“I don’t really have any stories,” says
@joe___bloom , while taking a bite out of a slice of pizza. It’s an eyebrow-raiser from the creator of perhaps the definitive storytelling platform of the vertical video generation, but he’s thinking of what he’d say if he went on the other side of the camera. “I don’t really find a need to tell anyone. Not that the stories aren’t overly interesting or anything, but I don’t know – I think I’d bug out.”
You’ve seen his creation. A person leans over a ledge, speaking into a bright red landline phone. As they talk and their stories unfurl, the camera slowly pans out and their place on a bridge comes into view. By the time the video reaches its conclusion, the person is just a tiny silhouette on the screen.
Since the very first video was posted on
@aview.fromabridge , it’s amassed millions of views and likes, developed into a longform podcast, and been joined by cultural A‑listers from Cyntha Erivo to Ashley Walters.
It was almost an instant success. A few videos in and the likes were in the tens of thousands, the views in the millions. Perfect social media fodder, the numbers would make it seem, but the idea itself came as a way of rebelling against mainstream forces. Since TikTok first emerged in the late-2010s, with YouTube and Instagram following suit with Shorts and Reels, shortform vertical video has been the dominant format for consuming content over the past few years. Easy to scroll past, while being characterised by quick cuts, attention-grabbing hooks, and a rapid runtime, cheap dopamine hits had flooded feeds, but Bloom questioned whether there was another way.
Read in full in Huck 83 – link to buy through the 🔗 in bio.
✍️ Isaac Muk
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@joehartphoto 
