Episode 33 - The Post-Entertainment Culture of Addiction

Darron and Jeff discuss a model of creation and consumption put forth on Substack by cultural critic Ted Gioia in which he draws distinctions between art, entertainment, distraction, and addiction, and they evaluate his hypothesis that we are entering what he refers to as a “post-entertainment society.” They delineate what he sees as the differences between these different forms in terms of what they are, why they are created, how they are consumed, and the subsequent effects their consumption has on both individuals and culture at large. Finally, as they try to make some sense for themselves they synthesize this framework with some previous thinking, and then speculate a bit on where these changes might all be leading.

Notes:

• 2:25 - “The State of the Culture, 2024” by Ted Gioia (The Honest Broker, 2024)

• 4:10 - Gioia cites Huxley’s Brave New World, which takes place in a future dystopia where the populace is essentially oppressed by their addiction to amusement, as the more likely outcome than the oppressive government control depicted in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. See “Pleasures” - a 1923 essay by Huxley published in Vanity Fair for more on his thoughts regarding the problematic ease of entertainment in the early 20th century.

• 6:15 - See Gioia’s “fish” model

• 8:16 - See “The Tiktokification of Everything” (Single Grain) and “The ‘TikTokification’ of the next generation” (Empoword Journalism, 2023)

• 11:33 - Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) by Neil Postman

• 13:06 - “The medium is the message” is a phrase and chapter title that comes from a 1964 book by Marshall McLuhan called Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, and it posits that that a communication medium itself, not the messages it carries, needs to be carefully considered because while the content of the medium is a message that can be easily grasped, the character of the medium is another message which can be easily overlooked, and it is this message that ultimately shapes “the scale and form of human action.”

• 13:50 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 32 - We Read So We Can Talk from April 2024

• 14:17 - See the “Attention economy” Wikipedia entry

• 17:29 - See “‘I can’t stress how much BookTok sells’: teen literary influencers swaying publishers” (The Guardian, 2023)

• 21:53 - Dopamine Nation (2021) by Anna Lembke, MD explores the interconnection of pleasure and pain in the brain and helps explain addictive behaviors — not just to drugs and alcohol, but also to food, sex, and smartphones. For more see “In 'Dopamine Nation,' Overabundance Keeps Us Craving More” (NPR, 2021) and watch Dr. Lembke discuss the science behind the book in a YouTube clip.

• 22:01 - See the “Anhedonia” Wikipedia entry

• 23:24 - The Anxious Generation (2024) by Jonathan Haidt

• 23:38 - Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It  (2022) by Richard Reeves

• 27:07 - See “the dopamine loop” as depicted by Gioia

• 27:53 - See “Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound.” by Maryanne Wolf (The Guardian, 2018) and her book Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World

• 28:10 - Reading in the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene

• 33:04 - See “TikTok’s ‘Roman Empire’ Meme, Explained” (Forbes, 2023)

• 34:30 - Read “Tradition and the Individual Talent” by T.S. Eliot (Poetry Foundation)

• 34:52 - Watch the “8 Led Zeppelin Songs That 'Rip Off' Other Songs” YouTube video

• 37:07 - The Righteous Mind (2012) by Jonathan Haidt

• 37:48 - Ready Player One (book, 2011) by Ernest Cline and movie (2018)

• 38:14 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 16 - Partisan Pizza from July 2021

• 41:48 - See “Humans can barely distinguish AI-generated content from human-created content” (The Decoder, 2024)

• 42:22 - See “Socrates on the Invention of Writing and the Relationship of Writing to Memory” and “Socrates on the Forgetfulness that Comes with Writing”

• 46:50 - See “Boredom: A History of Western Philosophical Perspectives” (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) and “Heidegger’s “Profound Boredom”: using boredom to cultivate the soul” (blog post from Eric Hyde)