What was an essay originally for? The word literally meant “attempts” or “trials.” An essay wasn’t supposed to be a finished, authoritative argument. It was a way of thinking on paper. A way of working through an idea to see where it led.
That made sense to me.
Writing things down. Picking them apart. Thinking through them. Trying to arrange them into some sort of logical sense or flow. That process is what I love about writing essays and blogs.
That was the original purpose of an essay. It still works. For oneself. Writing an essay still helps me think. It is valuable to me. I love it.
But if writing still serves its purpose, what about publishing essays?
What Changed in Publishing Essays/Blogs?
Artificial Intelligence has changed how we find information. Google increasingly answers questions directly instead of sending people to websites. People are reading less and watching more. Research confirmed it. Reading is a muscle. People are using it less.
But beyond helping me think, what use might publishing it have? If very few people discover blogs through search anymore, what is the purpose of logically constructing an idea into an essay and putting it out into the world? Why not just think it through for myself, find my answers and let it be?
Okay, for argument’s sake, let’s say publishing essays helps someone else think through their own thinking. Fine. That is the assumed reason for publishing my thinking.
But now, where do I publish it?
Where Should Essays Be Published?
A personal blog or website seems like the natural place for an essay. But then, as we said, Google no longer sends people to websites and instead sums up everything from multiple websites.
As a Tweet? On Threads? LinkedIn post? No. A 500 or 700-word long-form writing isn’t best suited for those.
Yes, I can repurpose a 700-word essay into a Tweet thread. It is doable. But then that is additional writing, restructuring, and reformatting. I already did that work in writing the essay in the first place. For context, just writing this 550-word essay took me 3 hours of focused work. Not to mention the thinking, questioning, research, reading and wrestling with all that in my head for weeks or months.
A YouTube video or a Podcast is another option. In addition to rewriting the essay for a different medium, it also needs preproduction, production, editing, exporting, uploading, cover design, show notes creation and so on and so on. All of that on top of all the thinking and structuring work that already went into writing the essay in the first place.
By the time I’ve finished all that, it feels like I’ve spent more energy packaging the thinking than actually doing the thinking.
Maybe that’s the distinction I had been trying to articulate all along. Writing the essay has never really been the problem. Everything after writing it is.
The Question I’m Left With
Change, truly, is the only constant. The shift that AI is bringing, the change in reading habits, where people consume ideas, all of that is increasingly making me wonder if there is any point in publishing essays or a blog. And if this continues, what happens to the essays and critical thinking in the age of AI? How will thinkers and writers of essays adapt?
