4 ms·

> It is not obvious to me we invest far more than our ancestors, I doubt it. Of course it is obvious. People waste their lives away consuming fiction in the wa

> It is not obvious to me we invest far more than our ancestors, I doubt it. Of course it is obvious. People waste their lives away consuming fiction in the way of books, netflix, video games, politics. The luxury of doing that en masse simply was not possible if we go ways back. Hell, just in my lifetime this has changed. 25 years ago I heard of no one watching ten episodes of a series in one sitting. I believe most people now spend far more time with and engaged in fictions than reality. People even think that the fictions media create are real. Most news are editorialized and fictionalized. What is presented is not reality. What people spend most of their time on a phone on, social media, are to a high degree fiction. That is not reality you are engaging with. Reality is closer to the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid than the top.

ChrisSD 6y ago
25 years ago, so 1996? Yeah people did that with VHS tapes. Console games, both solo and parties, were things that carried on into the night. Civilization on the PC was infamous for "one more turn" in to the wee hours of the morning.
- erikbye 6y ago
  That was a niche group. Now it is most people. I should have wrote «Very few» instead of «no one.»
  - izacus 6y ago
    [Citation needed] really. Handwringing over "time wasting" activities is as old as time, whether it's video games, TV, newspapers/radio or gambling, drinking and dicing.
    - erikbye 6y ago
      No handwringing, I do not give a fuck what people spend their time on, it is their life. Just saying I think people are wholly absorbed in fictions these days in ways rivals anything in the past. Today fictions permeates everything, and most seem unable to separate it from reality. Half the US population even believes outlandish conspiracy theories.
  - iso1210 6y ago
    OK, people didn't watch the same program 10 times in a row, but they did watch 6 hours a night of brainrot TV (2 hours of which were commercials), from returning from their job to going to bed. The TV dinner was popular over 50 years ago -- people didn't have time to actually eat without consuming fiction
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    In 1996 the average household watched about 5.5 hours of TV per day. The peak of TV watching was actually around 2010, it's gone down since then (although still above 1996 levels!) -- replaced of course with internet use of various kinds, including kinds that could be considered "fiction consumption" as well as not (social media I would only consider fiction consumption as a joke!). Another thing that has gone down since 1996 is leisure reading time (again they don't usually count social media as leisure reading though). I don't have numbers on how much time a medievel European peasant spent listening to stories, plays, or narrative music. People may have on average more leisure time than they had 500+ years ago! As you say, "The luxury of doing that en masse simply was not possible." But now we're talking about a different thing, the OP's claim was that "we invest so much time and energy into fiction, far more than did any of our ancestors" because of a crisis of moral shared meaning, not simply because of an increase of leisure time. The leisure time of people in different social positions in different times and places is another (interesting) question, but I think people have always chosen to use much of their leisure time (time not required for material survival) and energy on fiction.
foldr 6y ago
If we go “ways back” then we don’t have much hard data on how people spent their time. It doesn’t seem at all obvious to me that people consume more fiction now than they used to, though they certainly do it in different ways.

ChrisSD 6y ago

25 years ago, so 1996? Yeah people did that with VHS tapes. Console games, both solo and parties, were things that carried on into the night. Civilization on the PC was infamous for "one more turn" in to the wee hours of the morning.

erikbye 6y ago
That was a niche group. Now it is most people. I should have wrote «Very few» instead of «no one.»
- izacus 6y ago
  [Citation needed] really. Handwringing over "time wasting" activities is as old as time, whether it's video games, TV, newspapers/radio or gambling, drinking and dicing.
  - erikbye 6y ago
    No handwringing, I do not give a fuck what people spend their time on, it is their life. Just saying I think people are wholly absorbed in fictions these days in ways rivals anything in the past. Today fictions permeates everything, and most seem unable to separate it from reality. Half the US population even believes outlandish conspiracy theories.
- iso1210 6y ago
  OK, people didn't watch the same program 10 times in a row, but they did watch 6 hours a night of brainrot TV (2 hours of which were commercials), from returning from their job to going to bed. The TV dinner was popular over 50 years ago -- people didn't have time to actually eat without consuming fiction
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  In 1996 the average household watched about 5.5 hours of TV per day. The peak of TV watching was actually around 2010, it's gone down since then (although still above 1996 levels!) -- replaced of course with internet use of various kinds, including kinds that could be considered "fiction consumption" as well as not (social media I would only consider fiction consumption as a joke!). Another thing that has gone down since 1996 is leisure reading time (again they don't usually count social media as leisure reading though). I don't have numbers on how much time a medievel European peasant spent listening to stories, plays, or narrative music. People may have on average more leisure time than they had 500+ years ago! As you say, "The luxury of doing that en masse simply was not possible." But now we're talking about a different thing, the OP's claim was that "we invest so much time and energy into fiction, far more than did any of our ancestors" because of a crisis of moral shared meaning, not simply because of an increase of leisure time. The leisure time of people in different social positions in different times and places is another (interesting) question, but I think people have always chosen to use much of their leisure time (time not required for material survival) and energy on fiction.

foldr 6y ago

If we go “ways back” then we don’t have much hard data on how people spent their time. It doesn’t seem at all obvious to me that people consume more fiction now than they used to, though they certainly do it in different ways.