Ted Goia’s “The State of the Culture, 2024” is grim but necessary reading—and it contains the image below. Reminder: if you like the idea of handwritten letters, send one to PO Box 110 Oolitic, IN 47451 and you’ll get a reply. Eventually. I’m not exactly a swift correspondent.

@jabel this is really useful

(granting that every framework is an imperfect capture)

@jabel I couldn't agree more, sadly. I've shared it with friends and family with the exhortation to read, mark, inwardly digest, and then take a walk.

@JimRain For real. I've thought about sharing it with some of my friends but I know some of them spend a lot of time on tiktok and I get a little tired of always coming off as the no-fun pessimist.

@jabel the word is “curmudgeon.” Ask me how I know 😃

@jabel Interesting graphic! Honestly, perhaps I'm young, but I don't even see anything wrong with the things in the "fast modern culture" column (except I really like listening to full albums and no one will ever convince me not to. And I like (good) TV shows and films, too). The "dopamine culture" stuff is so problematic, though! I've had conversations with friends who can't, say, finish a book any more because Twitter et al. killed their attention span. I'm not even sure anything can be done about it – it's kinda up to people to exercise self-discipline, since I don't think "state regulation of social media to ban it from being too bite-sized" is a viable, or desirable, path – but yeah, it sucks!

@jayeless I’m right there with you. There are plenty of things in that middle column I like too. It’s tempting to say just roll it back to wherever it all went wrong—but everyone has different ideas about when it went wrong. Everything from the rise of TikTok to the Neolithic Revolution! I don’t like what I’m seeing but I’m also short on answers.