Amusing Ourselves to Death 选读理由

玉米。

玉米。

因为我在选读理由里用了一些emoji, pdf里显示不出来，所以我把完整的选读理由放在这里了↓↓↓↓↓
Read time:一天
Reading task:确定选读书目
Reason:
I had known about this book for a long time, but it wasn’t until preparing for this course—learning its historical context, the author’s insights, and its core arguments—that I truly reevaluated my own relationship with the internet, which dominates my daily life. This reflection ultimately led me to choose Amusing Ourselves to Death as my semester’s reading. It’s a decision fueled by both intellectual curiosity and a personal urgency to confront how digital media shapes—and often distorts—our reality.
Last week, while doomscrolling through Douyin, I stumbled upon a livestream of a panda eating bamboo—set to a remix of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, captioned “ASMR for existential dread.” The video had 10 million likes. Meanwhile, my roommate was watching a Bilibili “study-with-me” stream where an influencer highlighted Das Kapital with pastel markers. I laughed, then shuddered. That’s when it hit me: Neil Postman’s 1985 takedown of TV culture isn’t just relevant—it’s the Rosetta Stone for decoding our algorithmically deranged internet era.
Let’s be real: We’re the generation that learned about the Ukraine war through Minecraft explainer videos and debated Nietzsche via Stumble Guys memes. Postman’s core thesis—that every medium reprograms how we think—feels less like academic theory and more like a live autopsy of our collective brain. Take TikTok’s “knowledge snacks,” where quantum physics gets distilled into 15-second clips between dance challenges. Sure, it’s fun to “learn” while waiting for your milk tea order, but as Postman warns, when complex ideas get shrink-wrapped into entertainment, we stop craving meals and settle for MSG-laced crumbs.
But here’s the twist: Postman’s not some grumpy grandpa shaking his fist at fun. His real beef is with how entertainment colonizes everything—even the stuff that’s supposed to matter. Last month, when a Xiaohongshu influencer went viral for live-streaming her “mindfulness journey” at a funeral (hashtag #SelfCareGoals), I realized we’ve reached peak “now… this” culture. Postman called it decades ago: TV news treated tragedy and trivia as equals, separated only by a commercial break. Today, our feeds mush together AI-generated climate crisis parodies, ASMR unboxings of The Communist Manifesto, and ads for “blockchain-infused skincare”—all while screaming, “Look at this! No, look at THIS!” It’s cognitive whiplash disguised as content.
And don’t get me started on language. Postman warned that TV would turn public discourse into “a baby talk,” but he’d lose his mind at our emoji-fied dialect. My WeChat group chats now look like hieroglyphic ransom notes: 🚀 (for ambition), 💔 (for failed group projects), and 🧠💥 (for exam week). We’ve even outsourced vulnerability to AI poets—why articulate heartbreak when Xiaoice can generate a tear-jerking stanza in 0.3 seconds? As Postman quipped, “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, culture-death is a clear possibility.” Joke’s on us: Our “trivia” now has a machine-learning PhD.
So why choose this book? Because it’s the ultimate antidote to what I call “content vertigo”—that dizzying feeling when you’ve binge-watched eight hours of “educational” Reels but remember nothing except a cat playing Schrödinger’s paradox. Postman forces us to ask: Are we using technology, or is it using us? When I catch myself mindlessly liking AI-generated “inspirational quotes” over actual books, or zoning out during a lecture but hyper-focusing on a Kuaishou drama, I hear his ghost muttering: “You’re amusing yourselves to death, kid.”
But here’s the plot twist even Postman didn’t see coming: Gen-Z isn’t just the problem—we’re the lab rats and the scientists. My peers are already weaponizing his ideas. Last month, a Tsinghua student’s viral thesis defense compared ByteDance’s algorithm to Huxley’s soma, complete with memes dissecting “attention capitalism.” Another classmate hacked Taobao’s recommendation engine to spit out Postman quotes instead of sneaker ads. We’re memeing our way toward awareness, one ironic deepfake at a time.
In the end, Amusing Ourselves to Death isn’t about hating TikTok or worshipping books. It’s about realizing that every swipe, click, and scroll isn’t neutral—it’s a vote for what kind of minds we want to be. Sure, I’ll keep binging those panda ASMR videos (no shame), but I’m also keeping Postman’s warning on my lock screen: “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to tweet this essay—ideally with a dancing capybara GIF to make it “relatable.” Somewhere, Postman is facepalming. And that’s exactly why we need him.

玉米。

玉米。 发表于 2025-3-2 21:26
因为我在选读理由里用了一些emoji, pdf里显示不出来，所以我把完整的选读理由放在这里了↓↓↓↓↓
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