Yeah I guess that's another big difference: people used to mostly only be able to consume one dumb thing at a time.

I think the difference is maybe more pronounced with young people. I remember being like 12 and just... sitting there and watching whole episodes of TV shows, back to back, with commercials and everything. I can't imagine most adults today doing that, let alone kids. You were just sort of captive to whatever happened to be available right then and there. It was usually something you'd seen before, but what else are you going to do? You could read books, but you were also limited to whatever you physically had picked up from the bookstore or library.

that, and they watch stuff on youtube/tiktok instead

Maybe out of favor now as the media landscape has changed, but it used to be standard reading in high school media literacy/criticisn section for English class.

I remember reading it when I was in high school (early 2000s) and not liking it, but I was dumb and I'd consider reading it again.

So some boomer argued things weren’t boring enough? Have they ever had a job?

If people actually had the standards for being entertained they should we would have global communism already. Spending 8+ hours straight where you aren’t allowed to do anything you want to and are expected to subvert all of your brain’s resources to your cash overlord is the most boring experience known to man.

“Ohhhh I’m bored now at work, the world is ending, the woke agenda has transferred the boredom mind virus” welcome to being under stimulated fucker, wonder how people with ADHD feel when you tell them they’re penalized for fidgeting or looking at their phone?

Certainly there’s a factor of problematicness with how social media is constantly designed to be as addictive as possible, but for some reason these fuckers always focus on how kids these days are listening to music (a REAL, ACTUAL communist writer unironically claimed this was caused by hedonic treadmilling and not enough organizing, and not just having fucking ADHD) or reading Wikipedia instead of working or while being at class. Maybe blame the boring ass work conditions instead of the technology that’s finally made you realize you deserve more from your time?

“Why don’t I enjoy looking at a spreadsheet for 70% of my life? My phone has infected me!”

Is that the one that got posted all over the "normie" internet back in 2011-2012? That makes a half-brained argument against TV and saying that 1984 was too obvious and that people would rebel, and that the real dystopia was Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451? Because I remember reading that title on 9gag back then and wondering if my english skills were failing me, since I could not make sense of that at all.