I don't much like ephemeral writing. By ephemeral writing, I mean writing with these traits:
- Even the person who wrote it forgets what it was about once it's done.
- It isn't connected to the author's other writing. Sometimes other pieces even contradict it.
- It has a short lifespan. Right after it's posted, people's attention drops off exponentially.
Lots of people these days try to post once a day on Threads or LinkedIn, and those posts tend to evaporate easily. That has less to do with the content than with the nature of the platforms. A platform boosts a post with its algorithm only right after it goes up, and after that it hardly shows it in the feed. So people get used to a shoot & forget approach: post often and forget about it. I don't like that instant-noodle feel.
For writing to stay alive instead of evaporating, it has to be connected. In a Digital Garden, where pieces are linked to one another, it's easy to keep writing alive. I suspect that's why I'm drawn to the idea.