The Terrifying Shortening

#personal notes

“Everyone’s attention spans are shortening,” says Katie Feeney, a 19-year-old Penn State student experimenting with all of the services. “It’s what people like.” In her view, the era of the three-minute video—or television, for that matter—is over.

I made a resolution, a few weeks ago, to try and focus on aspirational topics. To avoid bleakness if I could. Wow. The above quote is from a Bloomberg article about Meta testing out a new UI that essentially transforms Instagram into Reels, to better compete with TikTok. Desperation in the face of growing irrelevance, it seems. Couldn’t happen to better people.

But what a frightening and depressing statement that is. Like watching the world burn and nodding. In the context of the tragic last few days it may seem inconsequential, but the implications are immense and catastrophic: it represents an inability or unwillingness (not sure which is worse) to focus, which can only lead to an eventual inability to comprehend…anything. A civilization that can’t pay attention for more than fifteen seconds is doomed. Humanity exists because we were a species that could stop, think, and build on what it had learned. We could transcend time, transpose ourselves forward or backward, make plans, anticipate future events…all because, unlike most species on Earth, we had a capacity to reflect deeply about issues facing us. It’s how we managed to protect the ozone layer at the 11th hour. It’s how we landed on the moon.

Now, a three-minute video is “over”. Too long to absorb, too time-consuming to endure. Fifteen. We’ve found the new threshold. Will language follow this devolution path? Will humanity eventually mumble its way into oblivion? Where do we stop? Where’s the bottom?

Too many questions, I know. And we’re now much too painfully aware that a bottom doesn’t exist. We’re living an insane week of an insane month of an insane decade. Sadly, this explains so, so much.