Cinemorphosis

Category: culture

  • Appetyranny

    Appetyranny

    One of the most memorable TV ad campaigns of my youth in the late 1960s was “How Do You Handle a Hungry Man?” The stakes were sky-high. Imagine the scene: a harried housewife in her perfectly pressed apron, hair teased to high heaven, facing off against her husband, the archetypal Hungry Man. He enters the kitchen with the imposing gait of a lumberjack who’s felled a forest, his appetite as vast as the Grand Canyon. He casts a skeptical eye over the bubbling pot on the stove, nostrils flaring like a bloodhound on the scent. The tension is palpable. But fear not! With a dramatic flourish, she opens a can of Campbell’s Manhandlers soup, the magical elixir that transforms her kitchen into a culinary Colosseum. She pours the contents into a pot, and it’s as if she’s summoned the culinary gods themselves. The soup is no ordinary broth; it’s a veritable cornucopia of steak chunks, peas, and potatoes, swimming in a rich, hearty base that promises to tame even the most insatiable of appetites. As the aroma wafts through the kitchen, her husband’s eyes widen in delight. He grabs a spoon and dives in, and the transformation is instantaneous. His previously skeptical demeanor melts away, replaced by pure bliss. He slurps the soup with the gusto of a Viking at a medieval banquet, and she watches, triumphant. The jingle plays in the background, a triumphant anthem to her victory over hunger.

    The food industry at the time was relying on Appetyranny–the 1970s advertising-driven psychosis in which a woman’s entire self-worth was measured by her ability to quell the beastly hunger of her man. Fueled by jingles and canned soup, Appetyranny framed female failure not in terms of character or intellect, but in spoonfuls: if he’s still hungry, you’re unlovable.

    It was the golden age of culinary gaslighting, where a man’s growling stomach was treated like a ticking bomb, and your job—housewife, mother, woman—was to neutralize it with sodium-laced beef sludge. Fail, and you risked suburban scandal. Succeed, and you were serenaded by baritone jingles that implied your marriage had been saved by soup.

    Side effects of Appetyranny include:

    • The belief that men turn feral without starch by 6 p.m.
    • Buying food with names like Manwich, Sloppy Joe, or Hearty Beef ‘n’ Barley
    • Mistaking Campbell’s labels for emotional validation
    • A lifelong association between love and ladles

    Appetyranny wasn’t just marketing. It was a meat-chunk manifesto from the patriarchal pantry, where the kitchen timer doubled as a ticking bomb of feminine adequacy.

  • Mascotopia

    Mascotopia

    In the pantheon of childhood injustices, the fall of Quake cereal stands as a monumental tragedy, rivaled only by the desecration of classic toys left to languish on the frozen island of misfit toys in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. When Jay Ward’s cereal mascots, Quisp the Martian and Quake the Muscle-Bound Coal Miner, squared off in the great cereal showdown, the stage was set for an epic clash of taste, texture, and, most importantly, personal pride. Quake cereal, with its robust, gear-shaped nuggets, was not merely a breakfast option—it was a testament to human resilience and strength. Each nugget, dense enough to withstand the fury of a thousand spoons, stood firm in milk like a stoic warrior on the battlefield of breakfast. Meanwhile, Quisp, that whimsical Martian interloper, boasted soggy, flying saucer-shaped morsels that dissolved into a milky mush faster than a gremlin in a rainstorm. The rivalry between Quisp and Quake wasn’t just a marketing ploy; it was a battleground of epic proportions. Quake represented the pinnacle of cereal engineering—a bulwark of flavor against the encroaching tide of mediocrity. It was the hero of breakfasts, a cereal that could withstand the ravages of time and milk. Yet, despite Quake’s gallant efforts, the Martian’s insipid cereal prevailed. The decision was as senseless as declaring that the Titanic had not been adequately equipped with lifeboats because it had too many! When Quake was ultimately relegated to the annals of cereal history, I mourned as if my very soul had been denied a fundamental right. My grief was not solely about the cereal’s departure from the shelves—it was a visceral rejection of my will, a cosmic snub that struck at the very core of my breakfast autonomy. The elimination of Quake was akin to having one’s preferred superhero unceremoniously booted from the Justice League or, even worse, being told that one’s beloved comic book character had been written out of existence in the most disheartening crossover event ever imagined. The real tragedy here was not just the absence of Quake but the profound, personal affront I felt. It was as though Quake’s disappearance had somehow invalidated my very existence. Every time I poured a bowl of Quisp, I could almost hear the distant echoes of Quake’s forlorn whimpers, like a hero’s lament echoing through a desolate wasteland. The cereal aisle had become a barren landscape, a cruel reminder of a time when my preferences mattered—when I had a say in the cosmic balance of breakfast cereals. To me, Quake’s demise was not just an end to a cereal line but a grand, cosmic betrayal. It was as if the universe had conspired to mock my taste, to show me that my choice was inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. It was a stark, immutable reminder that, in the endless war between sugary Martian cereals and dense coal-miner nuggets, I was but a mere footnote in the annals of breakfast history. The apocalypse of Quake was the most tragic event in my cereal-eating career—a frozen island of disappointment, a sorrowful wasteland where only the memories of crispy, gear-shaped nuggets could console me.

    This incident introduced me to the idea of Mascotopia–the psychological condition in which the mascot of a cereal is so charismatic, heroic, or mythically overdeveloped that the actual cereal—a bland, sugar-dusted travesty—never stood a chance of living up to the hype. Victims of Mascotopia don’t eat breakfast—they mourn it. They pour a bowl expecting a hero’s journey and end up with soggy mediocrity.

    In this fever dream of commercial betrayal, Quake becomes a breakfast demigod, and Quisp a marshmallow Machiavelli. The mascots aren’t just marketing—they’re myth. And when your chosen avatar (Quake) is written out of existence in favor of a glorified puffball from Planet Bland, the resulting grief isn’t about flavor—it’s existential.

    Mascotopia is that childhood moment when you realize the cereal box is lying to you. It promised glory, grit, and nuggets that could survive the Big Bang. Instead, you’re left with dissolving saucers and a broken identity.

  • Snackjection

    Snackjection

    When I was five, my father constructed a treehouse that stood like a beacon of childhood ambition in the Flavet Villages Apartments in Gainesville, Florida. It was a fortress, a palace, a skyscraper reaching for the heavens—at least in my young mind. In this realm of wood and nails, I sought to assert my dominion, and what better way than with the power of Sun-Maid raisins? One fateful day, I lured Tammy Whitmire to ascend the tree’s wooden slats by brandishing the ultimate weapon: a box of Sun-Maid raisins. This wasn’t just any box; it featured the Sun-Maiden herself, a radiant figure holding a colossal tray of grapes. Her red bonnet and the halo of yellow light marked with white triangles around her head made her look like the Great Raisin Angel, a deity of dried fruit. Tammy, captivated by the angelic glow of the Sun-Maiden, climbed up to join me. Victory seemed imminent until Zane Johnson, lurking in a nearby tree, emerged from a leafy cluster and shattered my triumph. With a smug grin, he declared he had something far superior to my measly raisins: Captain Kangaroo Cookies. These weren’t just cookies; they were double-fudge, cream-centered cookie sandwiches, the culinary equivalent of Excalibur. In the brutal marketplace of childhood affections, my raisins didn’t stand a chance. Tammy, seduced by the allure of Zane’s superior snacks, descended my tree faster than a squirrel on espresso and sprinted to Zane’s treehouse. There, they feasted on the decadent cookies, leaving me alone with my pitiful box of raisins. My reign had ended before it began. Crushed by the betrayal, I reclined in my treehouse and sobbed myself to sleep. But the universe wasn’t done with me yet. I awoke hours later to a stinging horror: my body was swarmed by red fire ants, drawn to the sweet raisins. My skin felt like it had been lashed by a thousand stinging nettles. In agony, I bolted to my apartment where my mother, horrified, gave me a scalding bath to rid me of the ants. In the battle between Sun-Maid Raisins and Captain Kangaroo Cookies, the cookies had won, and I had learned a painful, itchy lesson about the power of snacks and the fickleness of friends.

    This traumatic memory was my introduction to Snackjection–the  soul-bruising humiliation that occurs when your lovingly curated snack—especially one featuring wholesome packaging like a bonneted raisin maiden—is publicly rejected in favor of a rival’s more brand-name, sugar-slicked treat. Often inflicted during the high-stakes snack diplomacy of childhood, Snackjection delivers a one-two punch: the collapse of your social standing and the realization that Captain Kangaroo cookies wield more romantic sway than your dried fruit ever will.

    Symptoms may include:

    • Sudden loss of confidence in your snack brand identity
    • Emotional exile to a solo treehouse
    • Uncontrollable sobbing followed by an insect siege
    • Existential questioning of why the Sun-Maid looks holy but delivers only heartbreak

    Snackjection is the snacktime equivalent of being left at the altar for someone with a lunchbox full of TV tie-in sugar bombs.

  • How to Stop Your Appetite from Heckling You and Achieve Savorosity

    How to Stop Your Appetite from Heckling You and Achieve Savorosity

    Coined Term: Cravattenuation

    (craving + attenuation)

    Extended Definition:

    Cravattenuation is the psychological and physiological art of turning down the volume on your inner snack gremlin—the one who starts kicking the back of your consciousness the moment your stomach makes a polite gurgle. It’s the deliberate process of retraining your body to interpret minor hunger signals not as existential emergencies but as low-priority system notifications: “You might want to eat in a bit” instead of “RAID THE PANTRY OR DIE.” Just as meditation teaches you to sit with discomfort rather than react impulsively, Cravattenuation teaches you that a little hunger isn’t a crisis—it’s foreplay for a better meal.

    We’ve been conditioned by snack culture and anxiety-driven consumption to treat hunger as something to be feared and fixed immediately, like a smoke alarm or a toddler tantrum. But when you practice Cravattenuation, something remarkable happens: your threshold for hunger strengthens, and the urgency softens. You learn to sit with a mild stomach pang without spiraling into carb-lust. Over time, you develop what can only be described as Hunger Discernment: the ability to separate emotional nibble-itching from true physiological need.

    The Unexpected Perk:

    By making your body earn the meal—not through punishment, but patience—you begin to eat with a clarity and joy that’s been missing since the dawn of office vending machines. Food tastes better when you’re actually hungry for it. Not “kinda bored” hungry, not “scrolling through cheese reels” hungry, but real hungry. Cravattenuation helps you not only manage your weight with more ease and grace, it re-enchants the eating experience itself. You’ll start treating meals like mini homecomings rather than pit stops at a dopamine gas station.

    Name for the Healthy State: Savorosity

    (savor + satiety + curiosity)

    Savorosity is the elegant state you enter after mastering Cravattenuation—a zone where hunger feels less like a hostage crisis and more like an invitation. It’s when you greet mealtime with curiosity and pleasure, not guilt or compulsion. It’s when you chew slower, taste deeper, and know you’ve arrived not because you gave in to a craving, but because you earned your appetite.

    Cravattenuation gets you there. Savorosity keeps you there. And together, they free you from the tyranny of the pantry’s siren call.

  • DeDopaminification: Breaking Up with the Machine That Loves You Too Much

    DeDopaminification: Breaking Up with the Machine That Loves You Too Much

    DeDopaminification is the deliberate and uncomfortable process of recalibrating the brain’s reward circuitry after years—sometimes decades—of synthetic overstimulation. It’s what happens when you look your phone in the face and whisper, “It’s not me, it’s you.” In a culture addicted to frictionless pleasure and frictionless communication, DeDopaminification means reintroducing friction on purpose. It’s the detox of the soul, not with celery juice, but with withdrawal from digital dopamine driplines—apps, feeds, alerts, porn, outrage, and validation loops disguised as “engagement.”

    In Alone Together, Sherry Turkle diagnosed the psychic fragmentation wrought by constant digital interaction: we’ve become people who talk less but text more, who perform connection while starving for authenticity. In one of her most haunting observations, she notes how teens feel panicked without their phones—not because they’re afraid of missing messages, but because they fear missing themselves in the mirror of others’ attention. Turkle’s world is one where dopamine dependency isn’t just neurological—it’s existential. We’ve been trained to outsource our worth to the algorithmic gaze.

    Anne Lembke’s Dopamine Nation picks up this thread like a clinical slap to the face. Lembke, a Stanford psychiatrist, makes it plain: the modern world is engineered to overstimulate us into oblivion. Pleasure is no longer earned—it’s swipeable. Whether it’s TikTok, sugar, or digital outrage, our brains are being rewired to expect fireworks where there used to be a slow-burning candle. Lembke writes that to reset our internal reward systems, we must embrace discomfort—yes, want less, enjoy silence, and learn how to sit with boredom like it’s a spiritual practice.

    DeDopaminification is not some puritanical rejection of pleasure. It’s the fight to reclaim pleasure that isn’t bankrupting us. It’s deleting TikTok not because you’re better than it, but because it’s better than you—so good it’s lethal. It’s deciding that your attention span deserves a tombstone with dignity, not a death-by-scroll. It’s not heroic or Instagrammable. In fact, it’s boring, slow, sometimes lonely—but it’s also real. And that’s what makes it revolutionary.

  • Reclaiming Your Sanity May Depend on DeBrandification

    Reclaiming Your Sanity May Depend on DeBrandification

    DeBrandification is the conscious, defiant act of peeling away the curated layers of your public persona like old vinyl siding from a house that never needed a makeover in the first place. It’s the moment you look at your bio—“educator, content strategist, latte enthusiast, recovering perfectionist”—and think, Who the hell is this algorithm-optimized mannequin and what has she done with my soul? DeBrandification is not rebranding; it is anti-branding. It’s the willful act of becoming unmarketable, unpredictable, and gloriously unverified. You stop asking, Will this post get engagement? and start wondering, What would I write if no one were watching and no sponsors were lurking?

    It begins subtly: you delete a profile picture, unpublish a blog, or (gasp) let your TikTok account die peacefully of neglect. Soon, you’re off the grid like a suburban Thoreau with Wi-Fi guilt, refusing to hashtag your lunch or quote-tag your trauma. You don’t disappear—you just stop performing. The metrics vanish, and in their place, something odd happens: your thoughts get weirder, your sentences wobblier, your voice less pleasing but more alive. DeBrandification is not career suicide. It’s self-resurrection. And if you do it right, you won’t just lose followers—you’ll lose the craving for them.

    The final scene of Black Mirror’s “Nosedive” is a textbook act of DeBrandification—messy, raw, and utterly liberating. After spending the entire episode contorting herself into a chirpy, pastel-colored caricature to boost her social rating, Lacie finally bottoms out—literally and metaphorically—in a jail cell. Stripped of her devices, her followers, and the suffocating need to be likable, she engages in a gloriously profane scream-fest with her fellow inmate, both of them hurling insults with reckless joy. It’s the first time we see her alive—flushed, furious, and unfiltered. In that moment, Lacie isn’t falling apart; she’s shedding the synthetic skin of her brand. No more forced smiles, no more filtered breakfasts, no more networking by emotional hostage. What remains is a person—not an avatar, not a score—a human being who, for the first time, doesn’t give a five-star damn.

  • If Paul Feuded with His Rival Apostles on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen

    If Paul Feuded with His Rival Apostles on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen

    Title: The Real Apostles of Jerusalem: Pentecost and Pettiness on Bravo

    [INT. Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen – The studio is lit like a Roman bathhouse crossed with a New York tiki bar. Andy Cohen sits gleaming between a grimacing Paul the Apostle, in an impeccably tailored robe with Roman stitching, and Peter, who looks like he’d rather be crucified upside-down again than share a couch with Paul. To the left, Bartholomew checks his cuticles while James the Lesser sips merlot like it’s judgment day.]

    ANDY COHEN
    Welcome back to Watch What Happens Live! We are blessed tonight—literally. It’s an apostolic showdown, honey. On my left, we have Peter, James, John, and the boys from Galilee. And to my right, the man who insists he’s also a real apostle—Paul of Tarsus!

    PAUL (tight smile)
    I’m not just a real apostle, Andy. I’m the apostle to the Gentiles. I practically invented the church. And yet I’m never invited to the literary salons in Antioch, never quoted at theology brunches. I wrote thirteen letters—some of which people still read. Unlike certain fishermen whose only contribution was foot-in-mouth disease.

    PETER (fuming)
    Oh give me a break, Saul—I mean Paul. You show up years after the resurrection, claim you saw a “light,” and suddenly you’re the CEO of Jesus, Inc.? The rest of us actually knew the man. We walked with Him. We ate with Him. We heard Him snore. You had a seizure on a donkey and decided you’re the oracle of salvation.

    JAMES THE LESSER (leaning in)
    Let’s be real. If Paul had a PR team any better, he’d be trending on Messianic TikTok. The man has a scroll drop every month. “To the Galatians,” “To the Ephesians,” “To My Haters.” Please.

    ANDY COHEN
    Wow, okay! So Peter, what’s your biggest gripe with Paul?

    PETER
    He’s always subtweeting us in his epistles! “Even if an angel preaches a different gospel, let him be accursed.” Oh gee, I wonder who he meant. Then he throws in a “those who seemed to be something meant nothing to me.” That’s me, Andy! He means me! I was the rock! Now I’m a footnote?

    JOHN (muttering)
    I wrote a whole gospel and he still called me “pillar adjacent.”

    PAUL (exploding)
    You accuse me of ambition, but I suffered for this calling. I was shipwrecked! Imprisoned! Bitten by snakes! You lot had fish and loaves—I had near-death experiences and unpaid missionary tours! If I boast, I boast in the Lord. And maybe also a little in my rhetorical genius.

    BARTHOLOMEW (finally speaking)
    He called himself the least of the apostles and then made himself the brand.

    PAUL
    The Spirit speaks through me!

    PETER
    The Spirit told you to call me a hypocrite in front of the Galatians?

    PAUL
    If the sandal fits.

    ANDY COHEN (grinning like a man feeding Christians to lions)
    Oof! Okay, we are flaming tonight—like the bush, not the brunch. Final thoughts? Can we bury the hatchet like it’s buried at Golgotha?

    PETER (snatching his wine glass)
    Sure. I’ll bury it right here.

    Peter hurls the wine in Paul’s face. The studio erupts. Paul stands, soaked and fuming, quoting 2 Corinthians about his sufferings while John rolls his eyes and checks his scroll for quotes about loving one another.

    ANDY COHEN (gleeful)
    Okay, that’s the gospel according to Bravo! Next week: Mary Magdalene claps back at Judas in The Real Disciples: Women Tell All! Goodnight, everybody!

    [Cue the theme song: “Turn the Other Cheek (Remix)” by DJ Pontius Pilate.]

  • Cartoon Eve and the Algorithmic Hangover

    Cartoon Eve and the Algorithmic Hangover

    In the early ’70s, the network execs at ABC, CBS, and NBC pulled a marketing move so manipulative it should’ve been illegal under the Geneva Conventions. On a hallowed Friday night in the month of September, they handed kids a psychic dog biscuit: a glittering preview of Saturday morning’s new cartoon lineup. As a nine-year-old, I’d sit cross-legged in front of the TV, slack-jawed and vibrating, watching grainy flashes of The Bugaloos and H.R. Pufnstuf like I was being shown a trailer for heaven. It was less of a preview and more of a grilled Ribeye waved under my nose by a smiling sadist who tells me breakfast is in 12 hours.

    Sleep was not an option on Cartoon Eve, a night more sacred than Christmas, Easter, and your grandma’s funeral combined. I’d lie in bed thinking, What if I sleep in? What if I miss the premiere of Lidsville? What if, in a moment of tragic miscalculation, I eat my Cap’n Crunch in the kitchen instead of the TV room and lose valuable viewing seconds? These were the pre-digital days—no DVR, no YouTube, no forgiveness. If you missed it, you missed it. You could cry, but the cathode ray tube did not care.

    The masterminds behind these shows weren’t just marketers—they were psychological arsonists, setting fire to our dopamine circuits before we were old enough to spell serotonin. They didn’t just sell cartoons. They sold Tang, Danish Go-Rounds, and Pillsbury Space Sticks with the breathless urgency of black-market opioids. The shows started at 7 a.m. and ran till 11, but by 10 I’d start to feel queasy. I’d hear the crack of a baseball bat outside and realize I was sitting in a dim living room while my real childhood was playing third base across the street. That’s when the guilt set in—the primal, shame-soaked knowledge that I was trading sunshine and scraped knees for anthropomorphic cereal mascots and animated product placement.

    Eventually I’d fling off my pajamas like a molting larva, throw on jeans, and bolt out the door, desperate to reclaim the morning before it calcified into regret. Childhood, I realized, was a loop of anticipation, overstimulation, and the fear of having made the wrong choice.

    But compared to today’s chaos, that quaint Saturday-morning psychodrama feels like a gentle massage from Mr. Rogers. Social media is Cartoon Eve with weapons-grade dopamine—a psychic arms race where even adults devolve into sweaty, wide-eyed nine-year-olds, tapping their screens like they’re trying to summon a cartoon genie.

    After a decade of scrolling, I’ve pulled the plug. I’ve cut back my digital exposure by 97%, and what’s left is like being a shell-shocked tourist floating down the Amazon on a deflating raft, watching piranhas in mid-frenzy shred a water buffalo. It’s gruesomely riveting, but it fries your soul and robs you of original thought. Now, like millions of others, I am in post-social media convalescence—pale, twitchy, and unsure if I’ll ever feel real sunlight again.

    But one thing’s for certain: I don’t miss the Space Sticks.

  • Foam Alone: The Hipster Bed Hustle and the Cult of Compressed Cool

    Foam Alone: The Hipster Bed Hustle and the Cult of Compressed Cool

    Recently, my wife and I embarked on that most sacred and ridiculous rite of modern consumer adulthood: mattress shopping. But not just any mattress. No, we were lured—like moths to an ironic Edison bulb—by the siren song of the “bed in a box” movement. You know the pitch: memory foam meets gel, vacuum-sealed into a tight roll like a Chipotle burrito of luxury. Just slice it open with a box cutter and voilà!—it unfurls into a California King, like some latex-based resurrection miracle, all while promising to align your spine and your chakras.

    The in-store experience was a curated fever dream. We lay on foam slabs priced between three and nine thousand dollars, enveloped in mood lighting, whisper-soft sales pitches, and ambient indie folk. The mattresses were… fine. They cradled our backs, cupped our hip joints, whispered sweet nothings to our lumbar region. But I wasn’t feeling transcendent—I was feeling sold. Somewhere, I imagined a marketing team high-fiving over a whiteboard with phrases like “Artisanal Sleep” and “Millennial Mattress Disruption” scribbled in dry-erase bravado.

    It wasn’t just a mattress we were meant to be buying—it was an identity. A lifestyle. Minimalist, eco-cool, unburdened by the dusty sins of box springs and showroom floor futons. The subtext was loud: if you’re still buying a traditional mattress, you might as well admit you still use a rotary phone and tuck in your t-shirts. FOMO was baked into every layer of that overpriced memory foam: Buy this, or accept your fate as an aging square who sleeps like a Boomer.

    Once home, I turned to the digital sages—AI platforms, review aggregators, comment sections brimming with keyboard philosophers. The consensus was sobering: “Bed in a box? Cute gimmick. Overhyped. Questionable lifespan.” It turns out luxury doesn’t arrive folded like a quesadilla and held together by hope and branding. Traditional mattresses—those innerspring tanks and hybrid fortresses—still dominate in sheer performance. They don’t need to be unpacked with surgical caution, and they’ll cradle your creaky skeleton well into the next presidential administration.

    The most damning flaw? Durability. You can drop four grand on a foam mattress with a name that sounds like a startup and a logo that belongs on a vape pen, and five years later you’ll be sleeping in a crater. Meanwhile, that crusty old-school mattress from the showroom? Still holding you up like a reliable ex who pays their taxes and owns real furniture.

    In the end, we walked away—me, a little wiser, a little smugger, fully unfooled. I had dodged the algorithmic shame cycle of “Buy now or die alone in orthopedic misery.” I collapsed onto my overpriced sectional—a remnant of a different consumer panic—and streamed stand-up comedy with the gentle satisfaction of a man who knew that comfort, real comfort, doesn’t need branding. It just needs springs that don’t flatten and marketing that doesn’t gaslight you into thinking your dignity lies inside a vacuum-sealed tube of artisanal foam.

  • I Am My Own Audiobook: A Washed-Up Reader’s Redemption Arc

    I Am My Own Audiobook: A Washed-Up Reader’s Redemption Arc

    After four decades of teaching college writing, I now find myself plagued by a humiliating truth: my reading habits have withered into something more decorative than devout. In my twenties, I devoured two books a week like a literary piranha. Now, I manage a limp 30-minute bedtime reading session before drooling onto the page like a narcoleptic bookworm. Call it aging, call it digital distraction, or—as I like to tell myself in moments of flattering delusion—call it undiagnosed ADHD. Whatever the cause, my reading stamina has become a cautionary tale.

    If I want to do anything resembling real, rigorous reading, I’ve learned to prop myself between two 27-inch screens like a cyborg monk: one monitor displaying the sacred text, the other open to Google Docs so I can take notes, argue with myself, and shame my inner skimmer into paying attention. This is not pleasure reading. This is performance reading—a controlled environment designed to bully my mind into staying in the room. If a book so much as looks at me funny, I’ll click over to email.

    But something strange has happened: I’ve become a better listener than reader. I now “read” through Audible with more duration and intensity than I’ve mustered with paper in years. Especially with nonfiction, the audiobook format feels less like cheating and more like a form of literary intravenous drip—direct, efficient, and oddly intimate. That’s why a recent blurb in The New Yorker caught my eye: Peter Szendy’s Powers of Reading: From Plato to Audiobooks isn’t just an academic tour through literary history—it’s a philosophical rebranding of the audiobook experience.

    Szendy resurrects a long-lost distinction between two roles: the reader (the person decoding text) and the readee (the listener, the audience of the reading). Since antiquity, he notes, most literature wasn’t read—it was heard. We were, for most of human history, listenees. Silent, solo reading is a relatively recent phenomenon, and yet we’ve somehow crowned it the gold standard of literary engagement. Szendy isn’t buying it. In fact, he argues for the emancipation of the readee—a manifesto that practically throws confetti over the return of orality via Audible.

    And here’s the kicker: even when we read to ourselves, we’re still listenees. We are listening to our own interior narration. We are, in essence, narrating to ourselves. Szendy suggests that when we read, we play both roles: the voice and the ear, the actor and the audience. And when we listen to a book, we are doing something ancient, dignified, and sacred—not some degraded, dumbed-down version of real reading.

    So yes, maybe I’m a fallen reader, a man who used to crush Dostoevsky before breakfast but now requires high-tech scaffolding just to get through a paragraph. But thanks to Szendy, I can now see myself as a kind of restored readee—part monk, part machine, part audiobook in human form. Not a failure of attention, but a return to tradition. And if my bedtime ritual now sounds more like a podcast than a prayer, well… Plato probably would’ve approved.