On Short Form

2026.03.22

XCLIV

[Amusing Ourselves to Death; Instagraphic Society; Sicario Can’t be a Tik Tok; Simplicity Does Not Equal Brevity; The Algo Decides; Sloppification of the World; Silver Linings…]

Thesis: Short form, instant gratification content limits our ability to rationally discuss meaningful, complex ideas.

[Amusing Ourselves to Death]

By the standards of 19th century America, our societal capacity for rationally talking about complex ideas is degenerate at best.

In 1985, Neil Postman published a book called 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' that observed shifts in American society as it moved from a "typographic" society that primarily expressed itself in long from, written word towards a society that expressed itself primarily via of television programming.

It’s hard to reduce his argument to one sentence, but here’s a good one:

In addition to the insidious blending of information and entertainment to the detriment of information, he explains that the medium switch from text to television actually changed what it’s possible to communicate.

And now, his “Age of Show Business” brought in by television has given way to the “Age of Social Media.” Our primary means by which we interface with the world, ideas, and each other has once again shifted as we now live a substantial portion of our lives through social media apps, text, and email hosted on cellphones and computers. Once again, some things we could discuss and communicate in the past are now effectively impossible in this new medium.

My argument is that while the shift is causing more harm than good, it is perhaps possible to live a life that mitigates the harm and maximizes the good.

[Instagraphic Society]

I'd call the society we now find ourselves in as Instagraphic. The way we interface with the world is constrained less by a dichotomy between text and video, and more by the dichotomy between long form and short form content. Short Form is increasingly dominant, flooding us with incessant, bite sized bursts of instant gratification, regardless of whether or not it takes the form of a 10 seconds video or a less than one sentence push notification.

A Qualitative change of this Instagraphic Society is that everything from the television world is compressed even further: no longer do we have 45 second news headlines, now we have 10 second reels. Paragraphs have been reduces to single, choppy sentences.

Qualitatively, there are other important differences too:

• Your feed is entirely custom to you; this is infinitely more personalized than even 1000 television channels ever could be

• You can skip ahead whenever you want and know that the next thing will have a high chance of being really entertaining to you

• Explicit ads have been increasingly blended with organic content as commercials fall out of style

• You have immediate access to the information system anywhere anytime: on the subway, walking to the store, in the bathroom, at dinner with friends.

This last point is perhaps the most important: it is always right there, accessible via the little rectangle in your pocket, waiting for you to engage. And oh, you'll engage. After all, it's very likely closely tied to how you make money, communicate with loved ones, and how you "relax" in your free time.

[Sicario Can’t be a Tik Tok]

In this new society, some things are now literally impossible to communicate in the dominant short form format. And, other things are so disincentivized that they might as well be impossible.

It might seem offensive or extreme to say that it's impossible to communicate certain ideas in certain formats, but I'll start with the example Postman did: it would be effectively impossible to communicate a philosophical treatise via smoke signals (feel free to try).

Making it more real for you, it would be effectively impossible to recreate Sicario, a beaufitul film I watched for a second time last night, with short form content.

There are all of these slow scenes and shots that involve tense build ups and, resultantly, actions that have strong emotional payoffs. More importantly than that, as I discussed as it related to a novel a few weeks ago, each scene has the compounding benefit of every scene before it.

- LIGHT SPOILER -

The film ends with a boy playing soccer in Juárez, Mexico. We hear gunshots nearby. The boy stops. A moment later, the ref blows a whistle and he resumes.

This in isolation is an emotional scene, but it is so much more impactful when you spent 2 hours watching characters justify murder and violence by saying they're going to create order in Mexico.

And it's even more impactful when you see, just 20 minutes earlier, one of those characters murder this boy’s father in the name of that order and peace that it’s now clear was never created.

- END SPOILER -

You can’t get to that depth of payoff in a discontinuous stream of 10 second videos. It’s literally impossible.

Outside of art, the matter is far worse in terms of it's impact on our discourse. That same complexity reduction hits our ability to communicate useful information and have calm, rational discussions even harder than it does to make beautiful film.

[Simplicity Does Not Equal Brevity]

Some platforms, like LinkedIn, don’t allow for true long form content in the main feed: the character limit is 3,000. So, it's impossible for me to post this blog on the main feed in LinkedIn. And yes, I'm sure I could rewrite this to be more succinct, but if I did, I would not capture as much complexity and nuance as I am now.

You might be saying, but Noah, that’s a skill issue! The real sign of intelligence is being able to communicate complex ideas in simple terms.

And in some regards, you'd be right! But quite frankly, this notion has been taken too far out of context and blown out of proportion.

Simplicity does not equal brevity.

Take these two sentences:

• The dog ran very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very far.

• On his way home, the pernicious birddog glided over an incredible distance. 

The first sentence is simpler than the second by any number of measures (number of clauses, number of unique words, metaphoric use of 'glided'). However, the second sentence has half as many words as the first. Simplicity and brevity are NOT the same thing.

And more important than that, while communicating a complex idea simply is a sign of intelligence and mastery, it's utterly outlandish to think that you can achieve mastery by hearing a complex idea communicated simply.

I was wrestling a friend this weekend, and I had him in the quite compromised position of being behind him with both of my hands latched around his waist. He tried snatching my leg. I just pulled it back out of his way and sat him down. Then finished taking his back, to which he could not escape.

He made the observation that he’s wrestled with untrained friends but always felt like he had a fighting chance, even in a position like that. With me, he said he did not feel there was any way out!

Of course he felt that! I've been doing marital arts for 4 years now. He went to one class with me 3 years ago in college, and sometimes roughhouses with his friends.

Now, I could tell my friend a very simple piece of advice, like: "The trick is to eliminate all space between you and the other guy and load all of your weight into him.” But the thing is, no one would seriously believe that me saying that will mean that now, my friend gets all of the benefit of my 4 years of training immediately.

The same thing goes for the written word. Some ideas are inherently complex. While you can break it down into simple parts and communicate them in plain english, you'd be a fool to think that you can explain pages of nuance and counter arguments in a 3000 character LinkedIn post, or astrophysics in a tweet.

Even though some platforms have removed character limits, it doesn’t matter—the algorithms’ reward systems can be even more incentivizing than can strict limits.

[The Algo Decides]

Sure, a competent person can navigate and extract value and complex ideas from short form content. The issue is, the Instagraphic world is not conducive to that. It requires active effort to achieve that outcome. On the other hand, the Typographic world of written books is far more conducive to building an understanding of complex things, and you might even say that in some ways, it's the default of such a world.

Beyond text constraints, algorithms tend to reward posts for tactics and formatting that are not conducive to level headed, thoughtful discourse or complex ideas being broken down into simple parts and then restructured into a meaningful whole.

Back in November, I was helping Lana film a Reel for a dinner we were having. I suggested we do a 4 second shot of her walking backward through a door into the house, and do a slow pan around the room. She humored me and took the shot, but explained she would not be using it because having a 4 second long shot in a Reel was basically suicide--nobody would look at one shot for 4 seconds!

Sure, Reels / Tik Tok hasn't made that shot 'impossible.' You can still 'do it' and post it... but it's very disincentivized, which is just as powerful, if not more than strict constraints. The Expected Values (EV) in terms of views, followers, and ultimately your goal (applicants, sponsorships, customers) are likely so much higher if you don't have a 4 second shot.

The same goes for written content. Before I start sounding like I'm talking out of my ass, the below is based on my experience getting over 1M impressions on LinkedIn in one year, as well as notes from my cofounder whose gotten 4.5M impressions in one year.

So, if I wanted a post to do well on LinkedIn, there are a whole slew of things I am strongly encouraged NOT to do:

• Communicate Uncertainty: "I think this tactic was a contributing factor to getting my first customer" has such a lower EV than "I got my first customer because I did this." Nobody cares for things that 'maybe' worked!

• Have Long Sentences: My 50 word sentences in this blog simply not fly on LinkedIn. I need to break them up and reduce it down to short, punchy sentences.

• Have Continuity Between Posts: Every LinkedIn post needs to be self contained. No series allowed.

• Discuss Nuance: Midway through the post, you can add a twist and say “but here’s the truth”; beyond that, nuance will hurt you.

• Complex Hooks: My cofounder analyzed his posts and found that 93% of his top 15 posts had a 2 line or less hook. Want to put a complex idea at the top? Suicide.

• Discuss Abstract Ideas: You can talk about the abstract, but it has to be emergent from a clear, real narrative--flashy numbers and confessionals work far better than cooly recounting logically sound strategy.

None of these things are strict "rules," but they're all heuristics that, through experience, we've seen that following improves chances of 'winning' (getting impressions, booking demos) dramatically. That has the effect of making these heuristics more compelling than someone else telling us to follow them ever could be.

To be clear, I am not saying that the content that’s a product of these rules inherently bad; I wouldn’t produce it if I thought it was. Rather, I’m saying that it is less conducive to rational discussion of complex ideas, and that if it is the dominant form of social discourse, that is not good for society.

[Sloppification of the World]

The worst part about the complexity reduction (read: sloppification) is that it effects all mediums, like long form writing, film, verbal debates outside of the dominant short form mediums that everyone is primarily using.

Just like Neil Postman noted that TV brought debates from the 1.5 hour turns in the Lincoln-Douglas series down to minute long turns in presidential debates, I'd be hard pressed to think that the average person in our Instagraphic Society would have the patience to listen to one person speak for even a minute straight!

I haven’t watched enough recent films to truly comment, but based on the trailers I have seen and the incessant serialization of any Intellectual Property that does remotely well, I can’t imagine that the vast majority of cinema is anyway as sophisticated as it was even 10 years ago.

It’s no wonder—if our primary way of engaging with each other and culture is through choppy texts, short emails, constrained social posts, and 10 seconds videos, we severely reduce the surface area complex ideas have to take root, and put pressure on the mediums that were once more conducive to it, as well.

This will leave us more impoverished than ever before.

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[Silver Linings…]

I'd be delusional if I said that everything about the Instagraphic Society was bad and grim. There are some beautiful parts!

• You really do have access to more information more easily than ever before, even if you have to be incredibly on guard about what actually constitutes as 'information.'

• The leverage and financial independence you can get from harnessing the power of the Instagraphic Society creates what appears to be (without direct experiential knowledge of what it was like before) a more rapid upward financial mobility

As a direct beneficiary of both of these features, I'm incredibly grateful for them. And as tempting as it is to say the solution is to throw the baby out with the bathwater and go and live in the woods alone, I do wonder if there is a less drastic path forward…

I'm not yet entirely sold that there is an effective way to have a society that both has access to Instagraphic Vices and shows more constraint than indulgence at scale on average, but for now, I am functioning as if that is the case. The path I am currently personally following to live a more vibrant and thoughtful life:

1. Strictly limit consumption of short form content with daily periods of no digital interactions

2. Actively engage with long form content, particularly books

3. Have daily moments of presence with others (dinner with friends where I don't use or sometimes even have my phone)

4. If I create content, be honest and provide something valuable (this one can be hard and is admittedly very nebulous... perhaps warrants a full post)

5. Have weekly time set aside for meaningful and dynamic in person interactions (jiu jitsu, volunteering)

Again, I have no idea if this is the "way," but it seems that if everyone behaved like this, the societal outcome would be more positive by any number of measurements.

Live Deeply,