Monday, February 17, 2025

A few years ago, the publisher of this newspaper and I were having a conversation about his columns. I mentioned to him that his columns were not as regular as they once were, that sometimes he would go weeks without submitting an article. I have to confess that his writings were the spark that made me read Amandala for so many years. Now it’s not only his column, but the editorials, which in my opinion are among the best of any newspaper, anywhere in the world. The publisher told me he believed that because of all the different types of media that are overwhelming us, people don’t read newspapers or rely on them for information as they once did. He’s absolutely right; there have been so many newspapers going under, all over the world, because they can’t compete with all the myriads of media in this new era of news and misinformation.

I was skeptical of his reasoning at first, but since that conversation I have become convinced that he was right. People don’t read anymore, especially the younger generation. They have the attention span of a gnat, and are drawn to the rapidity and the mindlessness of TikTok or facebook or X(twitter) and all the other platforms that readily respond to their “literary” needs! Not only do they see these platforms as satisfying their thirst for information, while containing non-factual content for the most part, these mediums are also responsible for the way they make decisions, such as giving their votes to authoritarians. I have come to believe that in the not too distant future, newspapers will become extinct; not like the dodo bird, but like small businesses, or books, or libraries, or best friends.

I have always been a voracious reader; I have found myself lost in books and in the stories in those books. I have found myself finding satisfaction in the smell between the pages of a new book. I have read the classics and fairytales, comics and even labels on some product that was in the house. I learned a lot, and reading expanded my horizons to the point where I can now share intimate details about my thoughts, my life, with others. Not that they ask for it, but through books and reading I can express myself and my thoughts, with credibility and lucidity.

We tend to deal with the short attention span of our children by giving up on parenting them, and allowing new technologies to satisfy their curiosity and their interests. A smart phone today contains much more information than any library does; and yet, in my opinion, the younger generation is less informed, less motivated to search for answers, than those of us who grew up in a time when you had to go to extra lengths to find information. Because of all the competition to get their attention, it has become increasingly difficult to concentrate, or even to fully digest all the information that one is bombarded with, in this new era.

As a result, we are living in a world of attention deficit disorder, where facts don’t matter anymore; if it sounds good, it must be true. We live in a world with snapshots of information, with snippets of the truth, instant gratification, and life goes on. We believe the ridiculous, and bark at anything so tedious as reading the paper or even opening a book. We have AI doing our work; we don’t have to research anything anymore. Our idea of research is Googling. Instant gratification!

So, when a politician or a preacher or conman is selling you something—by the way, they are all the same person—your lack of understanding, which has been sharply diminished, makes you gullible to their bullshit, with no pushback whatsoever. We have become so dumbed down that we can’t even separate fantasy from reality. Just look at the United States and the situation we find ourselves in at this moment. School shootings, false prophets, the denial of our rights as human beings, all this and so much more is happening, while our heads and our eyes are deeply buried in the object in our hands, 24/7. We don’t need to talk to each other anymore; we are becoming more isolated as individuals.

We have put Nigerian princes out of business, because we have replaced them with our AI companions. We don’t need to pursue romance, because we can find an app that will satisfy our every need. In Japan, more and more young people do not interact with each other anymore; they have artificial friends. These new friends make us feel special; they justify our ideas of who we are; there’s no reproach nor disagreement coming from them. People, especially young people, don’t have to leave their rooms or spend money on a date; they are being satisfied intellectually, and sexually, by their AI companions.

All this because we stopped reading books or newspapers, and especially not reading Amandala. Wat a ting!

Glen