Why I Really Don’t Care About Your Short Attention Span.

See that title and the feature image? I did that to reel you in.

I really don’t care about your shitty smartphone-constructed attention span. I don’t care if I write the entire article with no images to break up the space. I’m not here to fucking serve you tea and ideology. Go and do the thinking yourself.

I’m sorry, did I not give you 15 Reasons of How To Do Things More Effectively? No, I didn’t, because I recognise that to become better at anything in life takes a lot of time, talking to people in real life and a shit ton of practice. I don’t believe in quick fixes.

And that’s why I’m here, I’m here to practice my craft. I share because I’m grateful for anyone who reads, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t care, but if you think I’m going to bend my figurative ass over backwards for your ignorant, impatient and shitty attention span, then fuck off.

While I really love the fact that I can pay for a takeaway with my face, or get an underpaid “contractor” to drive an Uber to wherever I need to go, I really, really, really miss the days when we sat in the company of masters.

You know people who mastered stuff through sheer practice? Who completed education without Google? Who saw life as one continuous thread, and not as a collection of swipeable micro-moments?

When I see that people are recording fireworks with their phone I have to step back and think: What. The. Fuck. The entire point of fireworks is to experience the sound, colour and vibe in person; for it to be fleeting and personal. But we live in a reality now where, telling someone you did something is more important than the action itself.

That’s why when I load up Medium and look at all these “Top 10” articles with extremely short read times that are based on quotes or some basic-ass recycled shit but just packaged differently I sometimes question why am I on here? What is happening?

You know one of my favourite books? The Count of Monte Cristo. That is a long ass book. It is an epic revenge story and boy does he make you wait. I remember that book even a decade later because of the sheer joy it gave me. The irony? Aspiring writers who want to know how to write better through shitty list articles.

When this whole mobile-internet revolution started, I thought great, something to supplement and enhance our lives and give us more information so we can be more enlightened. But fuck, I was so wrong.

The snacks have become the main course.

When I was teaching English, all students wanted to know is what the bottom line was. They “educated” themselves through Wikipedia and videos. Efficiency was the name of the game. And they genuinely thought they could cheat their way through an education by taking shortcuts.

You know the people at the top of their game? They don’t take shortcuts. They sacrifice their time, money and social lives in order to be the best at what they can be. They really do care about what it means to attempt to master something, because of the deep sense of accomplishment, fulfilment and purpose it inherently gives.

Let me give you the bottom line of quick-fix culture right away:

The only thing you care about is being entertained until you die. You’re not ready to commit yourself to something because it would require sacrifice. You’re afraid of standing out in an ocean of mediocrity because of fear. You think reality should function how your self-entertainment systems work, because entertaining yourself is the highest priority. You’re complacent.

In the era of colonialism, the default method used was divide-and-conquer. It was so much easier to take land and wealth under your control if the people within it were fighting amongst themselves over something silly. While they argue about Gods, you slip in and take the prize.

Unfortunately, the same thing has happened to all of us. While the planet and people die, something that requires an incredible amount of education, creativity, dedication and mastery to solve, the people that hold the keys to solving those problems just stand by and idly watch while technology does a divide-and-conquer on us.

They take our money into tax havens, our time into endless mazes, and our actions on auto-pilot because we’re too fucking busy watching Netflix to even care. And when the time comes to face the music, we’re off on holiday to forget about everything.

This is a pathetic trap. You are pathetic. I am pathetic. We are all stupid for falling for this.

So no, I will not write articles that cater to instant gratifications. I won’t take part in this rat maze while the planet dies. I won’t fucking spoonfeed you information. I will make you work for it.

Because that is what you deserve; you deserve to be pushed to mastery.