Slow Storytelling is Making a Comeback

The power of slow storytelling is mak­ing a comeback.

Must everything be short­er and faster on the internet?

It seems as if slow storytelling is mak­ing a comeback. Longer tele­vi­sion shows, longer games, longer YouTube videos, longer tweets, longer blog art­icles, longer everything.

Here’s how:

The Paradigm of Fast Storytelling

The nar­rat­ive speed has accel­er­ated. News cycles are flash­ing by. Updates and tweets are blaz­ing by. Social media is turn­ing into show business.

Twenty-four-sev­en news cycles and bite-sized advert­ising mas­quer­ad­ing as enter­tain­ment are com­ing at us like a furi­ous swarm of moths cloud­ing the sky. 

Yes, some are con­cerned. Social media pess­im­ists are fore­bod­ing the decline of civil­isa­tion due to our short­er atten­tion spans and noti­fic­a­tion addictions. 

Everything must be short:

We’re all in a col­lect­ive hurry and can’t be bothered with too much con­text. “It’s just the way it is now,” I think.

Click, click.

Overdue for a Counter-Reaction

I grew up on the island of Alnö with about 900 fel­low dwell­ers. I moved away, got my stra­tegic com­mu­nic­a­tion and lin­guist­ic degrees, and ended up in Stockholm, the cap­it­al of Sweden. 

In Stockholm, I remem­ber being astoun­ded by the impa­tience of the city slick­ers; they sighed as they missed their sub­way ride — even though the next one was in just a few minutes. 

On Alnö, buses came by once every hour on weekdays. 

A city-life dec­ade later, hav­ing lived in Stockholm, London, and New York, I find myself being immersed in this Pavlovian con­di­tion­ing.

A five-second break today? No prob­lem. That’s enough to check my social feeds, cal­en­dar, and inbox, read a few head­lines and check dir­ec­tions on Google Maps.

In short: We’ve all picked up the pace.
Now, we’re long over­due for a counter-reaction.

Preserving Mental Bandwidth

A part of me loves the access­ib­il­ity and the speed of new inform­a­tion. Another aspect of me still feels attrac­ted to slow storytelling.

As a long-time fan of Marshall McLuhan’s idea, “the medi­um is the mes­sage,” I can’t help but think that we might have got­ten a few basic ideas wrong. 

Marshall McLuhan: “The Medium is the Message”

“The medi­um is the mes­sage” is a phrase coined by the Canadian philo­soph­er Marshall McLuhan in the first chapter of his not­able book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.”

Despite being one of the most influ­en­tial thinkers in media the­ory, McLuhan’s ideas are often widely mis­un­der­stood. “The medi­um is the mes­sage” is no exception.

“The medi­um is the mes­sage” does­n’t imply that con­tent or sub­stance lacks import­ance, only that the medi­um in which mes­sages are sent will sig­ni­fic­antly impact humanity.

• McLuhan pro­posed that intro­du­cing a new medi­um will impact human­ity sig­ni­fic­antly more than any­thing sub­sequently trans­mit­ted through that medium.

McLuhan views medi­ums as exten­sions of human physiology. Our abil­ity to build houses extends our human skin, as it pro­tects against the ele­ments. This added lay­er of pro­tec­tion and phys­ic­al safety frees up men­tal band­width for human interaction.

So, a house is a medi­um in McLuhan’s inter­pret­a­tion. All human tech­no­lo­gies, down to the camp­fire, are con­sidered mediums.

“McLuhan’s insight was that a medi­um affects the soci­ety in which it plays a role not by the con­tent delivered over the medi­um, but by the char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the medi­um itself. […] McLuhan poin­ted to the light bulb as a clear demon­stra­tion of this concept. A light bulb does not have con­tent in the way that a news­pa­per has art­icles or a tele­vi­sion has pro­grams, yet it is a medi­um that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to cre­ate spaces dur­ing night­time that would oth­er­wise be envel­oped by dark­ness.”
Source: Wikipedia ¹Marshall McLuhan. (2023, May 15). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​M​a​r​s​h​a​l​l​_​M​c​L​u​han

According to McLuhan, our abil­ity to cre­ate exten­sions of human­ity expo­nen­tially impacts our com­mu­nic­a­tion more than any mes­sage con­veyed as a result:

• A light­bulb is a medi­um (an exten­sion of the human eye).
• A house is a medi­um (an exten­sion of the human skin).
• The tele­phone is a medi­um (an exten­sion of human vocal cords).

And so on.

Why is McLuhan’s ana­lys­is neces­sary? “The medi­um is the mes­sage” is a stark remind­er that a medi­um’s format (and its lim­it­a­tions) will massively impact human soci­ety — and the mes­sages them­selves, too.

We often default to seek­ing mean­ing in mes­sages but for­get to con­sider the medi­um’s inher­ent media logic.

Learn more: Media Logic is Dead, Long Live Media Logic

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Dunbar’s Number and Cognitive Limits

150 — Dunbar’s Number

Robin Dunbar, a British anthro­po­lo­gist and evol­u­tion­ary psy­cho­lo­gist, pro­posed what’s known as “Dunbar’s Number” — a the­ory sug­gest­ing that humans can only com­fort­ably main­tain about 150 stable rela­tion­ships. ²Dunbar, R. I. M. (1998). The social brain hypo­thes­is. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 6(5), 178 – 190.

This includes fam­ily, friends, col­leagues, and oth­ers with whom a per­son can keep mean­ing­ful con­tact. Beyond this num­ber, the qual­ity of rela­tion­ships can dimin­ish due to the lim­it­a­tions in our men­tal band­width. ³Silfwer, J. (2012, April 14). Social Group Sizes (The Social Brain Hypothesis). Doctor Spin | the PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​g​r​o​u​p​-​s​i​z​es/

“Dunbar’s num­ber is a sug­ges­ted cog­nit­ive lim­it to the num­ber of people with whom one can main­tain stable social rela­tion­ships. […] No pre­cise value has been pro­posed for Dunbar’s num­ber. It has been pro­posed to lie between 100 and 230, with a com­monly used value of 150. Dunbar’s num­ber states the num­ber of people one knows and keeps social con­tact with, and it does not include the num­ber of people known per­son­ally with a ceased social rela­tion­ship, nor people just gen­er­ally known with a lack of per­sist­ent social rela­tion­ship, a num­ber which might be much high­er and likely depends on long-term memory size.”
Source: Wikipedia ⁴Dunbar’s num­ber. (2023, May 29). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

According to Dunbar, this lim­it is a dir­ect func­tion of rel­at­ive neo­cor­tex size, which con­strains our abil­ity to keep track of com­plex social rela­tion­ships. ⁵It’s worth not­ing that the concept of Dunbar’s Number has been debated and scru­tin­ised with­in the sci­entif­ic com­munity.

Learn more: 150 — Dunbar’s Number

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Mental Bandwidth and Narratives

Suppose Dunbar’s num­ber dic­tates the optim­al num­ber of per­son­al rela­tion­ships in a group. Why can’t we assume that there’s also a cog­nit­ive lim­it to the num­ber of nar­rat­ives we can stay inves­ted in? 

There’s com­pre­hens­ive sci­entif­ic sup­port for the idea that we fil­ter all incom­ing inputs. We dis­card these inputs or assign them to a few more prom­in­ent storylines that we’re already inves­ted in. ⁶See Leon Festinger’s the­ory on cog­nit­ive dis­son­ance..

The con­tent explo­sion of avail­able inform­a­tion might neg­at­ively affect everything from atten­tion spans to cog­nit­ive over­load­ing. Still, the indus­tri­al revolu­tion also brought its fair share of less-than-for­tu­nate outcomes. 

Remember, our men­tal band­width has remained unchanged for at least 200,000 years. ⁷If any­thing, our brains are shrink­ing. Over the past 20,000 years, the aver­age volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic cen­ti­metres to 1,350 ccs, los­ing a chunk the size of a … Continue read­ing

Television Series and Superhero Universes

Lately, the charm of watch­ing a full-length movie has been rap­idly declin­ing; the story arc in a typ­ic­al two-hour block­buster is too short for me; there’s not enough time to get to know and under­stand the char­ac­ters of the movie, and the sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief suf­fers from being force­fully paced.

This is, in my case, thanks to Netflix.

I don’t watch Netflix for its assort­ment of movies; I binge on their tele­vi­sion shows (albeit that “tele­vi­sion” sounds a bit old-fash­ioned). An epis­ode is argu­ably much short­er than a full-length movie, but the storytelling spans sea­sons instead of minutes. 

ScreenRant lists 15 reas­ons why tele­vi­sion shows are super­i­or to movies:

I’ve spent many hours fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of “The Walking Dead” and its main prot­ag­on­ist, Rick Grimes. As a view­er, I’ve been inves­ted in Rick’s life’s ups and downs (mostly downs) for a long time, but I still have no idea wheth­er he will make it.

There’s no deny­ing the lit­er­ary qual­ity of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic saga, The Lord of the Rings. Still, when it comes to sil­ver screen adapt­a­tions, it’s tough for LOTR dir­ect­or Peter Jackson to com­pete with the rich­ness of lore in shows like Game of Thrones, where the storytelling spans sea­son after season.

And it seems like movie­makers are catch­ing on, too. 

See how Marvel’s string­ing typ­ic­al block­buster-length movies togeth­er to cre­ate longer arcs for their char­ac­ters and add more depth to their cine­mat­ic Marvel uni­verse. ⁸Regarding cine­mat­ic uni­verses: It’s com­mer­cially clev­er to devel­op one par­tic­u­lar brand audi­ence over time instead of attract­ing new audi­ences from scratch with each new release.

Games as Long-Form Storytelling

My guilty pleas­ure (or obses­sion?) is to watch Let’s Play walk­throughs on Youtube. 

I’ve been at the edge of my seat through games like “The Last of Us,” “Detroit Become Human,” and “Uncharted.” I’ve dis­covered new worlds through games like “God of War,” “Far Cry,” and “Assassin’s Creed.”

In-game storytelling has seen tre­mend­ous devel­op­ment over the last couple of years. Watching social media nat­ur­als play their way through a good nar­rat­ive is immers­ive and cap­tiv­at­ing, even if you don’t play these games yourself.

More giant story-driv­en games might take a skilled play­er up to 40 hours of act­ive game­play to get through, espe­cially if they are into explor­ing and side missions. 

For instance, the anti­cip­ated title Red Dead Redemption 2 deliv­ers an impress­ive 60+ hour story cam­paign:

Read also: DayZ for Days

Long-Form Content in Search Engines

Longer forms have oth­er advant­ages, too. 

If you’re into digit­al mar­ket­ing or com­mu­nic­a­tions, you’ve prob­ably thought about how to rank on the first pages of Google’s SERP (search engine res­ults page) for your keywords. 

A study by SerpIQ sug­gests that 2,450 words are the “sweet spot” for rank­ing 1 – 10 on Google: ⁹A study by Moz indic­ates that long-form blog posts tend to do bet­ter not only in search rank­ings but in social media as well.

Also, accord­ing to Hubspot, you get more back­links as well:

(And for those who don’t write art­icles that often: 2,000 words are quite a decent length: you’ve barely read 900 words of this article!)

I’m not sug­gest­ing that longer is always bet­ter in every way. However, we might have under­es­tim­ated our basic human need for depth and con­text — espe­cially in this fast-paced, digit­al-first landscape.