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.
Previously:
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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.
