Why We Need Essays

I remember when I used to write on this one "user-generated" publishing site more frequently: anything that even vaguely smelled of essay format would automatically get shifted into the "Random" genre, which isn't really a genre but how they categorize things that are to aimless to have a plot, and don't fall under their definition of the word non-fiction: typically memoirs and autobiographies.

To compound things: we have websites that only just recently amped up their character limitation to 280 characters, rather than the more natural 5000 characters Pleroma has. And with blogs, you get ran off if you write anything that's vaguely political in nature, especially if it's of an anti-authoritarian nature.

This leaves people who write Five Point Essay format largely with no place to go, so they have to rely on either anonymous blogging, decentralized blogging, and sometimes both. All because people on social media harass and heckle you for writing anything longer than 280 characters, that is more political in nature than they're used to. This doesn't even go into the authoritarian approach to "topic organizing" some places on the fediverse do.

Even on places more geared toward non-fiction, you're generally encouraged to write click bait articles, if you're goal is to write to make a living ( of course mine is not, but that's another issue ). This further isolates those who write purely for intellectual pursuit and artistic merit. You're treated as invalid if you want to write to highlight issues about society, that people should know about.

If we want to have intellectual argument, we need to reject places that choose to have small character counts. We need to reject places that force your work into an "other" genre. And reject places where we're encouraged to write sensationalism. While the era of "indie journalism" is perhaps long gone, we need to encourage writers of all types, that don't fit into a specific mold.

While rejecting sensationalist garbage.