A few years ago, we all blogged. We scribbled on Tumblr, WordPress, Nairaland forums, and even BBM notes. If you had thoughts, you wrote them. Today? If you have thoughts, you grab a mic and say them. On Spotify, YouTube, and Twitter Spaces. Or in the back seat of an Uber with a ring light and a tripod. Podcasts, not paragraphs, are the new currency of expression. And quietly, without a formal eulogy, the writer faded into the background.
The Rise of the Loud
Don’t get me wrong. I love a good podcast. I love the banter, the boldness, the intimacy of hearing someone’s story in their own voice. But somewhere along the way, speaking became more powerful than writing. If you can hold a mic, ride a trend, talk for 30 minutes without breathing, you’re “creating content.” Meanwhile, the writer is still on page three, rearranging sentences like furniture.
Suddenly, storytelling feels like a performance sport. You’re expected to package trauma into trending clips, give hot takes in a carousel, or stitch TikToks into a monologue. And if you say “I’m a writer,” people pause. Like, “Okay…but what do you really do?”
Just look at how many conversations now begin with “Welcome to my channel,” not “Here’s a thought I’ve been writing about.” Even in Nigeria, once a place of deep storytelling and radio reverence, the shift is loud and clear. Podcasts like I Said What I Said, Tea with Tay, and Menisms have become household names. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s just a loud thing. Loud enough to drown the hum of a writer’s keystroke.
Writers vs. The Algorithm
The truth is: writers don’t go viral. Words don’t dance, they don’t lip-sync, and they certainly don’t come with captions that scream “Wait for it!” The algorithm is allergic to quiet. To stillness. To anything that requires five minutes of reading without swiping. And because attention has become a commodity, we’re now forced to compete for it with people who have never known the agony of backspacing a full paragraph.
There’s pressure now to be seen. To show up on Instagram Live. To post reels of your writing process. To speak your pieces into a mic with lo-fi jazz in the background. To prove that writing can also be content.
But what if we don’t want to perform?
What if our performance is on the page?
This is not bitterness, it’s bewilderment. Because in a world where visibility equals value, where does that leave the quiet creator? The one who doesn’t tweet daily threads or shoot video essays, but whose prose could undress your soul in five lines?
The Writer’s Resistance
There’s a stubbornness that comes with being a writer. A quiet defiance. Because while everyone else is building personal brands, we’re building sentences. While others are chasing algorithms, we’re chasing metaphors. We stay up late, not rehearsing intros but wondering whether that third paragraph flows. Whether the dialogue feels real. Whether we’ve said something that deserves to last.
And even though the world isn’t listening like it used to, we still write.
We write because silence is our birthplace. Because there’s something sacred in the slowness. Because not every story needs a mic drop, it just needs margins. A screen. A pen.
The irony is, most podcasters write too. They script. They outline. They plan segments and curate ideas. But it’s the delivery that’s different. One gets applause, the other gets archived.
Still, we choose the page.
Will the Writer Survive?
Yes. We always do.
We might not trend. We might not sell out live shows. But our work lingers. It’s read years later, quoted in classrooms, highlighted in PDFs, printed, and dog-eared. We don’t need clout, we want clarity. We don’t want to be famous, we want to be felt.
And even if we start a podcast someday, best believe it’ll be written first. Word for word.
So no, we’re not dead. We’re not obsolete. We’re simply choosing the long game.
And as long as some people still believe in the power of stories, slow, quiet, and deeply human, there will always be writers.
We’re not content creators. We’re world builders.
And that’s always worth reading.
Ezomo Godson is a Nigerian writer, storyteller, and creative communicator from Benin City, Edo State. With a background in Accounting from the University of Benin, he blends analytical depth with a passion for words, crafting essays, stories, and cultural commentary that resonate with clarity and purpose. Beyond writing, he explores brand storytelling, graphic design, and digital creativity, making his work both versatile and impactful.