(I promise to do my best not to deluge your inbox with posts day after day; excuse me this time.)
Serendipitously, today I came across an article by Zadie Smith1 which vindicated my unsophisticated thesis from the yesterday's post.
At the end of a review of “The Nightmares of a Nation” by a German author Charlotte Beradt, Zadie Smith recalls her meeting with four hundred teenagers in Barcelona. The young people did not ask about literature, they asked about social media. And here, the writer disclosed her “utopia”, idea so brave that it might feel “cringey”:
“[…] to seriously damage the billionaire empires that have been built on your attention and are now manipulating your democracies? […] All you guys would need to do so is look away.”
Next, comes an explanation that snubbing feeds on social media is not an instant remedy to all the current problems, but it can free us from manipulation, help restore places to public debate, make it easier to understand each other, and find ways to compromise and consensus.
The final citation from Zadie Smith:
“That’s a whole lot of ‘mights’. But in my dream, it is worth a try, if only because it would so seriously hobble the most powerful and dangerous political lobbyists on the present scene: the tech bros.”
Revolutionary changes in the past started with “I have a dream.” Turn off X, and encourage others to do the same. It is truly worth trying.
If you have any thoughts on the above, please leave a comment. Your remarks may improve my future writing.
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Thanks for reading; until next time!
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“The Dream of a Raised Arm” by Zadie Smith, The New York Review of Books, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/12/05/the-dream-of-the-raised-arm-third-reich-of-dreams-beradt-zadie-smith/