I’ve mentioned about this plenty of times, but lately I’ve been staying away from endless scrolling because I’ve realized how detrimental it is to my attention span. So I thought, why not channel my laziness into watching anime instead? At least it asks me to focus on something for longer than 5 minutes.

Before this I used to watch random vlogs but I stopped that, too.  Sure, they’re long, but they often feel directionless. They never really improved my attention span despite the length. A full vlog can still feel empty: nothing lingers, nothing stays with you. It is still something you need not to invest or imemrse.

I digress, some people would probably argue that anime is a juvenile way to spend your time. I don’t think so, because anime has plot. It has structure. It makes me think. Vlogs like travel vlogs, which I used to be so engrossed in don’t really do that for me anymore. Looking back, a lot of them feel overly externalized, all movement and spectacle. And honestly, my own drive to travel has faded a bit too. Real life gets chaotic, and sometimes you lose the spark to chase your own wanderlust and focus more on what’s right in front of you: the here and now.

Like I said, I’ve been watching a lot of anime but mostly rewatching. I’ve also been rereading books, manga, and webtoons from my stash (as seen in yearly reads so far). Yeah, just about anything to keep myself from endlessly scrolling. Because beyond ruining my attention span, scrolling makes me agitated and, again, directionless.

There’s something about immersing yourself in fiction (reading between the lines, remembering character names, noticing details) that moves your brain more than people realize. And I feel like in this time and age, we’re slowly losing our ability to stay still and be patient. We always want things instantly, like pronto! But back then, patience was part of how we consumed media. We sat through TV ads, waited for weekly episodes, waited for movies to come out (or wait a year or so before it officially premieres on TV/cable). We had to focus and take in things one by one, letting the details settle.

What also bothers me is how so much content online feels designed to rage-bait, to provoke and keep people angry. It’s honestly disheartening to witness how much media illiteracy is out there, too, and how many people seem unable to separate fiction from reality.

And that’s exactly what frustrates me: when that inability may eventually lead to censorship simply because some people can’t engage with fiction as fiction. What kind of cultural climate are we creating if fictional works constantly have to defend themselves against real-world moral standards?

I’ve spent years consuming fiction like series, books, films, and I’m still perfectly capable of distinguishing right from wrong, and fiction from reality. That’s the point. Fiction doesn’t erase discernment; if anything, it sharpens it. What makes me sad is that discussions around fiction now are so often flattened into moral judgments based on real-life standards, instead of being discussed within the context of the fictional world itself. Nuance gets lost. Everything becomes generalization, and honestly, I’m getting tired of seeing it.

As someone who grew up as an early internet adopter, I can’t help but feel how much the web has changed and not always for the better. I don’t like the direction it’s heading. We’re becoming more restless, more reactive, somehow less thoughtful, and sadly less intelligent.

I could say more, but I’ll stop here.

I read that even writing long-ish paragraphs feel harder now, which says a lot. That in itself feels like proof that something is shifting in how we think and engage. And ironically, it seems to be happening because we’ve let technology start taking more control over us than we ever intended.