There was a time on Cake when people took the time to communicate in paragraphs instead of a couple sentences reply. I know that may be hard to believe looking at most of the Twitter length replies that dominate on Cake; however, I assure you that there once was a time of a greater commitment to communication and the written word.
I came across the above magnificent conversation that is from March of 2018. It’s sometimes hard to remember that Cake has been around that long: I didn’t discover Cake until October of that year. But back then, there seemed to be a greater investment in sharing something that took effort to create.
Maybe it’s too much of an ask nowadays for people to put in that level of effort to their communications on social media. Commenting on blogs is less common compared to a decade ago. And it’s so much easier to tweet a link to someone else’s thinking than to take the time to express your own.
And yet, I still see amazingly long and thoughtful reflections whenever I host a panel on an interesting question. But then people will complain every few months that “You shouldn’t do panels when a public conversation could be created instead.” However, when I do create such public conversations, I usually get limited engagement by comparison and/or Twitter length responses.
I’ve decided to discontinue hosting those panels that I love for the foreseeable future. I will instead spend more of my time creating longer content for conversations of mine as well as crafting longer well thought out responses to the conversations of others. Hopefully others will respond in kind. I know there are a few people here who regularly put a lot of time and effort into their replies so I know that I won’t be the only one engaging in this effort.