There's a concept called "packaging for e-commerce" where things are packaged mainly for shipping for online shoppers. Simple, compact brown boxes that are meant to easily fit larger boxes etc. No flashy colors, large text or distinctive shapes meant to stand out on shelves...
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It's an anonymous-packetization of end-to-end supply chains that are addressed to their destination farther up supply chain than last mile retail.
The marketing "packaging" is now in online listing optimization. For eg. book covers are now designed to pop at thumbnail size.
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I like this idea, and have been thinking of ways to apply it to media/writing. I think a media environment that looks like retail shelving -- screaming headlines competing with neighboring headlines -- leads to bad kinds of arms races.
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One experiment -- it may not work -- is to simply abandon the biggest locus of "packaging" of content online: the headline. My new blogchain series model (300 word shorts) all share a banal, non-screamy name, and evolve as numbered parts. A sort of subscription brown box.
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Other parts of the experiment are less evident. 300 words is not enough in general to present even a simple freytag triangle narrative arc with a hook, an "aha!", and a gentle landing. So each part is necessarily a single point presented directly, without much complex trickery.
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Yeah, you can do very shallow storylets and amirite type humor, but that's kinda like sugar water. Mind candy of the worst sort. You can do "deep" short narrative arcs, but then you have to assume a lot of context and a very specific group of readers.
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Replying to
yeah, I'm trying to invent container shipping for writing basically
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