Read at speed

On the road from Dammam towards Al Hasa, a large sign advertises a new compound. Underneath the picture is a long website address in small type.

At the speed anyone is driving, nobody will ever read it. The sign was designed on a desk, by someone looking at it from half a metre away.

A few kilometres on, a farmer has propped up a piece of painted board: dates, fresh, next turning right. Three words and an arrow. It tells the driver something about their own afternoon, it can be read in the time it takes to pass, and it sounds exactly like the farmer. Cars pull in.

Feeds have turned all of us into roadside sign makers. A post that began as a note between friends is now, for a shop or a small brand, a little board by a very fast road. People pass hundreds of them before lunch. Most are seen for under a second, out of the corner of an eye, while the thumb is already moving on.

The posts that work follow the farmer's rules, not the developer's. They are about the person passing, not only about the seller. They make their point at a glance, from a distance, without asking anyone to stop and squint. And they have a voice that could only be theirs, so that over weeks of passing, the driver starts to recognise the board before reading it.

Everything else is fine print on a motorway. Accurate, expensive, and invisible.