I get angry sometimes that people don’t read books as much anymore.

But the other day, I had a scary realization for a big book nerd like me.

5,000 years ago, oral storytelling was king. It was the most scalable form of storytelling. Someone would tell a story to their tribe and it would spread organically through generations across centuries.

Then came the printing press. Writing became king: the most scalable form of storytelling spreadable across continents. The Bible spread. Fiction. Science. Whatever. Writing reigned as the most scalable form of media.

Then radio and TV came and flip-flopped society back to oral storytelling as king. Oral storytelling has been the reigning champ ever since. In the 1930’s, people gathered around the radio for FDR’s fireside chats. In the 60’s, the first televised presidential debate was aired between JFK and Nixon. Now with the proliferation of podcasts, audiobooks, and TikTok, oral storytelling is king. We’ve gone back to tribal times—only a more scalable form.

Everything has changed, nothing has changed.

I’m a big book nerd and this pissed me off, but then I realized I should stop being a pretentious English major twat and embrace human nature.

What does this mean for you, nerd?

If you’re not creating audio/video, you’re fighting against the ways of human tradition and 1000s of years of human nature.

Maybe you’ve seen I’m now publishing podcasts 1-2x/week! Well I finally hired a full-time podcast producer. He’s killing the long-form edits and is also clipping podcasts into shorts like these silly startup idea ones below.

At Product Hunt, I’m doing weekly Product Hunt SaaS video reviews. At Jam.dev, we even have a full-time video creator. Like it or not, video creators are now a must-have for nearly every startup. It’s not just TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube anymore either. X added an endless video scroll feed like TikTok. LinkedIn just did the same. The TikTokification of everything is happening.

In fact, a few weeks ago, I was getting coffee with Adam Faze, the founder of a TikTok-native studio called Gymnasium. Valued at $7M already, the studio produced viral hit series like Keep the Meter Running (a show where they let taxi drivers drive them wherever they want) and Boy Room (a show where a funny comedian girl takes tours of real NYC men’s bedrooms).

I tell you this because Adam’s story is one of accepting human nature.

He explained to me he grew up in LA obsessed with movies and then skipped college to work on movie sets. Then comes 2020ish and he had a realization which was even though he was the biggest movie nerd he knew, he was no longer watching as many movies as he used to. Neither were his friends. They were all watching TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. This depressed him—but he did something about it. He left Hollywood and launched a TikTok studio bringing Hollywood-level production to the small screen. He stopped fighting human nature and is creating hit after hit.

If you’re a cinephile you might find this depressing like I found people shifting away from books depressing, but don’t worry nerd, good writing isn’t dead. Neither is good storytelling. In fact, good writing and storytelling are alive and important as ever. It’s just not mostly in books/movies anymore. Clever smart writing and storytelling is alive and can be found in the stand-up comedian doing TikTok sketches, the storytelling of a founder on a podcast, the smart in-depth writing of a YouTube documentary. Good writing and storytelling is all around us, it just largely looks different than a century ago (but similar to 1000 years ago except more scalable).

Oral storytelling is a lindy skill.

Something being “lindy” is the idea that the longer something has been around, the longer it will be around. Yoga is lindy, religion is lindy, oral storytelling is lindy. None of these are going away anytime soon.

The point being: If you’re making stuff online, it’s time to practice oral storytelling. You don’t need to necessarily start a podcast (although now would be a good time to do that) or make videos (although now would also be a good time to do that). You can practice by simply telling stories at parties, jumping on the phone with friends and telling stories, or even just recording voice notes for yourself. Practice the art of oral storytelling.

Practice yapping.

Yapping is lindy.

Yapping makes millions.

P.S. Want to see me yap like a madman? Take 2 seconds to subscribe on YouTube. It means a lot to me!

My adventures this week

🔥 Announced my evil plan: I’m building Google Trends for memes

🎤 Yapped on the Madvertising Podcast with Adam Singer

😈 Read a fantastic Palmer Luckey profile and shared my fav quote

🍕 Wrote about a $15,000 pizza marketing stunt

Tech Memes of the Week

Nature had my brain flowin and I dropped some bangers this week

Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Head of Growth @ Product Hunt, Author of Memes Make Millions