Hypertextual Writing and Social Media
It also brought to mind how social media has largely kneecapped true hypertextual writing by not enabling it. You can, of course, add links to web pages in social media posts on any of the various basically-the-same-concept-as-Twitter platforms like X, Threads, Bluesky, or Mastodon, but you do so by pasting raw URLs into posts. (Instagram, by far the world’s most popular such social network, doesn’t even let you paste hyperlinked URLs into the text of posts.) The only links that work like web links, where readers can just tap them and “go there” are @username mentions. On social media you write in plain un-styled text and just paste URLs after you describe them. It’s more like texting in public than writing for the real web. A few years ago these social networks (and private messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp) started turning URLs into “preview cards”, which is much nicer than looking at an ugly raw URLs. But it’s not the web. It’s not writing — or reading — with the power of hyperlinks as an information-density multiplier. If anything, turning links into preview cards significantly decreases information density. That feels like a regression, not progress.
Writing on the web is not like print, where too many citations can feel interruptive. On the web, it is just part of the visual vocabulary. It encourages a more expansive tapestry where references can be used for more than just acknowledging source material. One can also point to definitions, tangential pages, or jokes. The hyperlink is among the singularly magical elements of the web.
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> where too many citations can feel interruptive
Simple linked text is one thing, but it is also tough reading Wikipedia sometimes when there are a lot of citations.
Like everything else this can be done well, or badly.
It's proven that reading text on a screen vs reading on a page uses more brain, chiefly because the brain is constantly open for all the possibilities a computer offers at any given moment.
Chucking in a link is an added layer of distraction. Especially if the linked text doesn't describe what can be found after the click. The very first sentence in the NYT piece links the word know in "You already know him." WTF is that supposed to mean? Why is that linked? It's made worse by the fact that the page it links to is behind a paywall.
Had the sentence read "He had a terrible first term" (Which I think the pay walled article is saying judging from the headline) then I would know what to expect and whether or not I should click through waould be a much easier decision to make.
As it stands it's an instant distraction. Some of the other links in that piece are handled much better, but far from all.
@Kristoffer Yeah, I think this specific NYT example is kind of a gimmick, and they are in general not very good about linking to sources or even the specific articles/posts/videos that they are commenting on.
I’ve been writing on and for the web since the 1990s. In my experience, inline hyperlinks provide almost no functional advantage in most contexts. The “information density” provided by inline links is counteracted by the fact that the page on the other end is seldom relevant or truly additive to whatever you’re reading. People skip them because they’ve never proven helpful. They end up being mere decoration, far more interesting to the author than to their audience. I‘m not saying they’re bad, but maybe having a single featured link to which a post explicitly relates is not such a bad thing either.
