Starting today I will begin phasing out short-form content.

Following the huge success of TikTok it feels like every app has shifted to short-form content and now mainly use their platforms to push this upon us. The algorithmic feed goal-seeking for user time is having negative impacts on people and content in general. On top of this, we cannot escape it. For all the features and options these platforms offer, they don’t let users hide and restrict short-form content.

The current impact on humans is pretty obvious. They have taken over, and everywhere you go you will see (and probably hear) people of all ages scrolling through their feed to fill any small chunk of time. The brain loves it. To be clear here, I am not a complete hater of these. Watching some of this content can be enjoyable and in some situations it is the perfect content to pass the time. It is more how quickly they have taken over, and how addictive the feeds are.

I’ve seen a lot of doomerism around the long term impacts this style of content could have on people. None of these impacts are positive and hence are an additional driver pushing me away from this content.

Other Impacts#

Impacts on people aside, the algorithms are ruining content. I acknowledge that online content has shown rapid change since it’s introduction with not all of the changes being positive but this current step feels pretty bad.

Everything becomes a video#

It feels like it has become the default medium for sharing various types of information, even if it doesn’t really make sense. Somewhat akin to ‘When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail’, all content has become a short-form video.

Want to share a list of your 10 must visit places in a country? Make a video exclusively of B-roll and stock footage, whilst listing the items in the content description.

Want to share other people’s content with your audience? Stare at the camera nodding and pointing to the pictures/video overlaid on the screen.

All the content is disposable#

The frustrating thing I find with all this content is how hard it is to bookmark and view things again. Sure, the apps themselves often have a bookmark feature but to find the post I have to scroll through thumbnails of all the saved posts to determine what it is I am looking for. This feels like common knowledge as you will often see users re-posting content rather than sharing the existing content.

What I Will Do#

My goal is to make a conscious effort to not view short-form content for at least 1 month. During this time I will be keeping the apps installed for their other features so there is a good chance that muscle memory will lead me to a feed at some point. I’m not particularly fussed with this as I should notice pretty quickly, and a slip up like this doesn’t go against the spirit of the challenge.