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For real, I can’t stand this kind of longform. They take three simple facts and write an article that is more a short essay. And when the write starts with an accurate description of weather, place or person, “It was a foggy winter day in …”, “we reached a hidden part of the shore”, “is a tall woman with bright expressive eyes" you know you’ll be stuck in a fifteen minutes reading without learning anything.

Do you actually keep reading? If the first sentence is that way, I immediately close the tab.

From the articles about occurrences and domains I have personal knowledge of I learnt not to trust in the factual correctness of media articles. If they on top of that start with a story, I'm off.

That's Nautilus for you. Pages of fluff for a few lines of facts...

Once upon a time their articles had more substance.

I might be wrong but this longform is called "feature article". It's not meant to be for quick consumption. I'm not sure what is happening with our brains, but I find it increasingly difficult to concentrate and appreciate longer writings. Nowadays everything is about getting info in small chunks. No time for meandering flow of thoughts.

Not all writing is utilitarian.

People in tech, on average, prefer the utilitarian. They also, as a whole, on average, are considered to have below average social skills and below average art skills. Their coincidence is not a coincidence.

> To make it even more frustrating to me the article teases different but-wiping techniques used today without telling me which ones. Thanks for that...

For an introduction to South Asian "toilet technology", both very accurate and very humorous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKkryfdtMNQ

[EDIT: also quite humorous is how this is getting down-voted into the toilet. Is it defensiveness? Angry denial?]

So, the article about the stuff ancient Romans used instead of toilet paper is an art piece? Well, fine, why not.

It's just posted to a wrong forum then. Hence the readers being nonplussed.

most people don't click on something titled "What Ancient Romans Used Instead of Toilet Paper" to read an anecdote about a stranger's vacation to denver or the history of toilet paper, hn audience aside

> most people

or, perhaps, most tech people. Not all tech people, of course, as is evident from other comments on this page.

The article was on Nautilus, not The New York Times or Scientific America or Linux Journal.

Why do you wonder about "down votes" on a comment that basically insults people in tech on a forum primarily visited by people in tech.

Why would tech people, who pride themselves on objectivity, find it insulting?

Do tech people deny that they, AS A WHOLE, ON AVERAGE, have below average social skills and below average art skills?

A lot of men in tech also deny that current tech culture is sexist, often misogynist. That's male objectivity for you. Perhaps a similar "biased objectivity" is at play here.

It's all a bit ironic given that the two comments to which I replied are essentially insulting the author of the article and anyone who appreciates things beyond the utilitarian. They are essentially saying, "It's garbage. It's worthless."

Would you please not take HN threads further into the weeds like this?

I apologize (sort of) dang. I believe social and cultural change is far more important than the technological. Even SV is belatedly starting to realize this in the Trump era. Gaining a broader perspective, and more honest self-perspective, are critical to our progress as a society, as a species.

You might tell me that even if true, it's not what Hacker News is for. But people in technology are having an outsized impact on our culture, and many people question whether this impact is ultimately good. Where else should people in tech be exposed to thoughts outside the SV bubble?

Note that when I made the comments above, the ones I was responding to where at the top of the page. I felt compelled to counter.

I'm not arguing with you. I barely post on HN anymore, since it is clear such discourse isn't really welcome.

I'm not disputing your point about social and cultural change. The issue is that the comments you posted were too low-quality (generic, venty, and off topic) to be good contributions to a Hacker News thread—a thread about the Romans and toilet paper, of all things. If you get from there to Trump, you've gone on a generic tangent, which is exactly the sort of low-quality, all-the-same discussion we're trying to avoid here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I understand. I only responded because they were the top comments, and I'm a believer in calling things out (the narrow-minded i-don't-have-time-for-humanity dismissiveness common in tech), even the little things, as that is how change happens, from the grassroots. In the same way sexist culture will if sexism is called out most every time it happens.

But I will refrain, here on HN.

My social skills are just fine. You don't waste my time, and I won't waste yours.

If you ain't got nothing to say, don't waste my time.

Sir, this is a Denny's.

* Writing is cheap, research is expensive.

* People are rewarded for how long they can keep people looking at ads, not how much value those readers find in their work.

* Finding/re-engaging an audience via aggregator sites such as this one is cheaper than maintaining an audience loyal to the quality of your journalism. For the most part, people click on titles, rather than domain names.

The end result is small amounts of content, disbursed as slowly as possible, with a clickbait title.

You prefer 10 Ways Roman toilet practices were weird! Number 2 will shock you!?

No thanks, I like a conversational story. This Wis written like how the author would tell it live. Humans remember things best when there is a bit of narrative to root the facts to.

Personally narrative only helps me remember when I care about it, which usually isn't the case when I read this kind of article.

For me the endless fluff around the information is just wasted time.

I enjoyed your comment, but would have appreciated it even more if some of the words had said what the Romans used instead of making me look at the TFA.

OK here: But instead of reaching for a roll of toilet paper, an ancient Roman would often grab a tersorium (or, in my technical terms, a “toilet brush for your butt”). A tersorium is an ingenious little device made by attaching a natural sponge (from the Mediterranean Sea, of course) to the end of a stick. Our ancient Roman would simply wipe him- or herself, rinse the tersorium in whatever was available (running water and/or a bucket of vinegar or salt water), and leave it for the next person to use. That’s right, it was a shared butt cleaner. (And of course, there were other means of wiping as well, such as the use of abrasive ceramic discs called pessoi.)

Thank you for posting this - you added more value than that entire article.

The wikipedia article used quite similar wording and images, and you can click through to some more topics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylospongium

TIL that "In the middle of the first century Seneca reported that a Germanic gladiator had committed suicide with a sponge on a stick. The German hid himself in the latrine of an amphitheater and pushed the wooden stick into his gullet and choked to death."

In that alone Seneca thus reported that Roman culture had every right to be dismantled. If you push a man so far that he'll kill himself with a sponge recently up someone's butt, your entire society has gone too far.

here's the picture that should have been in the lead

http://static.nautil.us/16038_96fb9b48825b741083d35b0137af1b...

Oh you made a meta comment on his comment. Inception

Dude, an article about Roman anal hygiene is not to be read for important facts. It's feuilleton, reading as pleasure per se, light-hearted entertainment, path, not destination.

Having said that, I agree that a) this article was extremely light on facts, b) many other long articles about actually important topics digress way too much on setting the scene.

Agreed. This is a perfect article to read, while sitting and taking care of #2.

I still follow the "Wadsworth Constant" from several years ago, which says one can skip the first 30% of content to get to the heart of the thing being discussed. Otherwise, I just skim through, looking for anything relevant to the title.

Works on HN too, apaprently. (This thread, QED.)

I was equally annoyed by the narrative intro, angrily skimming to find the answer. Unfortunately, I think its a trend within information media – I find myself skimming Atlas Obscura the same way I skim Nautilus. These articles are good for keywords to prompt the real search…

This style is leaking into documentaries too. The best example is "Wild Wild Country" – a six hour long docuseries where I still had to read the wikipedia page afterwards.

As a father I found the tangent about the kids doing their business on a family vacation relatable, funny, pleasant, joyous. You may find it extraneous but others of us are enjoying the odd tangents in our lives.

I wonder why so many articles today have so many words but yet so little content?

Because short articles are penalized in search engine rankings.

all those digression are used to spam links to third party blogs, which in turns cross link back on some other article.

if it was just the answer paragraph + affiliate paragraphs you'd notice it, rule of thumb is one paragraph of content per one of cross-linking.

Can't you just skim over that stuff?

I wonder how anyone could consider this as being "so many words", or being so time poor that they couldn't spare 4 mins to read it...

I share the GP's complaint. It's less about the length -- it's not all that long -- but about the meandering nature of the form. The introduction of the author's family is not extensive enough to grab my attention as a reader, nor does the banality of the situation make them feel like anything other than a small bit of padding, nor do I feel closer to the author for our shared experience. Had the article started at "Modern American society..." this would have been a much snappier opener, though I'd argue that paragraph 4 should be rescued in some fashion.

I wonder any of this is real.

SEO?