The Guardian has an interesting article on longtime blogger Dave Winer and posits that the blogosphere is blooming while the rest of the Internet is wilting. By “the rest of the Internet” they actually mean social media. In a sense, it’s a no-brainer. For anyone with an attention span not measured in seconds, a hot take social media post can’t begin to compete with a longer form, more well considered blog post.
That should seem obvious but, according to the article, many journalists were completely oblivious to that fact. You can see that in their embrace of Twitter as the most important media of all time. While they were delivering their jejune hot takes, bloggers were writing longer, better researched, and much better considered posts that actually provided some analysis. You might agree or disagree with any particular post but reasonable bloggers do their best to make a case rather than just express an opinion or, worse yet, a hot take.
Irreal is, of course, a blog but I make no claims to its superiority over the average Mad Magazine strip. Still, regardless of what you think about Irreal, I do think that the Guardian is right: the longer form writing in blogs or blog-likes publications provide a much more rewarding experience.