The Trouble With Skimming
I did something this week I don’t recommend. I read my own blog like a stranger.
Not the way I read it when I write it — slow, every word weighed, the argument stacked one brick at a time until the wall stands up on its own. I read it the way you read it. The way most folks read anything now. At a scroll. Caught the headline, caught the picture, caught the first line in the share box, and kept moving.
And I’ll tell you what that man looks like from out there on the highway, doing fifty past his own front porch.
He looks mad.
Not mad about a thing. Just mad. Mad as a default setting. Mad like it’s the only gear the truck’s got. You line up the last two months of headlines end to end and skim them at scroll speed and you don’t come away thinking there’s a fellow making careful arguments. You come away thinking there’s a fellow with a grudge and a keyboard, and Lord help whoever he’s pointed at this week.