Back in the day commuters and bench-sitters weren't somehow more "present" than they are now, they were just consuming other media. And I wouldn't venerate the

Back in the day commuters and bench-sitters weren't somehow more "present" than they are now, they were just consuming other media. And I wouldn't venerate the books/newspapers of old and sneer at IG quite so much. Back in the day the majority of commuters were reading pulpy crime and romance novels or sordid tabloids, not "real" literature or journalism. It's not that IG is intellectually inferior to how people entertained themselves back in the day, it's that it's qualitatively different, in some disturbing ways. What used to be shameless (innocent!) diversion and escapism has morphed into an odd kind of media that requires everyone to produce content, content that everyone knows in their bones, one way or another, broadcasts the quality of their lives and their person into the ether. Creating such content is arguably more intellectually demanding than consuming that crime novel, not less, but it's also exhausting and anxiety producing. The commute or checkout line is no longer a quick and simple respite. I don't think social media is making people dumb or brainless as people thought tv would back in the day. Rather, it's making the average person smarter in a very 21st century kind of way - savvy, harried, and insecure - overworked brand managers.