Member-only story
Do it slowly
Questioning the fallacy that fast = good, always.
This piece of writing was inspired by an add for an app that I saw on my Facebook newsfeed recently.
I can’t remember the name of the app, and it isn’t important to the story. What’s important is that the add was for an app that supposedly summarises books for you, enabling you to consume many more books in much less time. Because reading a full book is time-consuming and why would you bother?
So I saw this add and it seemed to me in that moment to perfectly encapsulate a lot of the things that are fundamentally skewed about the culture we’ve built (Or that others have built and that we find ourselves living in).
Everywhere you look, the message is perpetuated that everything must be fast, loud and cheap, though no one has ever stopped to explain why.
But if you think about it a little, you’ll soon suss out that it‘s got a lot to do with consumerism. Consumerism doesn’t really work if things aren’t quickly made and consumed, and if people aren’t stressed out of their minds and short on time almost constantly so that their resistance to reaching for the sugary stuff, the cheap stuff, the easy stuff, the lowest-shelf stuff will become low and stay low.
We’re not supposed to dwell on anything or to process anything or to savour anything. We’re not…
