Author's own blog or site. If they do not want to do it that's fine. They can chose Medium I can chose to not read.

Plenty of good. As a writer myself, sometimes just having these thoughts put out into form is a very gratifying process. When the inspiration hits you, nothing feels worse than not being able to express these thoughts and feelings in a way that feels appropriate.

Likewise, sometimes people write dumb things in a fit of passion. They write something that is a blemish on their otherwise fine history or that no longer reflects what they believe anymore.

While I'm on the side of the Internet Archive here, I can definitely appreciate that it's not an open and shut case. Sometimes the yearning for information to be free is at odds with our want for privacy. Tools like Medium, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media are like the gun in the house to someone suicidal (to use a very bad analogy) - an easy and convenient tool that allows for a very bad spur of the moment decision to be made.

I know I've done stupid things on games and on message boards in the past, and I'm only so lucky that this data likely isn't available anymore. Some of it was me being a dumb kid. Some of it was me just being an angry kid, but I am 100% grateful that this information is only remember by myself and a handful of others. A very different past me had a very stringent set of beliefs which I now have come to accept were very bad beliefs, and I did bad things in general as a result of them.

Is it really fair that I have the benefit that time forgot all these dumb things I've done simply because I was born before a time when Twitter/Facebook were common place? Before data permanence was really possible on a global scale? I'm open to the idea of some review on archiving data like this; I want the Internet Archive to be able to archive this stuff, but it would be really nice if there was a way to vault it for a reasonable period of time as well by request. Otherwise, you end up in a position where no one wants to write or produce or do anything in a fit of passion as a result of knowing that everything is permanently preserved.

I don't have an answer aside from "vaulting" the data, and I don't think that's a good answer. But I also don't think it's black and white like you're trying to make it.

I assume you read mostly nonfiction, then?

Does this author live in a world where people write books unwillingly to appease their friends?

Because they never put it together? Because it contains new to them information? Because they like the style it was written in?

I get it, you don't think it's interesting - but that fact itself is boring, most people find most things uninteresting, why do you feel the need to share?

It might help you to pause and reflect on the fact that some people are not you, nor are they here to cater to you. As people they have their own interests and tastes, and maybe, just maybe, they differ from yours.

> It's very well known, especially given that almost the entirety of our internet infrastructure runs on it.

The knowledge in your head is not the knowledge in my head. Some of it may intersect and be shared knowledge, but you know things I don't and I know things you don't. This place has all sorts of readers from all sorts of backgrounds, some of them are young or new to the field - they need to get this info somehow, otherwise it stops being "very well known". One way of disseminating information is via blogs, another is sharing links to that blog on sites like HN.

This may help you understand: https://xkcd.com/1053/

There are a lot of books, too. More than one could read in a lifetime, even if new ones stopped being released. Thus it doesn’t follow that quantity is the problem, or that if it is you’ll eventually be bored by books too.

Years ago I started consuming dozens of books a year. I eventually realised most non-fiction are stretched-out pamphlets: one core idea which could fit into a blog post padded with anecdotes until it reaches book length. The overwhelming majority of productivity books—including the ones typically favoured by HN—fall into this category. A better use of time is to look for an online talk the author has given; you’ll get all the book’s important information faster without the fluff.

Books get boring too. Until you start to develop an eye for quickly identifying the duds so you can abandon them early (or not get them at all). When in doubt, the 2-star GoodReads reviews will typically spell out if a book suffers from too much fluff.

All this to say I don’t think it’s a “books VS blog posts” matter, there’s a ton of garbage in both mediums. Perhaps you’ve just read fewer books than blog posts. If you’re happier with books now, enjoy it.

(I’ve excluded fiction from the conversation because I imagine you’re not talking about blog posts with short stories.)

Why read books when you can have a shallow understanding of everything through internet posts?

Why learn anything from millennia of human experience or get to see the perspective of others through literature when you can watch YouTube?

Why try to get the subtler side of things, when you can read a PowerPoint / cliff notes style "good parts"?

I used to read a lot when I was younger. A lot of it was junk. I enjoyed it, I would not mind if my kids read it, but really, it did not had more quality in it then random blog.

You’re wasting your life and rotting your brain. Get a hobby, friends or just go outside once in a while. Also “self improvement” books are all a scam.

If you chose not to read books yes it is worse. There are many books you can read that will give you a massive amount of information about a subject, not only hard facts but soft philosophical issues. I've experienced The Trail by Kafka as radio/play/movie/book, it is amazingly good as a book.

I do not care if you do not think the same or if you can not experience the same thing as I can when I read books. I do not want you to deprive others of that feeling though.

I've seen a lot of blog posts written for this reason, and they're all pretty crappy. I really hope that wasn't seriously a reason to write a book.

I don't find it that useful to argue for things that I don't like. And I am capable of making value judgments and having opinions.

You thought correctly. You should have read a book written by someone smarter. Imagine a world where you'd have to ask book writers if you're allowed to cite or to refer to their books in yours.

See, this is where I differ (potentially from most, given the responses here). I love reading "disorganized" thoughts because they aren't random, they follow the writers train of thought. This gives insight not just into the content of their mind, but the structure! How fun!

That sounds like a you problem. It doesn't really affect my reading. Sure it's more creative than the usual corporate blog style but I don't mind.

Don’t you simply bored with those? I genuinely find them incredibly formulaic and then I just stop reading - most of the opinions are barely worth a dime unless the author actually did some homework supporting what they say.

You could spend the remainder of your life trying to read every worthwhile book that has already been written and still not finish them all.

You're already hypocritical - readers don't want to 'engage' with writing. People don't want to 'engage' at all. This is not an ordinary way of talking about things outside a pretty niche circle of VCs and marketing managers.

Choose what to read and who to associate with as well as it will strongly influence your own language :)

Even back in the day my friends weren't reading my LJ. I wound up discovering the only people reading mine were a few internet friends, ex-girl friends, and a professor I was working for (which taught me the lesson of never writing something on the internet that I didn't want out as public information).