This observation can also be applied to trip reports. If there is no sense of value tied to a given trip report, it can be sampled in bits and pieces and just forgotten.[People] can ... turn a picture off and go straight to the next piece of content. If there’s no sense of value tied to a given movie, of course, it can be sampled in bits and pieces and just forgotten.
Of course there are good and bad movies, just like there are good and bad TRs. By "sense of value" Scorsese is not referring to the evaluated content of a particular movie, nor am I in regard to TRs. The "sense of value" here refers to the form in which the content is presented. For example, on YouTube one can experience a bit of almost any movie, then immediately click on the next bit of content, which might be a how-to video on making coffee. Or, on Facebook, one can view the first few sentences and pictures of a trip report, then immediately scroll down to the next bit of content, which might be some meme about cats.
Scorsese's point is that we are devaluing cinema, the art form itself, by lumping it piecemeal with lesser forms of video. And I guess my point is that we are devaluing trip reports, the article form itself, by lumping it with lesser forms of writing.
Unlike other social media, this forum preserves much of the classic article form. Trip reports here can be given a title and are contained on their own individual pages in their own separate category. They can be stylized and presented as integrated works, with pictures placed logically between paragraphs. In this way there is a strong focus on form over content, and the value of the form itself is generally respected. Whereas platforms like Facebook have generally dispensed with the article form in favor of something I would call the "random snapshot" form, in which the consumer is presented with an endless scroll of uncategorized short posts or snapshots of longer ones, a practice that formalizes the equating of all types of written and visual content. It represents the death of critical judgment--the end of serious valuing. The most important content is the one with the most "likes." Trending things replace valuable things because, as a culture, we don't think and value anymore. We emote and click buttons. This is the effect of egalitarianism in media.
