> We expect straight and to-the-point prose, piddly word counts and a literal/predictable assortment of ideas.
Personally, I disagree with all three items. This isn't the first time I've seen a text delay its thesis until the end. Yet none of them imparted the sense of utter bewilderment that this article has. I doubt word count is an issue since I read plenty of books. It's not as if all I read is buzzfeed, cracked, and HN. As for ideas, I don't know how this is relevant. HN's primary criticism is directed towards the presentation, not the underlying ideas. I do think Curtis has an interesting idea, but I still think the presentation was trash.
> writing is still a creative art. (...) surely we can allow a few artists to tell their stories the way they want to?
"Creating noise" is surely appropriate for sports stadiums, but probably not for journalism. This text is clearly explanatory. It's not a novel, it's not a poem, it's an article. Its purpose is to inform.
This goal is accomplished effectively most often by building a hierarchy of abstraction. The thesis is often a single abstract opinion/judgement supported by tangibles such as examples, anecdotes, statistics, etc. Paragraphs organize text so that tangibles support a minithesis, which often supports a main thesis, which sometimes supports a chapter in a book.
The author didn't take the normal route, but did he accomplish his goal of "informing the reader" effectively? I think his paragraphs were too short to organize his ideas meaningfully. And even if his paragraphs were longer, I would have preferred that Curtis group the paragraphs into "chapters" so I could mentally index each segment for the conclusion. In short, I think he failed his goal spectacularly.