The marketing industry is obsessed with the quick hit—finding the shortest/loudest/fastest way to say something. It’s the culture of YouTube Shorts, TikTok, six-second bumpers, ephemeral social posts, and reading the headline without clicking into the article. This version of the internet has been thriving for a long time; I call it The Fast Internet. And it has a lot of appeal when we’re trying to reach a wide audience of busy people who don’t really care that much about what we’re trying to say. So we better say it quickly.
But there’s another internet, The Slow Internet, and that internet is thriving too. It’s the world of podcasts, newsletters, #longreads, and blogs. It’s bigger or more popular than ever, but it gets very little attention from brands. Which I find sad, because that’s the internet of fandom, and community. In our rush to win over people who don’t give a shit, are we ignoring the people who do?
Those are the enthusiasts and the influencers who tend to shape opinion on both internets. They don’t like marketing, and they don’t like being condescended to, but they love rich experiences, fun collabs, and deeper levels of information. Why not give it to them?
If you’re still not persuaded, here’s a tip: The LLMs that people are increasingly using to find information are super reliant on content from The Slow Internet. If you’re trying to tailor your content to show up in chatbot results, the shortcut is to take the long road and create rich content, thriving communities, and deeper media coverage.