Why studies are NOT enough

Welcome to my first blog written on a mobile device. It will necessarily be short because I have fat fingers even with a drag keyboard.

What I what to say is that studies, no matter how complex and well written, are not enough. They need a story, a narrative, something that people can relate to. They need a blog post.

Let's start with the obvious: people have little attention span. Not their fault, there is a lot of content out there. For something to click, it must be catchy and immediate. Studies are not that, quite the opposite. If they have comments, they are more of a drag than a boon.

Isn't a blog post even worse? No. Because the purpose, the very meaning of it, is to be long form text. A study can be embedded in a blog post, but not the opposite.

People have tried, with various degrees of success, to tell a story via studies, but let's be honest: it's forcing a round peg through a 64 square hole. We are language machines and we need human language to express the author's meaning.

I was prompted to write this post by a prevailing feeling of guilt. So many talented and passionate people create studies and I just can't be bothered to properly pay them the attention they deserve. Why?

To quote a famous Romanian movie: the hand that tells no story gets no coin. I have to get inspired BEFORE seeing the chess moves. It's the equivalent of youtube video posters: the story has to be hinted at, even if it's a cringe lie.

And there is more: people need to connect with the creator and not the creation. If you're enthusiastic about something, I need to understand why before I spend time understanding what it is.

It's not something to be proud of, but it's true nonetheless. People are limited and shallow and lazy. You have to defeat that in order to spread the wisdom of your chess.

So I beg you, write the blog post, explain what you see and what excites you. Unfortunately for all, chess does not speak for itself, it needs you to speak for it.