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If in the original Grim Bothers version, The Sleeping Beauty had a goldfish, it would have witnessed her being raped and deliver two children while asleep, only to wake up and marry the perpetrator. Looks like a stretch to “happy ever after” doesn’t it? Yeah, it did so too to Disney. Probably why, on picking up the story, the Studios rewrote it.
Fun thing, if you know any Philosophy or Storytelling scholars, they’ll probably agree that it was beautifully done. A sleeping character’s “Hero’s Journey” turned into a tale beyond the self. In it, a witch and a prince are closer to Cyclops or the mythical mermaids of Ulysses, than to any real human.
Its pinnacle; the encounter with the self and the awakening of the true princess. (Some actually read the prince as a secondary character, to lend an aura of romance, with the kiss representing the encounter with oneself, and the waking up; the awakening of consciousness process.)
we want it fast, we want it straight, we want it now
But we live in a fast-paced era. Too fast to dwell too deep in single topics like “the philosophical approach to the hidden meanings and stylistic devices in storytelling”. If someone tells us a story, we want it fast, we want it straight, we want it now. All of it. Preferably in chewable, immersive, sharable bites.
As media platforms grow, reducing complex storytelling to bullet points, and to share them in a 10-second video, became a crucial skill. One that Advertisers, latter Millennials and Gen Zers became quite experts in, as it makes their ideas sharable and seen in a highly competitive arena.
The result was brutal. Stories like The Sleeping Beauty, summarized, rapidly became nightmares. A man kissing a sleeping woman he barely knows. Taking advantage of her lack of consciousness. No consent. This has become, for a generation struggling with socially accepted abuse, just one more example of something that cannot, and should not, be part of kids imaginary world.
Short videos about it go viral, Disney is “exposed”, even “canceled”. Tensions rise between lovers of the original story, feminists, conservatives, philosophers and the devil itself if one is to believe some of the things online about it.
An old fire rises; the idea that the generation calling out on biases on cultural patrimony is one of lower cognitive capacity. Books are written about the subject, memes and gifs make the rounds, fake-facts spread.
these are appealing ideas, controversial, and lend the idea of superiority to some
Articles with similar titles to “You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish” (Time) thrive, even though the original studies they were based on are no longer available, and there is even good, published work, discrediting the validity of the conclusion. But these are appealing ideas, controversial, and lend an aura of superiority to some. Ideal for likes, shares, and buzz.
Let’s take a peek at what the latter Millennials and Gen Zers are doing. We already know that in a world where everything is screaming at them all the time, they are spending a lot of time using their personas online, and have a preference for fun and fast short content.
Strangely enough, according to Think with Google’s expert Nicholas Szmidt, there has been a consistent rise of people searching for video essays on YouTube. Long formats on specific topics.
And according to YouTube Culture & Trends Report 2022 (PDF) for many young people, short-content media is a form of entertainment that allows quick access to different topics and themes. So much so, that about 59% of the inquiries agreed that they use short-video apps to discover new things of interest. That they then watch longer versions of.
my attention span is clearly diminished
How about me? I don’t have a “thing” for short content, but I do find myself watching most videos in 1.5x or even 2x speed, as well as audio messages. I also consume much more content than I used to, and disengage much easily.
My early Millennial brain seems to be on a similar path, as my attention span is clearly diminished. In equal proportion to my lack of patience. Which has increased exponentially. Especially in relation to content that I find uninteresting, and which I now find: 1) everywhere; 2) at all times; 3) in all kinds of formats.
There is this rogue wave of content continually flooding our brains, both in our virtual and physical spaces. Only on YouTube about 500 hours of video are uploaded per minute. And about 85% of Gen Zers have posted video content online. That is A LOT of personal, branded, social, informative, comic, relaxing, “you-name-it”, content.
Choosing among unending options (while very appealing to the market), is actually an expensive and tiring job for our brains (don’t take it from me, watch Barry Schwartz talking about how so much “freedom of choice” can become a path to unhappiness). This is called “decision fatigue”. The excessive buildup of glutamate in our brains, an amino acid that relates to normal brain function, can lead to conditions like anxiety, sleep disorders, or even epilepsy, among others.
Hard mental labor increases the concentration of glutamate in the prefrontal cortex, and this really wears out the brain.
there’s simply no good reason to spend time watching content of dubious quality
And let’s be honest, not all of this content is good or worthwhile. The time available to choose and to “waste” while watching uninteresting content for this generation is between little and none. I understand them:
With so much to choose from, there’s simply no good reason to spend time watching content of dubious quality, or not tailored, specifically, to my personal taste.
The way I see it, it sounds just fair, and a good sign, that this new generations needs differently written stories. Just like the generation of Disney felt the original, The Sleeping Beauty, was too brutal to be told as it was.
a true digital native generation using some goldfish super-power-skills
I doubt that if we take a closer peek at what Gen Z is doing, we’ll find a bunch of goldfish-memory-like people. But the idea of a true digital native generation using some goldfish super-power-skills to swim around in the noise isn’t one to dismiss entirely. Actually, it sounds a smart, and kinder, one.
They do find themselves searching for their worth-while tales, in a world filled-up with a lot (a lot) of plain and vulgar storytelling. The need to cut through, to permanently be making choices, always be on alert, ditch traps, be aware of “bubbles”, must be exhausting.
The ability to simply not pay attention, not retain, to not waste brain energy on less relevant things, seems to me, as I end this draft, a priming, natural, and quite good idea. And maybe what educators, teachers, storytellers, philosophers or content creators need, is learning how to ease and help the making of better, smarter choices, about what they do consume.
I believe most of us would make good use of that.
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