Is society growing stupider? The clues are simple and repeated(washingtonpost.com) |
Is society growing stupider? The clues are simple and repeated(washingtonpost.com) |
So I went and checked, and it really is a ~90-minute thing, but I wonder if the excessive-exposition could partly be explained by habits (or cancelled plans) involving multi-part TV shows, where it's less-weird to remind viewers of details that might be--in their own timeline--a week in the past.
> According to actor Matt Damon, filmmakers are told: “It wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue, because people are on their phones while they’re watching.”
OK, well, that's just depressing... or at least, the idea that someone is being distracted playing on their phone while watching the movie on a larger screen is depressing.
In contrast, if it means people are watching on their phones while riding the bus or whatever, and distracted by external events... That's not so bad, because it's a story of where people watch rather than their (in)ability to focus.
multi-device life is a reality, something playing doesnt meant something is being watched in a world where a human can have several screens around
I do not think TV/Movies should be adapted for this reality, its up to me as a user to decide what to pay attention to, and its up to the creator to decide how to try and capture it
That seems a little unfair, given that we're seeing an essay to sell a much lengthier book. Some brevity is probably the author being strategic rather than un-self-aware.
Also, several of the claims do contain links for more information, such as simplification in music lyrics [0], melodies [1], and sentence-length in books [2].
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55742-x
[1] https://www.seresearch.qmul.ac.uk/chcc/news/4763/study-finds...
[2] https://www.economist.com/culture/2025/09/04/is-the-decline-...