Half-baked Musings #6
Write ahead
Dear Readers,
Like all good things in life, I started this newsletter on a mix of impulse and vengeance (nothing sordid, just to prove the naysayers wrong).
But the one thing that I thought it would eliminate was the need to incessantly broadcast new writings on social media. After all, isn’t the point of a newsletter to teleport your thoughts directly into people’s inboxes?
It turns out that I was wrong about that, a fact that the Twitter-verse was kind enough to clarify, reminding me that the key to online branding is to be utterly shameless.
The irony is that I started my career in the digital world. I was the savvy millennial steering content strategy and instructing people, often much older than myself, on how to use hashtags and live-tweet at events. And no, I don’t mean Twitter Live (that feature didn’t exist then) but writing an infinite stream of 140-character messages (Twitter threads didn’t exist either).
That I went from here to being an Internet grandma in just a few years is a friendly reminder of the lightning speed at which social media evolves. Even my go-to popular culture reference, a dialogue by Drew Barrymore in ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’ about how confounding the Internet can be, is now outdated. Although the sentiment still holds true, so here you go:
Mind you, I have little nostalgia for the days of blackberry messenger or voicemails. But reflecting on how this landscape has transformed does leave me with a more existential question about my chosen craft: where does this leave the future of writing?
In some ways, the ubiquity of online platforms has democratized the art of writing. How else, after all, would I be able to hand-deliver you these musings each week? But just because anyone can write doesn’t mean that there’s necessarily a demand for it. Even Twitter, the platform that once revolved around written content, is now a jumble of video streams, Spaces, its Clubhouse rival, and its most aptly named feature, Fleets, the intended equivalent to Instagram stories, which have thankfully been removed as of last week. Because aren’t all tweets meant to be fleeting thoughts?
When I think back to my first digital media job, or the very reason I entered the industry, it was because I could write. And write I did, even if it was not of the imaginative or long-form variety. But today, I probably wouldn’t make the cut, precisely for this reason: I can only write. And in a world where most stories are now conveyed visually or aurally, where words are relegated to subtexts and subtitles, I can’t imagine that this skill alone would be valuable.
As much as I’d like to romanticize the written word and lambast the shift toward passive content consumption, I have to admit that even as a writer it is hard to resist some of these changes. A few months ago, I discovered the joy of listening to audiobooks, even if for limited genres, to keep me company during mindless chores. And more recently, I even experimented with Instagram reels on my Bookstagram account, after reluctantly accepting that glossy images aren’t enough to garner eyeballs.
I am neither suggesting nor ready to believe that the art of writing is obsolete. It certainly has a role to play, whether in the confusing world of content creation or the literary universe. But its form and shape will continue to change in ways we are already seeing and ones we probably can’t even imagine yet.
Of course you have nothing to worry about, since I am aeons behind most writers in starting a newsletter. So expect to hear from me well after this format is replaced by the next new-fangled digital feature!
Happy reading, reflecting and bearing with my teleported thoughts.
Yours half-baked,
Internet Grandma
HAHA. I can totally relate to this. I had a smile on my face as I was reading your article. Will writers be an extinct species 20 years from now? On some days, thoughts like these cross my mind. On other days, I'm confident about our future, and I feel we will adapt. Loved your writing style, Internet Grandma! ;)