I think the dichotomy here is a false one. There is plenty of well-researched, in-depth content that does well on social media. The trick is that it’s also presented in an accessible way that provides value at every step, even the “superficial glance” one.
The mistake many of the “I spent hours researching this piece” creators is that they don’t package that content in an accessible way. Instead it’s a huge block of text without any coherent organization or entry point. Ergo it’s not surprising that it does worse.
> The mistake many of the “I spent hours researching this piece” creators is that they don’t package that content in an accessible way. Instead it’s a huge block of text without any coherent organization or entry point. Ergo it’s not surprising that it does worse.
It's like a lot of open source software. Tons of high quality effort put together to make great things, but very little time put toward packaging it to be appealing to the masses. Which is fine if you're okay with that, just don't be surprised when the average person isn't setting up a toolchain to compile your project from source or not editing config files to changes settings that aren't accessible in-program.
It's possible hour+ blog posts don't have much of a market, but I know super in-depth, informative, hour+ videos have some form of a market. At the very least Summoning Salt does something right in their videos to get millions of people to watch hour long historical video game videos.
> The mistake many of the “I spent hours researching this piece” creators is that they don’t package that content in an accessible way. Instead it’s a huge block of text without any coherent organization or entry point. Ergo it’s not surprising that it does worse.
I honestly think this is what draws me to the documentary/podcast/video essay genre so much. I have a hard time concentrating on reading non-fiction but take the exact same material and deliver it via someone with decent charisma and the willingness to construct into a narrative story, and I'll watch a 4-hour deconstruction of a TV show I don't even care about.
The mistake many of the “I spent hours researching this piece” creators is that they don’t package that content in an accessible way. Instead it’s a huge block of text without any coherent organization or entry point. Ergo it’s not surprising that it does worse.