Secret Shorts and Discarded Plots
Some thoughts on cultural overproduction
Recently my inbox has been flooded by posts from Matt Taibbi, one of Substack’s most prolific posters, sometimes three or four a day. It seems that the curious trend of short form posting has now also hit (or infected) Substack. But I get it and I understand the urgency with which social media posters fill the airwaves. For many, posts follow a simple economic logic. The payouts for social media posts are already too low and heading ever lower and an already present overproduction of all forms of media means that every new video or post gets immediately buried in a tsunami of algorithmically produced content. And payday happens based on views and referrals, so flooding the market with content means that at least some of it will break through the dense fog of social apathy. The argument goes that people are so riddled with ADHD that they’re unable to focus their attention on a single piece of media for longer than just a few seconds before moving on to the next distraction.
Even formatting follows this trend, as some writers now tend to put their thoughts in short paragraphs, often just a single sentence or thought.
Like this.
Or this.
It’s a worn out argument that doesn’t seem to account for the glut of long form videos that exist all over YouTube. I routinely see videos as long as 11 or 12 hours long. Yes, those are to be played in the background, just as all the countless lo-fi, coffee shop jazz, dark academia, and oldies playing in the background of a rainy evening videos are. But there are true crime reaction videos and documentaries that are 2 or 3 hours and they get views in the hundreds of thousands. And it looks like the long form videos get produced with as much speed as the short ones.
Interesting.
Reading is a little different. One cannot read and do something else at the same time. There is no background reading, unless one is listening to a podcast or a book on ‘tape.’ Podcasts are really just books for people that don’t want to, or don’t have time to read (I am one of those people). I still read, I guess I just don’t have the kind of time as I once used to. There are too many responsibilities, too many things to take care of during the day, and yes, too many distractions. To that end I read before going to sleep and extend my bathroom reading time as much as possible and keep a stack of books at the ready in both locations. It’s much easier to find a video or a podcast and listen while working, cleaning, or driving. It is an obsessive activity to have one’s mind constantly occupied by a flood of information, most of which is superfluous and totally unnecessary. It’s an activity of ‘surplus enjoyment.’ We’re mired in cultural overproduction, or as a friend of mine says, everyone is in the business of producing garbage. And he would know. Every day he throws out hundreds of books that people trade or donate to a bookshop that he manages for a living.
So much effort went into the production of an object that just ends up in landfill is difficult to fathom, until it is right there in front of you. But that is the case with most modern production. Every day millions of objects are designed, planned, produced, processed, bought and paid for, shipped, used up and discarded. It can be argued that from the very beginning each and every one of these objects exists to be thrown away. These objects do not simply become garbage, they are garbage by their very essence of having been produced simply for consumption. It is the same with words, images and ideas. The shelf life of either of those things is shorter and shorter every year. The throwaway culture isn’t relegated just to objects in real space.
When I started A Secret Plot, the idea was to produce long form essays about art and culture. But those kinds of essays take a long time to write. A 2500 word article can take weeks to write. There is endless editing, proofreading and rewriting at the end of which something like 50-60% of everything never sees the light of day. I have dozens of articles and hundreds of notes just sitting around that may never see the light of day. And that’s because I still refuse to admit to myself that what I engage in is the overproduction of garbage. They sit around collecting digital dust, because perhaps the relevance of a note has passed, or maybe I lost interest in an idea. Unless that is, I decide to release them as snippets rather than completely formed thoughts.
It’s an idea.
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Hubba.
How well do I understand as an over-producer of garbage myself. Garbagemen & insects will inherit the planet.