Linking is writing

This essay in the New York Times about how writing is not that important is just A+, high quality trolling of its readership.

As engagement bait, as editorial aikido, I just marvel. There’s nothing more to say about it. Its existence is the comment. 

With all that said, and I’m not going to support this any further than just saying it: I do think writing is actually important.

Writing helps you learn, and writing online affords an element that enhances that learning: Linking. 

I genuinely believe that taking a piece of writing and going through it and writing as many links on it as you can helps to form neuropathways in your mind. Writing links cements your learning process.

In particular, I think it works really well if you stretch your memory to recall pieces you have read or pieces that you have written that are relevant to whatever you are writing today. Then you go to search and you find them, grab the link and add it to your text.

Over time, as you keep pursuing a subject, all that linking well help you lock down the key parts of the subject you are covering. You’ll find you keep linking back to certain pieces, and that will show you that those pieces are the heart of your understanding.

It’s good to link to almost anything that’s relevant, but finding reason to link back to your own past work is especially helpful. This isn’t about SEO. It’s about locking in your own experience of the learning process. 

Note: So obvioulsy I appreciate the way Blygger is designed fundamentally around users of the protocol linking to each other. I wonder if, as Blygger users link away with abandon, we will become a sort of hivemind, learning in its own monstrous, decentralized way? 

—Brady Dale
October 2, 2026