Are Pictures Worth 1000 Words?

I sometimes wish that I'd get more views on my blog. Or more accurately, that more people would read what I have to say and give some feedback. It's hard to tell how much a "view" really entails. It could be a misclicked link, a glance at a page, or someone starts reading and has a tl;dr moment and leaves.

I have often thought about including pictures to maybe capture the attention of others who stumble upon this blog. I chose not to do this for two reasons. First, I'm lazy and don't want to spend time finding pictures related to the topic I'm blogging about. Second, and most importantly, because I sort of don't like the "instant gratification" idea that pictures bring to a blog. In a age where we have sites like tumblr where most people just post a bunch of interesting pictures and call that a blog I think it's pretty useless. Pictures are good and can convey ideas but in an society where the internet allows one to access almost an infinite wealth of information with a few seconds of typing and clicks of a mouse, they only serve to worsen the problem. Look at facebook, for a example. Many people argue (myself included) that if you really -cough- stalk someone on facebook you could find out a lot about their life rather than taking the time to get to know them in person. These examples only serve to show that we're spoiled and have gotten far too use to having all this information at our fingertips to the point where we've forgotten the magic that comes with meeting someone completely new from the first time.

I guess the tl;dr version of this would be that pictures seem too convenient for me. So what if they are flashy and eye-catching? They should be used to enhance what a blogger writes about, and not the focus of it. The internet seems to make things impersonal and, I guess with my blog, I'm trying to make things personal again. I'm trying to write about how I feel and share it in the purest way I know how - through plain old text.