Something to Keep
“Well, I guess this is growing up”.
blink-182 – Dammit
A Second Look
In his latest video, Mark Manson talks about what he calls the “Everyone is Twelve” theory. Although the theory mainly applies to internet culture, it pretty much describes the world we live in. I know some of my last articles featured Mark Manson videos, but there’s no one in the self-development space putting out content this solid and consistent, so I’ll keep putting it here as long as I have to.
Philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously said that “the medium is the message”. Luhan argued that different types of media interact with our brains (and therefore, reshape them) differently. Books make us more cerebral and rational, television makes us more passive and reactive, and short-form content (read: TikTok and YouTube Shorts) makes us more distracted.
Now, the thing about TikTok and the like is that they atrophy our sense of self-regulation. Adults have the ability to evaluate a stimulus and then choose their reaction to it. The massive consumption of short-form content is taking that away from us and is turning us into twelve-year-olds.
What I loved about this video is that it takes an idea we all experience and puts it into words. In the rare occasions when I do engage with short-form content, I feel bad, but I can’t say why. It’s because TikTok removes our ability to be patient, experience boredom, and numbs us. Another important argument Manson brings up is that traditional media (movies and television) have room for ambiguity and depth due to their longer nature.
So that’s bad, but the worst part is that our culture rewards 12-year-old behavior, which explains why a lot of billionaires and presidents act like dicks. So where do we go from here? How do we solve this problem? According to Manson, the solution isn’t to quit social media to read more books; the solution is to make adulthood aspirational again.
Something I Liked
If anything I brought up in the section above sounded interesting, here’s the complete video.