Abba Zabba

Now that everyone's got high-speed Internet, there's a trend towards putting more multimedia content on web sites. (Note: I can't say the word "multimedia" without feeling like it's 1995 and I'm reading a Time article about the Information Superhighway. But I still feel like more of a tool when I say "podcast", one of the dumbest words ever invented.) And I don't like it.

I like text. It's easy. It's convenient. Podcasts and videos are neither. With text, you can start reading, then switch away to something else, and come back to read more later. I guess you can pause a video or audio file, but it's harder to scroll back and remind yourself of what just happened. I read very quickly; I can definitely read faster than people can comprehensibly talk. I can skim text briefly to look for interesting parts, which is impossible with video files. Some streaming audio/video sites are blocked at work, so I can't access that content at all. And when I'm on the Internet at home, I have the TV or music on. I can listen to the TV and read something, but I can't watch two videos at once.

I know that some people prefer multimedia. They want to see or hear what happened. And that's fine. But that's no reason to take away my text! Big sites like the New Yorker (which inspired this rant) can certainly afford to pay an intern to transcribe their audio and video pieces. That way the cool kids can podcast and vlog and do whatever they want, while I sit here and read.