The media that we use shapes who we are. Does your memory matter? Does your imagination? What about your attention span? By distinguishing media, we can make better decisions about the kind of media we want to use. 

Reels kill memory and imagination. Short-form video has no resistance, it has no pause when you turn the page, it has no sharp edges. The reel wants you there, and it is there to transform how you focus and concentrate.

This is unlike the book. The difference between the media of books and short-form videos is striking. Once you understand the difference, you will think entirely differently about these media.

The Book

A book requires sight, ponderous touch, memory, and imagination. Your eyes are engaged as you look at the page, your fingers scan up and down, sometimes tracking words, sometimes flipping backwards and forward upon a page, and your memory traces what has come behind and in your mind then anticipates what comes ahead.

It’s also strange that its structure is one that creates friction—the page is rough, the shape of a book is there in a rectangle, its edges are sharp, and every time you turn the page, it asks you to slow down and take a mental breath. The book medium is slow, ponderous, sightful, tangible, and memory-laden.

You must remember what came before and predict by imagination what comes after. You cannot just start in the middle and be entertained. It takes mental effort to begin reading again.

Short-Form Videos

The reel or the TikTok (i.e., the short video format) differs markedly. It privileges sight, hearing, and touch only insofar as it has the least amount of friction possible. The swipe differs from the turning of the page because the page has friction—it slows you down when you turn the page. The edge of the book is sharp, but with the reel, you swipe a finger across a smooth, rounded-edged screen. No sharp edges are there. Your finger slides across, and there’s no resistance.

There’s no mental resistance either. That’s the second kind of resistance that reels lack: you both have the tangible finger swipe that lacks resistance, and then you secondly have the lack of mental resistance. Memory then is unimportant to this medium; you don’t remember the reel that just went past. You don’t need to trace the argument or the story and predict what might happen in the pages to come, because the reel doesn’t ask you to predict or to remember.

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