gemini://pennywhether.xyz/articles/Content-Sake.gmi

One thing I really want to avoid with this capsule is writing something for the sake of posting something here. It’s a facet of a lot of sites that I really don’t like as I find they just get cluttered with half-hearted articles that exist solely to fulfill a quota. They just come off as flat and it’s obvious that the author is just going through the motions.

That’s why I’ve not been posting much in May. There just hasn’t been much drive to write anything. Not much has been popping into my head that I’ve been remotely enthusiastic about, just the little write-ups articulating my thoughts about books I’ve read recently. I’d much rather my posts be sparser in such a situation than to force myself to write something.

“Slow News Day Syndrome” really does seem to have permeated throughout much of the internet. It’s not just the occasional anomalous news article that feels shoehorned in to help a newspaper hit its page count anymore. People with YouTube channels are told to post X times per month to appease the algorithm gods. Twitch streamers are told to be online X times per week if they want to retain their following. News sites always seem to have a stack of top ten lists on standby for whenever they seem to be running short on proper articles to post.

Despite all of this, it’s highly debatable whether this really adds anything to the experience in any of those respective realms (or any other I may have missed). Statistically speaking, if one throws enough stuff against the wall, something is bound to stick eventually. However, on the whole, all of this forced content just wastes people’s time. I suspect part of the problem is that a lot of the people consuming this stuff are in a semi-conscious stupor as they watch or read this stuff, so it just slides off their back. They don’t care much about their time so why should the content creators of the siloed platform they post on care either. They undiscerning viewer / reader gets a cheap dopamine hit and the creator and platform get their ad revenue. It’s a disappointing situation, but not really all that surprising I suppose.

Nevertheless, I really don’t want to be part of the problem. If I have something to say, I’ll make a post, if I don’t I won’t. I have no interest in wasting my own time nor that of visitors who stumble across this capsule with forced, ho-hum content. If there’s gaps in my posts as a result, c’est la vie.