I was just thinking how a little button on the beginning of a binge show says so much about our communication world today. 

We are all talking about Shorter copy, shorter videos, shorter presentations, shorter books, shorter podcasts … It seems like we all want shorter, until we must write a speech, do a video or write a blog. Shorter is better as long as it is everything I’m reading, not my own work. Right?

So I was thinking about this while I was binge-watching “For All Mankind” on Apple TV+.  It’s a great series and renewed for a third season. Highly recommend it. 5 stars.  “Hi, Bob,” to all the fans out there.

I noticed at the beginning of the show there was a Skip Intro button. We all know that people have no patience for credits at the end of a movie — no matter how the movie industry has tried to keep content mixed with the credits to keep us in our seats. Yet this is allowing me to skip the intro as well. And so I skipped. All that money spent on music, design and video, and I just skipped it. What a world.

I was listening to my favorite economist in a podcast the other day and he asked a lot of opening questions that had nothing at all to do with the topic of the podcast, and I found myself wanting to “skip intro.” Instead, I just skipped the podcast altogether. I didn’t need all that intro bun, just give me the meat.

SKIP INTRO means leave all the superlatives until the end of the show. Think of the long intros you must endure while someone introduces a speaker. Some are interesting, but most should just be skipped.

The next time you write a blog, letter, article, speech or video script, think of SKIP INTRO first. Do it for all mankind.