our media literacy crisis
In 2026, I think we should bring back boredom. I like that life is supposed to be, technically, a little boring. We are a silly little species when we peacefully exist, and that’s fine. Sunsets are exciting for that unexplainable reason. We were granted an ability to rejoice, on the daily, for things that happen seemingly only once, by chance. The tyranny of shock value is turning anything and everything into a bland mush we continue to absorb, and that is concerning.
There needs to be a scale, a structured hierarchy within our brains that sorts the information in a sensible way. Not everything is an emergency and simultaneously, not everything should be just a headline. If something is good the words should linger, and the thoughts bloom independently. Like any good pickled green (and I have an Asian mom so trust me when I say the spiritual stinky fridge is worth it), you need to let those little reflections of yours marinate for a while before you let them out into the world. Boredom is that outstretched hand we need, inviting in a time to meditate on what your brain has retained.
overconsumption & curation
There is something deeply unsettling about the sheer overconsumption of media today. Not only because we are constantly told what to buy, what to want, what to aspire to—but because consumption itself has become an agenda. Attention is monetised, outrage is profitable, and distraction is sold as relief. It becomes easier to perform intellectualism by rehashing general statements that are not your own.
Yes, access to so much information is a privilege. But privilege comes with responsibility. If everything is available, then discernment becomes essential. You have to be your own curator. Otherwise, you’re not informed—you’re just flooded.
Rousseau, pity and morality
Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that what makes humans fundamentally human is pity: a natural, instinctive repugnance toward the suffering of others. Not something learned, not something intellectualised, but a spontaneous tenderness—an evolutionary instinct that precedes law, reason, and morality itself. Before we think, we feel. Before we judge, we recoil at pain.
This natural compassion moderates self-interest. It’s what stops us from harming others simply because we can. It’s universal, pre-social, and fragile. Civilisation can dull it, distort it, even suppress it momentarily—but it remains the moral origin point of humanity.
And this is precisely why media saturation is dangerous: that instinctive pity weakens. Overexposure doesn’t make us more informed—it makes us numb. Media literacy, then, isn’t just about critical thinking. It’s about protecting our capacity to care.
proximity, conflict and selective empathy
We should not be this estranged from the people producing the media we consume. Relatability matters—but pretending our modes of consumption haven’t radically changed would be dishonest. It has never been more obvious that where you happen to land on Earth determines the shape of your life. Not because the world has suddenly become more violent, but because violence is now uncomfortably close to those who once felt safely removed from it.
War has always existed. What’s different is proximity. It’s at the doorstep of the Western world, impossible to ignore. And the difference in media treatment—Ukraine versus Palestine—makes this painfully clear. Visibility is political. Sympathy is conditional. And media literacy requires us to notice not just what we are shown, but what we are trained to overlook.
irony and “it’s just the internet”
This is also where online subcultures—incel rhetoric included—become dangerous. There is a threshold of violence, misogyny, and hatred that we tolerate on screen because we tell ourselves it’s “just the internet.” Just jokes. Just irony. Just content.
But this logic collapses when we consider how much of the online world bleeds directly into real perception—especially for people who are isolated, angry, or searching for belonging. What we excuse as entertainment often becomes someone else’s worldview. The idea that digital spaces are harmless because they’re virtual is no longer compatible with reality. No one is more serious than someone who feels protected by anonymity.
“Charlie Brown, undaunted, seeks tenderness and fulfillment on every side: in baseball, in building kites, in his relationship with his dog, Snoopy, in playing with the girls. He always fails. His solitude becomes an abyss, his inferiority complex is pervasive—tinged by the constant suspicion (which the reader also comes to share) that Charlie Brown is not inferior. Worse: he is absolutely normal. He is like everybody else. This is why he is always on the brink of suicide or at least of nervous breakdown: because he seeks salvation through the routine formulas suggested to him by the society in which he lives…”
-umberto eco, on ‘krazy kat’ and ‘peanuts’
tyranny of self-narration
On the one hand, we are finally able to talk openly about mental health—and thank God for that. On the other, we’ve developed an exhausting urge to constantly narrate our lives to ourselves, packaging experience into something digestible, postable, legible to an invisible audience that now follows us everywhere.
We participate in this willingly, because social media has become a new societal standard. When we are alone, we invite others in through narration—because many of us are deeply uncomfortable with actual solitude. Hearing ourselves think can be unbearable. No one is easier to dislike than yourself.
But we need to acknowledge human fault without turning it into an epidemic narrative. Hate is not a virus—it’s a choice. Not everyone is right. Not every opinion deserves amplification. And one day, you may realise you were profoundly wrong—and that’s not failure. That’s growth. Be gentle with your mind. That’s called grace.
Responsibility
What we gain from any and all media, is essentially pre-distilled for us. The extreme of that would be censorship. Mainstream media have their importance because they determine what consciously exists in our minds, as well as what we are allowed to experience, love, hate and grieve in the public sphere; it serves as a popular curriculum, the basis of what we as a society get to discuss. I believe we morally have the right to know about everything. The way that our modern instance of democracy should manifest itself most clearly is by giving us oversight, and enabling our capacity for judgement.
That does not get to happen without media literacy. Narrative shaping can hide many things, say for example…far right fascist fuck ups?
-Elana Gomel, from “Strangled by the Time Loop: Paradoxes of Determinism”, Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination (2010)
“Since identity is created through a narrative re(construction) of the subject’s life story, the weaving and unweaving of memory and anticipation, a timeless subject lacks identity. But this is not to say that [they] necessarily lack structure. If time fails, there is always space to embed the fragments, the ‘intensities’, of individual experience in some semblance of a personhood: ‘We have often been told…that we now inhabit the synchronic rather than the diachronic, and I think it is at least empirically arguable that our daily life, our psychic experience, our cultural languages, are today dominated by categories of space rather than by categories of time…’ (Jameson 1991, 47).”
Education is not a duty, it is something to seize because yes, it is more accessible today, but it is still a luxury, a chance, a great privilege. Something to be cultivated, not spoonfed.
So, take advantage of things like the internet archive, find the plethora of books that are in the public domain in your country and thus freely (and legally, how exciting!) available online.
If you know how to read, congratulations! You’re a reader, make us proud.
Keeping ourselves aware is not something that would be much of an advantage for anyone but us. Because knowledge is power.
An article is not its headline (and a good one should not be confined to it either). A book is not its cover. And without context nothing means anything. Without boredom, there is no scale. And without scale, there is no morality—only noise.
To be or not to be —enlightened by literature, music, movies and the shared human experience? That is the question you get to answer, mostly consciously, and every day whilst choosing what kind of media you are consuming, and recommending to your community.
Submissionis a form of power, and we should reasonably question everything we are told (except for the fact that we did go to the moon, we know that since Edward Snowden’s checked the files, he once had access, the lucky fella !). So shut up. Take a second. Think !
Some recommendations of women i do think fixed my brain a little :
Youtube: Anna Howard Instagram: @wildgeesepod
Youtube: Nina Montagne Instagram: @ninamontagne
Youtube: Mickey Galvin Instagram: @mickeygalvin
Youtube: Shannon Kim Instagram: @shnnonkim
Youtube: Mina Le Instagram: @gremlita
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