One of the weirdest yet important trends I saw in my years at Cracked is something that is rarely discussed: As readers migrated from browsing on desktop to mobile, their preferences and behavior changed completely, but NOT because readers got dumber/worse (they didn't). THREAD!
On mobile, all reader preferences or tastes were soon replaced by just one: URGENCY. Any piece that was a little creative or playful in its delivery or that drove home its point in an ironic or backhanded way, was traffic death. Everything had to be directly stating facts. 2/
In the desktop era, readers would bookmark a site and just visit every day to see what fun thing you'd planned. On a phone, readers would browse some link aggregator (reddit, facebook, whatever) and only tap on the links that seemed the most urgent. 3/
This is why, industry-wide, there was such a gravitation toward "you won't believe what happened next" headlines. Because readers weren't as loyal to specific creators, every site was trying to create the most urgent headline that would stand out on a list of links. 4/
For us, at one time we'd mock movie plot holes by, say, writing or photoshopping the implications of that plot hole, meaning it was several (hopefully) clever steps removed from just stating the point. As more and more readers were browsing on a phone- 5/
-the only version that would work was a straightforward, "20 Plot Holes In Famous Movies." Even the tiniest veneer of whimsical polish would murder traffic. Say, if you asked people to photoshop those plot holes into movie posters, or something like that. 6/
Because promising a list of plot holes has some urgency (a plot hole changes how you see a movie). Promising that we're going to have fun playing with plot holes and genre conventions didn't have as much urgency. "No time to play around, just inject me with the info." 7/
And no, it's not shorter attention spans. Audiences will listen to a podcast or YouTube series that's 25 hours long. But that's the point: When we want nuanced deep dives, we put in earbuds and listen passively while doing something else... 8/
When they're actively browsing text, they wanted data and they wanted it fast and distilled down to its clearest/shortest form. We browse as if a bomb will go off if we spend too long on any one thing. The device trains that behavior. 9/
"Who cares about how movie plot holes are delivered?" No one. But now imagine that same phenomenon when trying to explore the morality of a subject. The article you want to write is, "This movie is great but this plot has interesting/weird moral implications" 10/
In the mobile era, the "urgent" version of that article is "This movie you THINK is good is actually PROBLEMATIC and is thus CANCELLED." All nuance is gone - publications are almost trying to create a fight-or-flight response. "This article is going to kill Batman for you!" 11/
It seems to me like the implications are enormous. The internet as fed through your phone seems to light up a completely different part of the brain than that same internet fed through a PC. Wanting ideas delivered as efficiently as possible is reasonable but also very bad. 12/
Especially when, say, you are facing an incredibly difficult societal problem that requires complex solutions with nuanced rules and confusing cost/benefit analyses. "Social distancing" or "reopening" aren't yes/no propositions, there's a spectrum of ways to do them... 13/
ie, walking alone in an open park is very safe. But when trying to use your phone to get clear guidance, it's awfully hard to cut through the noise of "Here's another headline about a politician/company that wants you to DIE". But that's how content works in the mobile era. END.
Anyway I have left behind that industry as my full time employment and now focus on writing/relentlessly promoting my gruesome but ridiculous novels, my most famous one is $2.99 on Kindle this month: amazon.com/John-Dies-End-… Check the reader review score!
