The Internet Is Being Ruined by Bloated Junk
Sites such as YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter used to be defined by short content. Not anymore.
We live in the age of the short attention span. And yet: Finding a recipe in a blog post requires first scrolling past a detailing the chef’s personal experience with the dish. Streaming shows , dragging into feature-film territory. Episodes of podcast are sometimes longer than . Even platforms once known for short-form media are stretching the limits: Gone are the days of the 280-character tweet; on X, a user (this article, for comparison, is under 6,000). YouTube videos once had a at 10 minutes long; now they (and ) reach 12 hours. for some creators.
