by nataliste | 2025-10-24 00:05:31+00:00
This "YouTube shorts are killing our attention" take is just the latest instance of a moral panic that's as old as writing itself. The only reason we're OK with novels or TV is path dependence.

The interesting question isn't "is this new media bad?" (it's almost always shallower), but "what structural change in society created the demand for it?"

My thesis is that the progressive "rationalization" of civilization has automated away the need for most people to have a long attention span. For the median worker, society is "running on autopilot." Your incentives are: Go to work. Do what the boss says. Come home. Consume. Sleep. Repeat.

In that environment, a long attention span isn't just useless, it's a liability. It's a bug that makes you miserable and non-compliant. You're not paid to think deeply; you're paid to execute predefined tasks and be there to report edge cases to your superiors.

"Shallow" media like Shorts are just the market's efficient response. They're a way to "exercise" atrophied cognitive faculties in a way that doesn't threaten the underlying system.

This isn't new. This pattern is a clear regression. Every new layer of media abstraction is met with the exact same complaint.

To wit:

Novels:

> 'Were it not for this consideration, it is an open question whether the novel traffic ought not to be dealt with as stringently as Mr. Bruce proposes to deal with the liquor traffic; whether it would not be well to enable the ratepayers of a district to limit the number of the circulating libraries, or even to close them altogether; and to place the "habitual" novel-reader under some such paternal restraint as that to which Dr. Dalrymple wishes to subject an "habitual drunkard." It is too clear, unfortunately, why it is that so many women thus waste their time and rot their minds. They read novels exactly as some young men smoke and drink bitter beer—for sheer want of something to do.' -- The Sabbath School Magazine, 1872

On the Printing Press:

> "He who gives up copying because of the invention of printing is no genuine friend of holy Scripture... Printed books will never be the equivalent of handwritten codices, especially since printed books are often deficient in spelling and appearance. The simple reason is that copying by hand involves more diligence and industry." -- Jonathan Trithemius, In Praise of Scribes, 1494

On Writing Itself:

> "...this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory... You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant..." -- Plato, the Phaedrus, 370BC

This isn't an argument for YouTube shorts. They're junk.

It's an argument that complaining about them is a waste of time. You're complaining about a symptom, not the disease.

At some point in the dark recesses of time, there was an antediluvian hominid upset that self-awareness and transcendence in the children deprived them of the immanence of being.

They were right.