I dont think people are necesarily afraid to do what they want, but you'll find that not all wordpress users are "web savvy" and will ultimatelly be under the impression that if it's not native (or available in a plugion) then its not possable. Not that wordpress isn't capaple of posting "just a link" or "just a video" but I find that the admin area Is definately geard more towards bigger articles.

Tumblr seems to offer this great feature that allows an almost flickr like posting mentality, short sharp frquent bursts of information, its not that this can't be achieved with Wordpress, I think its just people are less inclined to mess with the default functionailty.

One other blogging tool that I have been looking into that goes even further than Tunblr for ease of posting "on the fly" is http://posterous.com/. This really is the ultimate "flickr in a blog". Not sure what other peoples opinion and experince with this is though.