverbs or big words are like smudges or dirt on the glass that you should eliminate.
They prevent your reader from having direct access to what you want to communicate.
It’s almost like the act of reading should transmit the idea from the page to the reader’s mind like water flowing into a glass.
Obviously, writing is about transmitting ideas. But a lot of writing discourse online makes it seem like this should be as frictionless as possible.
A few points
This is an oversimplification and requires a lot of caveats, but I do think there is a kernel of truth to what I’m saying. And it’s something that I want to push back against. At least a little. But first a few points.
First, like I said this is an exaggeration, but there is truth to it.
Second, I read a lot about “writing online” and a lot about copywriting So that definitely colors my perception as well.
Copywriting is writing that sells or persuades the reader to take action. It’s very different from your normal online writing and definitely veers more harshly in this direction towards simplification and pure communication than normal writing.
Again, I may be mixing my perception a bit for how “writing” and “copywriting” are talked about.. But I still think there is a push for the same in normal online writing as well.
Third, this trend has helped me. I gotta admit it. My writing used to be a lot more convoluted and confusing. I definitely needed to make it clear, simple, and more straightforward. So, don’t get me wrong, there is something good about this approach..
Generally speaking and for the most part, it helps to write in a manner that is simple and clear, especially when you’re writing for an online audience.
The good and the bad
But I also want to resist this trend. Something about this push in online writing makes me feel as if we’re being trained to write for the algorithm.
What do I mean?
First, this “simple writing style” is aimed at creating as little friction between the reader’s mind and the ideas on the screen as possible.
Ideally, the words shouldn’t even get in the way. When I read the words on the screen, it’s almost as if the ideas should pass into my mind as water molecules through a permeable membrane.
This brings to mind the fact that we’re basically all cyborgs now anyway. Even if the internet isn’t literally implanted in our brains yet, it practically is already for all intents and purposes. We’re conditioned to have our phones with us at all times, and this habit is backed up and reinforced by memes.
So even if we’re not literal cyborgs, we’re practical cyborgs now.
Writing/words are just an interface between our minds and the internet. Simple writing makes the process of transmitting ideas into our minds much more frictionless. Simple writing strengthens that cyborg connection between our minds and the devices we carry around that power the algorithm.
Second, the text itself of simple writing is more easily organized and understood by the algorithms.
Algorithms can render and search simple, easy-to-understand text much more efficiently. It’s easier for the algorithms to classify and organize a simple statement like “I’m obsessed with revenge” than the text of Moby Dick. It’s easier to process how memes transmit and communicate nostalgia than Proust.
When you combine the first and second points above…well,, it kind of freaks me out. It makes it seem as if the culture of online writing and the type of writing style espoused online is aimed at making my interaction with ideas online more easily controlled and managed.
Whether or not there is intent, the effect of online writing culture and trends is that there is less separation between my mind and the algorithm. Online writing trends are making it easier for me to be a practical cyborg.
And all I’m saying is that it makes me uncomfortable. No grand conclusions. No conspiracies. Just something that I’ve been thinking about. Something that I’ve been dimly aware of but couldn’t quite put into words.
Conspiracy?
Look, I get it. There are two kinds of people online. People that think technology is being used to control us and turn us into sheep. And people that think any criticism of technology is fear-mongering.
When it comes to technology, everybody’s either Chicken Little or Dr. Pangloss. Kaczynski or Musk. No in-between.
I don’t want to commit to either camp…yet. And I want to take all the lessons I’ve learned to make my writing more clear and more understandable.
But I also want to resist the algorithm.