Text is king

• The "death of reading" narrative cherry-picks data—book sales hit highs in 2025, 422 indie bookstores opened last year, and time-use surveys show the internet effect (2003-2011) was twice the smartphone effect (2011-2023)
• Human desires are too complex to hack: we know the difference between cheap pleasures (doomscrolling) and deep pleasures (finishing a great book), and evolution built us to never be fully satisfied
• Writing is "dish soap on ideas"—it makes holes in thinking obvious, which is why every long-lived movement has a book at its center (Communist Manifesto, Silent Spring, Common Sense)
• We're not becoming pre-literate, we're becoming hyper-recorded through photos, videos, and spreadsheets—different storage formats unlock different cognitive modes
• The real test: if this data measured smoking decline instead of reading decline, would you call it a crisis? Most of the line doesn't budge.

The author dismantles the popular "death of reading" narrative by examining what the data actually shows versus what the headlines claim. Book sales were higher in 2025 than 2019, independent bookstores are booming with 422 new shops opening last year, and surveys from Gallup, the NEA, and the American Time Use Survey show modest declines—not collapse. The key insight: the internet effect between 2003-2011 was roughly twice the size of the smartphone effect between 2011-2023, suggesting we may have already absorbed the biggest hit to reading time. The author poses a crucial reframing: if these numbers measured cigarette smoking decline instead, would we declare victory or crisis?

The deeper argument challenges the assumption that people who read less now never really wanted to read in the first place—that they were just killing time until TikTok arrived. This misunderstands human psychology. Everyone knows the difference between cheap pleasures (mukbang videos) and deep pleasures (finishing a great novel that feels like "leaving an entire nation behind"). Human desires are multidimensional and hard to satisfy, which is why we've survived this long—if we were easier to please, we would have "gorged ourselves to death as soon as we figured out how to cultivate sugarcane." The author introduces the metaphor of writing as "dish soap on ideas": it makes the holes obvious, which is why all serious intellectual work happens on the page and why every major movement has a book at its center.

Finally, the piece distinguishes between oral/literate cultures and non-recorded/recorded cultures. Even if we're slightly less literate, we're far more recorded through photos, videos, and spreadsheets. The billionth stream of a song is identical to the first, unlike a bard's recitation that changes with each telling. We can't return to a world where unmemorized facts are lost. Text has survived radio, TV, dial-up, Wi-Fi, and TikTok—it's "Lindy," and its unique power for complex thought means it will persist as long as humans want to think seriously.