it’s called a newsfeed because it feeds us.

Photo Credit, dailydot.

We need what it offers. As a human, there is no living without stories. What we read, watch — or to more accurately say, what we consume — shapes what we post, snap, write, tweet, tag, message and frames our expectations of where the world is headed. We become what we consume. Every scroll through the newsfeed while we wait for Ubers to arrive. We become what we consume. Every morning when we wake up and newsfeed before the bathroom. We become what we consume. In these brief moments, how can we form any depth to our comprehension of story? This is the age of horizontal stories. What I mean by that: the story’s surface becomes more important than its profoundness. The vast majority of the time we consume headlines not articles, reviews not books, pictures not letters. How many times are we scrolling through Facebook, the headline ends in dot dot dot, and we can’t even bother to read the full title, let alone the article itself? In this age of horizontal storytelling, we consume more headlines, tweets and video updates than ever before, but we rarely take the time to understand the depth of any of them. When policemen are shot in Dallas Texas, Fox News reports a lone gunman, activists of BlackLivesMatters report organized crime, and the public doesn’t know the difference.

This is an excerpt from my TEDx Talk called “Horizontal Storytelling.” You can watch the video or read the essay at HorizontalStorytelling.com.