people don't think anymore

The other day my school went on a excursion to a short film festival. We watched some experimental European movies about sexism, mental health, traumatic experiences... I was sitting next to my friends and was surprised by one of them saying "This movie is so weird, I didn't understand anything, I didn't liked" That caught me off-guard, I wasn't expecting a comment like that because even if it was a deep film and a nontraditional narration style it wasn't very metaphoric but very literal and self-explanatory, so I started explaining the story to her but she cut me fast and told me she was sure that the movie was bad and "didn't have any sense". After that all the students/viewers had a debate about the topics and the films, a lot of people gave really good analysis and conclusions about the movies but even after that she didn't change her mind. She wasn't even trying to understand and was talking about how she prefered movies like "My fault" or "The kissing both" because they were easier to understand. That's when I started thinking, is people starting to reject intellectualism and embracing commercial media? So I'm here to meditate about this.

Let's start talking about a very obvious pattern in nowadays media consumption. Wattpad/Netflix romcoms movies are the ones making numbers in the actuality, easy-to-watch films, about 1h 30min with plots that are easy to understand and don't talk about heavy topics (clarifying: there is nothing wrong with this movies, I also like this type off stuff, we are just analysing in general and talking about people that exclusively watch this media). In music terms the songs that are more successful are the pop ones, with fast and recognizable beats, that either have sexual or danceable lyrics (Sabrina Carpenter, Charlie XCX...) or "relatable" ones (Taylor swift, Gracie Abrams...). Another example will be literature, what are the most read books nowadays? The booktok ones, of course. I could write an entire essay about everything wrong with booktok: Literal p0rn storys about teenagers, toxic relations romanticizers, the idea that reading 15 books a month is totally normal (is impossible to actually enjoy and completely understand this many books in such a short time and is insane to spend that amount of money monthly, that level of consumption is insane, it feels like a competition about who reads the most instead of actually enjoying books), people supporting Collen Hoover and the worse thing to me the demonization of classics. The amount of people on booktok bringing down "classic readers" saying that they have a "superiority complex" and that they "don't actually enjoy the books they just want to be different" just because they aren't porn addicts is insane (I want to clarify that there are some people that do feel superior for reading older books and that isn't okey but that's not the majority of the cases and I repeat we are just generalising) not to talk about that this comments could desanimate young readers to get into classics. In social media now you don't even have to think about what you want to watch anymore an algorithm decides for you, just scrolling without even knowing what you are watching.

In summary media now days is characterized for a fast consumption of the product, people don't search for any meaning or knowledge in the pieces just something that gives them instantly satisfaction and because of this trend people that is used to easy meaningless media is having a hard time trying to get into most deep or philosophical stuff so they start feeling immediately rejection.

What is very concerning about this phenomenon to me is that this is happening in a moment where is incredible easy to find information thanks to the internet and education is in one of its best moments in history. So why now, when education is more accessible (in general terms) than ever people is feeling the least interested about learning. Not a long time ago skills like writing or reading were for the riches only, reading a book was a privilege but back in this years I don't know many people that are interested on reading, a lot of people found books boring and a lot of teenagers I know find books stupid or "a waste of time" why? Because they don't have a attention span good enough to sit and read a book, and this is honestly just sad. Another example is languages, nobles were the only ones able to learn more than one languages back then, it was considered a sign on wealthy, culture and education but now most of schools teach multiple languages and the students aren't interested in learning. After years of social revolutions, of people fighting for having the right of a good education for their children, women being banned for schools for years, they all finally had the opportunity of learning and educating themselves and now people are losing the interest for knowledge. 

I already talked about how social media is making society lost individualism, a personal identity and critical thinking in my other essay so I won't repeat it again but check it out if you are interested.

What's my conclusion after all of this? There is nothing wrong with commercial media but we can't only consume this type of stuff, there is nothing more dangerous than an uneducated society with zero critical thinking skills and no personal beliefs where the rest of the world tells you what to think. Education is the most important pillar in our society and people should realise how privileged they are for having studies and start showing interest again for learning.