Why So Many Websites Read Like War and Peace

Why So Many Websites Read Like War and Peace and Why That’s Not an Accident

If you’ve ever landed on a website and thought, “Why is this so long?”—you’re not wrong.

Somewhere between the opening paragraph and the fifteenth subheading, many modern web pages begin to feel less like explanations and more like endurance tests. By the time you scroll past the third screen of text, you’re no longer learning—you’re skimming, hunting for the one sentence you actually needed.

Ironically, this isn’t because writers suddenly forgot how to be concise. It’s because clarity is no longer the primary thing being rewarded.

How This Site Started (And Why It Changed)

The first version of this website was intentionally minimal. There were only a few pages. Each page contained:

a short, focused paragraph
a relevant image
just enough context to orient the reader

If the page answered the question, the page was done.

That approach works extremely well for humans. It works far less well for search engines.

Over time, it became increasingly clear that pages below a certain word threshold—often somewhere around 800–900 words—were being labeled as “thin content,” even when they fully addressed the topic they were created for.

The issue wasn’t usefulness. It was volume. So, the Hunter Storm Official Site adapted.

From Minimalism to Magnum Opus

At that point, there were two options: pad pages with filler or expand them with real substance. Padding felt dishonest. So instead, the site leaned all the way in.

Pages became:

deeper
more comprehensive
accessible to both non-experts and technical readers
capable of standing alone without requiring five other tabs

In some cases, that depth was absolutely justified. Certain topics—security, infrastructure, systems design, emerging technology—cannot be responsibly explained in a paragraph.

In other cases, if the site were designed purely for humans, the approach would have been much simpler: say the thing, clearly, once—and move on.

But that is not the environment websites operate in today.

The Attention Span Paradox

Here’s where things start to break down. By most modern estimates, the average human attention span is measured in seconds, not minutes. People skim. They scan. They read headings, not paragraphs. Many never scroll past the first screen.

And yet, websites are routinely penalized for being concise. We end up in a strange situation where:

people won’t read 900 words
but platforms insist those 900 words exist
website articles need to be written in “listicle” style

This creates a kind of digital ritual—less about value, more about compliance. Which raises an uncomfortable question: Are these requirements quality signals—or a ritual?

At times, it’s hard not to compare modern webpage “requirements” to a fraternity initiation ceremony:

Walk in a circle.
Turn around.
Put your hands on your head.
Say the words.
Drink the beer.

None of these steps are meaningful on their own. They’re meaningful because everyone agrees they count. Word count thresholds often feel the same way because:

They’re easy to measure.
They scale well.
They create the illusion of quality control.

But they are, at best, a proxy—and a blunt one. A concise page that answers a question perfectly may be less “valuable” by the metric than a longer page that says very little across many paragraphs. That disconnect is where a lot of modern web frustration lives.

Why This Site Looks the Way It Does

So yes—some pages here on the Hunter Storm Official Site are long. Not because verbosity was the goal, but because:

depth was required to avoid oversimplification
completeness mattered more than brevity
visibility required meeting the system where it is

Every effort is made to structure content so readers can:

skim headings
jump to relevant sections
extract what they need without reading every word

The length exists for the systems. The structure exists for humans. That’s the compromise.

When Clarity Actually Wins

Every so often, a platform does something refreshingly simple: it communicates a change clearly, in context, without theatrics.

Those moments stand out because they’re rare. They demonstrate that:

clarity scales
respect reduces confusion
one sentence can prevent months of speculation

If that philosophy were applied consistently across content evaluation, many websites—including this one—would look very different. They would be:

Shorter.
Sharper.
More humane.

The Real Question

So, what is the value of all this? If people won’t read long pages, why insist they exist?

The honest answer is that we’re in a transitional phase—one where:

human behavior has changed faster than evaluation systems
measurable proxies are standing in for judgment
and creators are adapting in imperfect ways

This site is a product of that reality, not a celebration of it. Whenever a topic can be explained succinctly without losing meaning, that remains the ideal. When it can’t, depth is chosen over distortion.

Until clarity is rewarded as reliably as word count, this remains a balancing act. But the goal is still the same as it was at the beginning:

Say something real.
Say it accurately.
Make it understandable—whether that takes one sentence or nine hundred words.

Hunter Storm ™