TV just plays such a big role in my psyche like I feel like I grew up in the 80s just 80s cartoons and 80s sitcoms. My whole generation shares and letterman like the biggest like that's like such a phenomenon. Gen X is like the laughingstock of Gen Z when we're teaching them, says Jen wheezy. You can make a reference that maybe three out of like 50 kids will get but it's not like it used to be no.
We dive into David Foster Wallace’s sprawling 1993 essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.” How do TV and new forms of media keep their hold on us when we know at some level that they’re reinforcing our loneliness and passivity? That’s easy, Wallace says, post-modern cool. Flatter me, let me think we’re all in the joke together, give me “an ironic permission-slip to do what I do best whenever I feel confused and guilty: assume, inside, a sort of fetal position, a pose of passive reception to comfort, escape, reassurance.” But in the years since this essay, the TV landscape has completely transformed. Has it transcended its function as a surrogate companion for lonely people, or has it just found new ways to keep us isolated and passive?
Plus, we talk about the recent new SPSP guidelines and Jon Haidt’s recent essay on why he’s resigning from the organization. (Sorry, Jon!)
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