What I Notice in Website Writing These Days

I’ve been paying attention to the writing pushed into my daily feed.

Not the long essays.
Not the deep dives.
Just the everyday tech news cycle.

And here’s what I notice.

The lead is buried.
Deeply.
Almost like it’s supposed to be.

You click a headline that promises clarity.
You get six paragraphs of warm‑up.
You get context you didn’t ask for.
You get a meandering tour of the writer’s internal weather.

And somewhere near the bottom —
there it is.
The actual point.

It’s curious.

Because an AI would never do this.
Not ever.

AI leads with the lead.
AI gives you the thing you came for.
AI doesn’t wander around the block before answering the door.

But humans do.

Especially humans stitching together:

• a few AI paragraphs
• a few personal observations
• a few filler lines
• and a deadline

You can feel the seams.
You can feel the drift.
You can feel the “almost there but not quite” logic.

And here’s the deeper thing I’m noticing.

This kind of writing serves a purpose.
But it doesn’t serve the reader.

That’s the real thesis.

A lot of writing today is self‑serving.
It’s written to increase time on article.
Time on site.
Time on platform.

It’s written to satisfy the algorithm, not the person.

There’s a season for this.
A short season.

Because anything that doesn’t serve the reader has an expiration date.

Readers drift toward clarity.
Toward signal.
Toward writing that respects their time.
Toward writing that gives them the thing they came for.

This moment — this season — is temporary.
A symptom of the current incentives.
A transitional phase in the shift from old workflows to new ones.

But clarity wins in the long arc.
It always does.

---

Aaron Rose is a software engineer and technology writer at tech-reader.blog and aaronrose.blog.