“Once we spent our time ploughing through Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Now we are more likely to be watching someone dressed as a tree miming to South Korean pop music”
We’re never bloody happy, are we? The weather is too bloody hot; the weather is too bloody cold. Music is too bloody loud; music is too bloody bland. Our attention spans have become too bloody short; films are too bloody long. If the rivers ran with Champagne, half of us would be yelling that we “actually prefer cava even though it’s not as expensive”.
The argument that young people can concentrate no longer than the average log has been around since a passing mosquito first distracted infant homo erectus. But those conversations have become fiercer in the age of video games and social media. Many are the unreliable pop science books that tell us nobody under 60 can read a sentence of average length without slipping into a coma. Before the decade is out we will all be running about the garden with buckets trapped on our heads.
You didn’t have to search too hard to find such complaints circling the recent news that TikTok was to become official sponsor of the Cannes film festival. There is no danger of the Palme d’Or being awarded to a twerking poodle from Boise, but festival directorwill be presenting prizes to the winners of a #TikTokShortFilm competition during the event. Seems fair enough.
Yet the popularity of TikTok, a service hosting videos lasting less than three minutes, is repeatedly offered as evidence that the modern mind is being permanently dulled. It annoys the elderly in wayscan only dream of. My upcoming book, Generation Meathead, will quote some study by Madey-Uppy University proving that guinea pigs can now negotiate simple mazes more quickly than the average PhD student. Once we spent our time ploughing through Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.
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