Why Written Content Will Always Trump Video

Welcome to the Bloat Era.

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I read a really interesting post by Ryan Broderick yesterday.

In it, he discusses how we’re already in the third Pivot to Video phase of the 21st century, what he refers to as the “Bloat Era”.

Ryan states:

“A Pivot To Video tends to arrive in stages, with each stage being more expensive and producing less interesting content as things progress. Usually it goes like this: The experimentation phase, the factory phase, and the bloat phase.”

He explains that video “bloat” involves incurring massively inflated production costs to keep viewers engaged longer. As he points out, you only have to look at Mr Beast’s current production budget on YouTube (up to $5million per video) to get an idea of where the industry’s heading.

This is the unfortunate byproduct of the Tiktockification of social media. It’s what happens when platforms start gearing themselves almost entirely towards the attention economy instead of the subscriber-based system most writing sites favour.

It’s unsustainable, and it’ll eventually kill the viability of video.

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The silver lining

In some ways, that’s good news for writers. While social media’s becoming more time-consuming and less effective by the day, writing-based sites like Medium and Substack are steadily growing.

Where blink-and-you-miss-it, algorithm-suppressed social media posts are dying, subscriber-based email newsletters are thriving.

After decades spent watching increasingly engagement-focused video content, people are becoming tired. TikTok is exhausting. Social media gimmicks are wearisome.

Viewers and readers crave authenticity now above all else, especially Gen Z, who are more or less immune to traditional advertising methods.

Ryan concludes with this:

“There is simply no incentive for these [social media] platforms to regress even though users seem to want them to. If history tells us anything here, viewers will start gravitating towards less professional video content, not more.”

Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

Time to change direction

If video-based platforms don’t find a way to pivot towards simplicity and authenticity soon, they may find themselves seriously struggling to survive the waning years of the Bloat Era.

It’s good news for creators who don’t enjoy being in front of the camera and may have felt under pressure to do so. It’s why I believe writing will continue to quietly endure while every other medium flails about in panic.

Video can last, but only if it evolves in line with what viewers actually want.

Have you ever created video content? What’s been your experience so far?

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