Nihilism and the Danger of Meaningless Writing (#13)
Why Every Good Document Needs a Soul
I recently spent an afternoon reading through a help article that left me with an odd sense of unease. It went something like this:
The Notification Module allows users to enable or disable certain types of alerts.
To enable notifications:
Navigate to the Settings tab.
Click Notifications.
Toggle the Enable Notifications switch to ON.
Click Save.
To disable notifications, repeat the steps above and toggle the switch to OFF.
Additional configuration options are available for email frequency and notification types. These settings can be adjusted under Advanced Settings.
It was structured well, technically accurate, and grammatically sound. The terminology was consistent. The layout was clean. But by the time I reached the final sentence, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had just consumed something hollow. The writing had no clear aim beyond its own existence. It presented information, but it didn’t seem to care what the reader did with it — or if the reader did anything at all.
I’m sure you’ve read similar articles.
This experience didn’t point to a particular documentation error. Rather, it pointed to a deeper issue. The article lacked purpose. It had no center of gravity. And without that, even the most accurate documentation can fail in the most essential way: it stops helping people.
This goes beyond the realm of professional hazard and trespasses into philosophy. When our writing fails to communicate its purpose, we’re no longer just being unclear — we’re brushing up against nihilism.
Nihilism in a New Form
Nihilism can be described as the belief that life is inherently without meaning, purpose, or value. Although the term may evoke images of existential despair, its presence is usually more subtle. It appears not as drama but as drift. People stop believing that what they do matters. They stop searching for deeper reasons, and they settle into inertia.
In the same way, documentation can mirror aimlessness. When a document provides instructions without context, or details without direction, it asks the reader to do something without ever telling her why it matters. The result is disconnection. The reader may complete the steps, but she’ll walk away with no sense of orientation — no understanding of how her action fits into a larger whole.
We don’t need to look far to see the consequences. Many product teams have libraries full of documentation that no one reads, not because the information is wrong, but because it feels irrelevant. These documents fail not because of what they contain, but because of what they lack: meaning.
The Need for Purpose
Humans are meaning-seeking creatures. We are constantly interpreting the world, trying to understand where we are, why we’re here, and what we’re supposed to do. Our stories and cultures largely reflect our communal search for what’s real. When documentation fails to reflect the same pattern of meaning-seeking, it fails to deliver on a basic human need.
Research in cognitive psychology supports this idea. Cognitive Load Theory, developed by John Sweller, emphasizes that our brains have a limited capacity for working memory. When users must work to understand both the content of a document and the relevance of that content, they are far more likely to disengage. In other words, if we force readers to guess why something matters, we’re making the work harder than it needs to be.
Similarly, Richard Mayer and Roxana Moreno have demonstrated that meaningful learning happens when the presented information clearly connects to a practical goal. People learn best when they understand how each part of the content serves a larger purpose. Without that scaffolding, knowledge becomes fragmented — and eventually, discarded.
We can’t assume that structure alone will provide meaning. A bullet list doesn’t become helpful simply because it’s clean. A paragraph doesn’t become clear simply because it avoids jargon. What gives documentation value is its ability to show the user what they’re doing matters, and to explain why it matters right now.
The Way Back to Meaningful Writing
If we want to avoid writing that drifts into nihilism, we must establish the purpose of documentation as a practice. Documentation should not simply record what exists. It should serve as a bridge between what the user knows and what they need to know in order to act. It is a form of guidance. And good guidance always involves purpose.
This means that every document should begin with a clear articulation of value. Consider the following questions:
What problem does the article solve?
What outcome does it guide the reader toward?
What task does it empower the user to complete?
What value does it deliver?
These questions shouldn’t be buried in the subtext. They should shape the very first lines of the page, giving meaning to the rest.
For example, see how this sample introduction highlights the value proposition of the social syndication feature.
The Imagine UI enables you to share media from your library to Twitch, YouTube, and Discord. By posting to social media, you can accomplish the following:
Increase impressions
Enhance visibility for your content and brand
Drive revenue through social channels
We can also employ several other practices to highlight value for the reader:
Structure content around the user’s journey, not the product’s architecture. Organize content based on how users interact with the product, not how the product is internally built.
Present features in terms of what they enable. Explain functionality through the lens of outcomes and user value, not in isolation.
Connect steps to practical results. Make sure each instruction moves the reader toward a clear goal or completed task.
Clarify terms in the context of action. Define concepts that help the user accomplish something. Omit terminology that doesn’t serve an end.
Write with human attentiveness. Anticipate the reader’s needs, respect their time, and guide them as if you’re in the room helping.
By implementing the writing practices above, we can steer our articles back toward the meaning our readers need.
Choosing Purpose in a Culture of Drift
Philosopher Albert Camus argued that the central question of philosophy is whether life is worth living. For him, the only answer to the absurdity of existence was rebellion. By rebellion, he meant that one should choose to live with purpose, even when life offers no guarantee of purpose. One should choose to act as if meaning is real, even when certainty is out of reach.
That same decision confronts us as writers. When we sit down to draft a new document, we aren’t just transferring information. We’re shaping an experience, clarifying a path, and helping someone make sense of what he’s doing. In a world where so much writing is mechanical and detached, choosing to write with purpose is itself a kind of rebellion.
Purposeful writing pushes back against drift. It refuses to treat the user as a ticket number or a checkbox. It insists that clarity matters, that action is possible, and that guidance — real guidance — is worth the effort.
Write Like It Matters
Meaningless writing does more than waste a reader’s time. It sends a quiet but damaging message: this product is not worth understanding, and your work is not worth supporting. That is the cost of documents that lack soul.
But meaningful writing tells a different story. It assures the reader that their task is important, that their confusion can be resolved, and that the product they’re using was built with care.
So the next time you begin a new piece of documentation, take a moment to ask yourself our questions from earlier:
What problem does the article solve?
What outcome does it guide the reader toward?
What task does it empower the user to complete?
What value does it deliver?
And then write like those questions matter. Because they do.