On the other hand, the longest works of written fictions in the world are fanfictions published on the internet.
These days I don't read many books anymore, but I still spend 3 hours or more a week reading the latest chapter of Wildbow's Pale, or ErraticErrata's Practice Guide to Evil.
The fact that these works have an audience suggests that there's still, in fact, a demand for massive amounts of written prose. Also, the fact that "binging" is a thing suggests that the "attention span" explanation doesn't hold weight either.
I strongly disagree and here’s why: your response doesn’t consider the means, which are much more important than some people still do read long-form works, and they do it on new-ish mediums like fanfic.
Yes, those traders still do exist. Same is true of the 40% of Americans that still read a book a year. But that number is falling quickly, and both my personal experience (older Gen Z) and scientific literature regarding the collapse of attention spans seems very real to me.
These days I don't read many books anymore, but I still spend 3 hours or more a week reading the latest chapter of Wildbow's Pale, or ErraticErrata's Practice Guide to Evil.
The fact that these works have an audience suggests that there's still, in fact, a demand for massive amounts of written prose. Also, the fact that "binging" is a thing suggests that the "attention span" explanation doesn't hold weight either.