We Choose To Read Posts

"if you’re reading it, it’s for you" - The Last Psychiatrist

We compulsively read posts. When we wake up, when we’re bored at work, or when we’re anxious at a party, we take out our phone and scroll posts. On our phones we have access to all the great novels and poems, to images of every painting in every gallery, but we choose to read posts.

What we pay attention to is worth attention. We should be curious about posts, not ashamed of the time we spend on them. Posts are the artform of the present.

When people think about art, what often comes to mind is art that’s difficult, like the great novels they can read on their phone whenever but choose not to. The word “art” evokes the older, more refined mediums: paintings, sculpture, ballet, opera, novels. The thought is that art means mining meaning from difficulty to reveal eternal truths.

Art isn’t limited to that. Art is also the cultural output that we compulsively consume, whether or not it’s good.

Our compulsive urge to read posts is what makes them the artform of the present. In the past, people compulsively read novels, newspapers, and magazines, and looked at paintings in art galleries. Those were the widely-consumed mediums of their time; they were not higher artforms that the cultured elite chose over slop for the masses. If you wanted a story, the novel was the best way to get that. If you wanted to see an image, you went to an art gallery.

Galleries used to be culturally vital spaces. Audiences reacted with awe and disgust to new showings. Back then, a painting was the best technology available to transmit an image of a beautiful woman, or a foreign landscape, or a flower. Audiences had visceral reactions to these new images, but we have other image technologies now. Today, if a painting in a gallery evoked visceral awe or disgust, someone would take a photo of it and post it online.

Technology has shifted the vital medium of art before. In the 1950s, television became the primary compulsive medium, replacing both galleries and novels. Television told a story and showed images, all right inside your home. It was easier than reading a book; it just washed over you. Families rearranged their living rooms, centered now around the television. The new technology of video, and broadcast television for its mass distribution, made us choose television over historical artforms.

As television’s popularity grew, there were reservations for whether this new artform could reach the depth and dignity of the older mediums, the same questions we see today for posts. And in many ways those reservations were true. But it didn’t mean that television wasn’t worth analysis.

Now, posts have replaced television as the compulsively-consumed media. Like the shift to television, this shift occurred because of new technology.

Today television executives worry if their content is fit to be “second screen”. They know their audience will be on their phones reading posts while they watch, so they want to be sure that the television content is still a pleasant experience while they’re half-paying attention. Television shows are slower, leaving space for the viewer’s mind to wander, knowing they’re competing even within the viewer’s home. Television still exists, but it’s fighting against the new medium that we compulsively consume.

It’s because posts are compulsively consumed that they deserve analysis as art. There are valid reservations about the potential for posts to be as fulfilling as longform writing, or even television. Compared to the mediums that came before, posts are short and ephemeral, so they can be shallow. Posts can also be pandering, to appeal to the algorithm’s desires.

But posts have benefits. They can be fresh. They’re made and distributed to audiences in minutes. They can also be creative. Millions of people make posts, and content algorithms select the best ones, instead of thousands of people making paintings or novels with the galleries or publishing houses choosing the best. Posts are democratic. The benefits are why we choose to read them.

I don’t discount that art has value for being difficult, for the work of mining meaning out of something hard and beautiful. But again, what people pay attention to is worth attention. I think you should pay attention to posts. You already are.