New Media Revolution: Why Are Geeks More Likely to Produce Outstanding Content?

God Translation Bureau is a compilation team under 36Kr, focusing on fields such as technology, business, workplace, and life, and mainly introducing new technologies, new ideas, and new trends from abroad.

Editor's note: Linear narrative is bankrupt. Use McLuhan's Tetrad to see through the current situation: Non - linear slices are turning the fragmented thoughts of geeks into new weapons to rule the era. This article is from a compilation.

There is a simple saying in the tech world, which, although a cliché, is always proven to be true: "We tend to overestimate the changes in the next two years and underestimate the changes in the next ten years." Realizing how far we still have to go requires both humility and imagination. This awareness is especially necessary when we think about media and how power quickly shifts to new groups that resonate strongly with new technologies.

In the past decade, a new mainstream media format has quietly emerged: transforming and integrating long - form materials into short video slices. This "from podcast to tweet/short video" pipeline has become the standard way to mine and package news and entertainment content. We attach great importance to this because it is not only a vane of media development trends but also reveals "who has influence and why."

There is a seemingly simple but profound trend that has just begun to emerge and has not been fully valued in the world's power structure: Geeks are more likely to produce "clippable" content; therefore, geeks have more power. This may sound absurd, but it is extremely important.

Everyone in the tech world can feel this to some extent because we have always been the beneficiaries of this new format, and it always feels good to win. However, I think we still underestimate the importance of this trend and how it strengthens the "podcast - to - slice" model as the primary path to gain influence. Just as the pamphlet politics in the 18th and 19th centuries provided a platform for a certain kind of political theory "nerds" and then placed them in high positions where they could rewrite important events in modern history, new media is also pushing a group of new faces into positions of great power.

Today, we will take this as an opportunity to use McLuhan's Laws of Media to better understand how the current situation has changed:

• What are "geeks," and what makes them special?

• What is the new media format (long - form materials + short slices)?

• What are McLuhan's Four Laws of Media?

• Overall: Why are geeks so likely to produce clippable content, and what is the upcoming institutionalization of new media?

Let's get started:

1. About "Geeks"

First, for the convenience of discussion, we need to give a simple definition of "geeks." The typical examples I'm referring to include Elon Musk, Alex Karp, Catherine Boyle, and many of our colleagues. They are a group of thoughtful and detail - oriented people who can now reach a massive audience, which was almost impossible in the previous generation's environment. Linear TV, media public relations training, and polished narratives have never been the strong suits of geeks.

Paul Graham once wrote a wonderful article about geeks. Although it mainly discussed adolescence, it touched on the core relevant to our topic:

The main reason geeks are unpopular is that they are always thinking about something else. Their attention is drawn to books or the natural world, rather than fashion and parties. They are like people trying to balance a glass of water on their heads while playing football. Other players who can focus entirely on the game can easily defeat them and wonder why they seem so clumsy.

This is the core: Geeks are interested in many things. They find the world extremely fascinating. Therefore, when expressing or discussing topics, geeks often appear to have scattered thoughts, be distracted, and even seem clumsy because they are processing too much information in their heads at the same time. According to traditional narrative rules - laying out a logical track and advancing linearly without error within a fixed 3 - to 5 - minute media time - geeks are not naturally good speakers. They are interested in too many things to adapt to traditional media. But now we have new media, and new media seems to suit them better. Why is that?

2. New Media: Podcasts, Slices, and Tweets

We use the term "new media" to cover many different formats and practices, but the most important core mechanism here is the following sequence:

• Long - form materials (for example: hour - long podcast conversations, long - form writing, live events).

• Packaged and viral slices of wonderful content on social media.

This sequence of "extracting short - packaged products from long - form materials" is the basic atomic unit of today's media. We are still in the early stages of understanding how this transformation will reshape everything downstream.

Sports broadcasts and other long - form materials have also undergone their own "slicing revolution," which is interesting in itself. But in our field, podcast conversations have become the core source of shareable new media materials. It is a perfect fit for the typical "geek" who finds everything interesting and has many unique insights to share; it's just that these insights don't flow linearly. They require an open - ended exploration to be discovered.

Podcasts existed in an over - produced original form for a long time, like NPR's radio shows (such as Radiolab, Serial, Gimlet's shows, etc.); it took us several years to realize that the real format is something like Odd Lots. Find interesting people to talk to each other; then segment, edit, and share. A few months ago, Marc (Andreessen) talked about how podcasts have completely changed the threshold of "speaking like an authority" compared to TV:

"The typical scenario is that you're watching an interview on cable news, and just when it's getting good, the host says, 'Okay, that's all for today. Thank you for coming.'"

"Why stop there? The guest is right in the recording studio. You could talk for another hour, or even three hours. But you choose to stop."

In contrast, what's good about three - hour shows like those of Joe Rogan or Lex Friedman? There's no problem of "having to stop right when it gets good." You can fully express your views on any topic, greatly expanding the breadth of topics. And all the content is available on demand, and they also segment the videos so you can decide which part to watch.

Will this change the skills and qualities required to become an authority? The new threshold is: you must be able to talk interestingly on a long - form podcast for three hours. Traditional media training doesn't teach this, and a large part of the people in power in the past 50 years definitely can't do this. Therefore, whether this will become a new threshold for success in the public domain is an interesting question.

3. McLuhan's Laws of Media

Finally, we need to understand McLuhan's "Laws of Media" themselves.

Compared to McLuhan's other works (including his core book Understanding Media, which is quite challenging for laypeople to read), his Four Laws of Media are very accessible. He insisted that all forms of media have four basic characteristics, which he called the "Tetrad":

• They enhance a certain innate ability of humans, making us louder, faster, and able to reach farther. This is the first attribute that comes to mind when thinking about technology: what do we use it for that benefits us?

• They make some of our existing abilities obsolete. (The well - known "disruptive theory" in the tech world is very relevant here: obsolete technologies become unimportant because the performance dimensions in which they used to have an advantage are no longer crucial.)

• They extract certain ancient traditions or deep - seated subconscious abilities and bring them back to the forefront. Some behaviors that we are naturally good at in our physiological instincts or old habits find an unexpected and strongly resonant "product/market fit" in new media formats. This is often difficult to predict in advance.

• When media are pushed to the extreme, they reverse into opposite attributes. The ultimate achievement of a certain format is that when it is carried to the extreme, it starts to operate in a way that is completely opposite to its original intention, almost paradoxically.

Take the familiar Google Docs as an example:

Google Docs enhances our ability to collaborate on documents (compared to just writing); it is essentially editing and commenting software.

It makes traditional word processors obsolete. The old model of writing a document in one go, then sending it to others for overall feedback or modification (also in one go), and finally sharing the finished memo is being replaced by the model of "Here is the first draft on Google Docs. Please comment directly on it."

It extracts the "Talmudic" commenting ability, but in a modern executive version. Inside a company, the highest - density information is often the comment chains of executives around a topic in Google Docs, and these comments are then used as authoritative references: "To understand the truth, read this comment."

It reverses into a chat tool. If there is really interesting content in the document, it will never be finished. Comments cannot be "killed" because they have become the content itself. Therefore, the "completed" Google Doc is the one that is never really published or printed; it reverses into an oral discussion exported as a source of truth.

Applying these four attributes to specific media can help us better understand the tools and perceive their counter - intuitive consequences.

The Tetrad of New Media Geeks

Now we are ready. We will apply McLuhan's "Tetrad" technology to the combined technology of "podcast + slice + social sharing" because they are indeed a single media format that works in synergy:

What does new media enhance?

The first innovation of new media is that it is an improved method of thought mining, aiming to generate slices that can ultimately go viral. The first step in generating thoughts is to encourage people to express themselves and eliminate their concerns. The "podcast - to - slice" sequence has proven to be extremely attractive in this regard, especially to geeks.

There are several reasons. Remember, the core characteristic of geeks is that they have too many ideas; they find too many things interesting. Therefore, without an expansive and open - ended format, you cannot discover those refined and easily sliced arguments that are suitable for going viral. Podcasts enhance a very specific form of thought presentation: "It doesn't matter how much time it takes. Let's find the path to the sliced form; maybe you don't even know where it is at first, but we'll find it together."

This observation is not new; interviews have been around for a long time, and good interviewers will try to do this with any guest. The podcast format just expands the coverage and reduces the exploration cost. What's more new is what new media makes obsolete:

What does new media make obsolete?

There is an unobvious compatibility between podcasts and social media timelines, that is, neither has a necessarily defined order. Even if you consume them in a completely scrambled order, they still make sense. This is the core reason why they are so efficient in thought mining and an important factor in why "geek content" performs much better here than elsewhere.

The out - of - order presentation of timelines is the core of their fun. You wake up in the morning and see the "hot memes of the day," but you first see the amazing reversals or sarcastic remarks. You actually need to scroll back to find the source, and then the punchline becomes clear. (Note that this applies not only to jokes but also to serious content!) You are rewarded for your effort (finding the source), and it feels good, which is why we use it repeatedly.

When you realize that podcast materials are also not linearly constrained, this feeling is not as obvious, but it is indeed the case. Many wonderful podcast segments often start with specific observations or questions (i.e., "reactions" to a grand idea that has not yet emerged) and then derive the grand idea through retrospection. Note an important point: People who are "traditionally" good at expressing themselves don't tell stories like this. Their narratives are purposeful, directional, and will ultimately reach a predetermined conclusion. In contrast, geeks usually don't think like this. Their ideas are great, but they are scattered and don't come out in order.

I think these two factors together explain why geeks are more likely to go viral. The things that geeks are not good at - the linear narrative format that rewards linear expression - have become obsolete. The non - linear podcast format successfully mines and extracts interesting arguments; and the non - linear timeline format successfully guides the audience to listen to the conclusion first and then fill in the background information. These are exactly the skills required to read geek content. Slices make geeks' thoughts more accessible, and timelines make readers more receptive.

What does new media extract?

The ancient behavior that reappears in the new media format has a name - "Pamphleting." This has been the vehicle that has made geeks popular on this timeline for centuries.

Pamphlets are often called the "original social media." Authors debated positions on serious topics such as religious or revolutionary movements, often using pseudonyms, just like anonymous accounts today. Many great ideological turning points in world history (such as the American, French, and Russian Revolutions) are related to famous pamphlets that went viral in history (such as Thomas Paine's Common Sense, the anonymous The Conversion of a Parisian Lady, Marx's The Communist Manifesto).

These pamphlets were the "posts" of that time, and many of them originated from long conversations in local salons and living rooms, which was equivalent to the "podcast interviews" of that era. Salons plus pamphlets created the same mechanism as "podcasts plus slices": the mining mechanism combined with the editing and dissemination mechanism provided a resonant platform for geeks. I have no doubt that these pamphlets are more like contemporary "slices" than contemporary "posts" and are synthesized by a familiar thought - mining process.

Pamphlet politics was an important development in world history because it pushed geeks into positions of influence and power. Geeks are usually not necessarily the loudest laughers or the quickest responders in salons; but they can extract the right segments and gain influence outside. Famous works such as The Federalist Papers, On Liberty, New Statesman, and Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks not only contributed important ideas themselves but also, as a medium, pushed enough contemporary geeks into the public space and decision - making positions, thus contributing to many major events in world history.

Correspondingly, the real behavior that is retrieved is "geeks as political theorists," even if some people's content has nothing to do with politics. Over time, geeks' politics has become politics itself (see: Gamergate). As the slicing format accelerates, you have to think about how much this will accelerate or what can stop it.

What will new media reverse into?

Podcasts have been around for a while, and so has social media. It took people several years to figure out that slices are the real native format connecting long - form content mining and short - form content dissemination. Now, this format is in full swing, and we need to predict where it is going.

The logical end of the new media story line is both obvious and very funny: it will completely collapse and return to corporate media. In our world, TBPN is an avant - garde experiment: What will happen when you scrape all the geeks, geek memes, and quite serious geek content that naturally occur on the timeline and bundle them into an ESPN - style "corporate slice show," bringing these people back to more traditional 3 - to 5 - minute TV - style segments?

John's operation in this regard is really impressive.

The interesting reversal with TBPN is that you now have an "ESPN" produced by geeks and for geeks, so we all love it. But this reversal also applies to venture capital firms like ours - we are responsible for finding talented geeks and their messages and assisting with hosting, rebranding, repackaging, and distribution. Compared with the old system, the major inversion is that in the past, "non - geek" institutions gave credibility to the audience to offset their dullness, while now, it is the "geekiness" of the guests that is suitable for slicing that gives legitimacy to the institutions. (The Odd Lots podcast is a perfect example. It is a geek show with perfect guests and has risen rapidly in the new media environment.)

The two - stage mining and dissemination model of "podcast + slice" that we used to have has now evolved into a three - stage model of viral content: mining thoughts from podcasts, spreading the winners through viral slices, and then giving them legitimacy through branded channels. This completes what I think is the accelerated flywheel of geek viral spread: around the "high - quality but non - linear geek narrative," enough supporting facilities have been established, so that we now have a mature mining pipeline, refined technology stack, and distribution mechanism for final consumption.

It is no longer as independent as before, but this strengthening effect will continue in the new institutionalized state: "Geeks are more suitable for being clipped, so geeks have more power."

Finally: It is worth pondering the question, "Are we just at the beginning of this trend