In Shallow Waters We Flounder

Consumerism and technology

A common theme of our modern, blighted age, is that it has rampant consumerism.

I’m CONSOOOMing as the meme goes.

This consumption is real and all around us but to the extent it exists it appears to exist in an incredibly shallow form, particularly when we think of ‘content’. Content is what drives the free internet, it in turn is funded largely by advertising. Substack is a subscription model with a long tail, this site is basically free because a tiny % of Substack writers make enough for them to offer these blog spaces for free. They too rely on content, it is why you see the likes of substack expanding their offering from writing to podcasts, to their new chat feature. All provide a way to consumer more content in some form.

In truth most content today is consumed in a shallow fashion, this is not a novel take but it is one distinctly modern and worth thinking about as commentators. We should be aware of how our fellow citizens do in fact consume media. Music is a great place to show the extent of shallow consumption.

If you’re a millennial or Gen X or Boomer you have more than likely bought a physical form of music. A vinyl record, a cassette tape, a CD. The older you are the more likely you are to have enjoyed music as a musical album in this fashion. That is you listened to the entirety of the album as it was composed by the band and their producer. There is a completeness to many albums and how the songs interact is usually part of how well liked an album is. I myself recall just sitting and listening to albums with my headphones on.

That is a wholly alien experience today.

People listen to snippets of songs, people make playlists of their music or rely on subscription services like Spotify or Pandora to generate collections.

Algorithmic control.

Not that this is an entirely bad thing, no doubt people discover some new artists and new music this way but I think how most people consume music today is just radically different to how it was even 20 years ago. Music is more accessible than ever on the devices we live and own, no longer is music confined to the radio or the car or the sound system it is available 24/7 and I think that has led to extended consumption but shallower consumption. People listen to the top songs and move on, they listen to more music but rarely do they listen to a full album.

Their toe is always dipped in the pool but they never dive in.

If this is true of music due to the changing technological landscape I expect it is true of other things as well. It is easy to become saturated in photos - a great many blogs and websites exists to document this. One I used to read of course uses the ‘porn’ suffix (disturbing and revealing all in itself) - Cabin Porn. Perhaps you’ve visited as well and idled away a few minutes scrolling, truly there are some interesting and cool cabins submitted from around the world but again it’s this very shallow kind of consumption. The very blog name, the pornification of it and life, hints at this as well. After all pornography itself thrives on shallow engagement of people seeking further novel images.

Images are awash, we shallowly consumer many of them all the time now. Arresting images are always present, it is almost impossible for us to even relate to our medieval ancestors sense of wonder at seeing a stained glass window. People don’t even really marvel at the natural stars, instead they are drawn to heavily manipulated images from the Hubble space telescope, to glance at, marvel and the move on from. Everything is always moving, it is rare for a deep dive. Instead we are in the shallow, could most people even explain to you why they like that picture, why it is powerful? Would they even remember it 30 minutes after they saw it? We have excessive consumption, but always shallow.

The final example of this is the Lex Friedman viral book reading list. In predictable fashion he misunderstood the mockery. He thought it was a critique of what he was reading when most people were critiquing his consumption and task based approach to reading (or re-reading) the books in a week. Quantity AND quality here was his flex. A person like him should probably read less, all he is doing is likely dipping his toe into these books not really engaging and dealing with the issues raised or appreciating the literature for what it is by focusing on this as some kind of maximal based lifestyle hack around reading.

There isn’t an easy fix to all this but I think a lot of people will start to trend slowly away from this shallow consumerism. External forces will drive it and the digital will be the hardest of the drugs to kick but in our own lives we can revisit depth in what we do and pursue. Go back to listening to an album for 45 minutes, don’t just treat music as a soundtrack to your commute. Be more discerning about your book choices, maybe even jot notes down afterwards, don’t race to the next book immediately. Appreciate the artistic images you come across, imagine what it would be like to have that image displayed in your house forever.

Depth will guide you out from the shallows.