Why We Are All Addicted to *Intellect* Porn
Intellect Porn is my made-up word for our compulsion to consume articles, blog posts, and any other form of electronic writing (except books), that gives us the illusion that reading them is actually time well spent.
Personally, I love reading…a lot! My interests span books, interesting newspaper stories, blog posts, and of course Medium Stories, to mention but a few. To add on to that, I have had the mobile apps for Flipboard, Pocket, and Medium all saved on my phone and/or tablet. My favourite activities/addiction on those platforms involved me looking for interesting stories and bookmarking them for later reading.
I first realized I had a problem when I started spending a lot of hours of my day looking for the perfect stories, bookmarking them, and then spending even more time reading them. Medium became my drug dealer on this particular kind of addiction because of its great stories recommendations based on topics am interested in, the ability to follow my favourite writers and other new ones as well, the wide selection of stories to choose from, and not to mention the endless link clicks to other stories/rabbit holes.
I started caring less about the value of the story, and more about the quantity I was reading. I re-read some of them, and consumed more even though they were regurgitated versions of similar stories I had read.
“And as a result, I soon took to… consuming articles…the same way a cocaine addict takes to a snowman made out of cocaine: I made sweet love to it, and then promptly suffocated myself in it.” — Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach To Living A Good Life. (I have slightly edited the real quote to reflect the subject matter am writing about).
The problem with *intellect porn* is that it’s almost too easy to delude yourself that you aren’t wasting time, that you are learning from the experiences of others, or being productive, or getting new perspectives…etc. You basically get the idea.
We bullshit ourselves that since we are not:
- mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram
- watching never ending and auto-playing YouTube videos and Netflix
- playing computer/console/phone games
we are in fact being more productive, even when we are not. We feel we are using our time better, even when we are not.
Whether you are reading productivity porn, or someone’s life story and lessons they learnt, or anything else for that matter, one thing is constant. You are merely consuming!!! It should only be regarded as time well spent if you are gaining something from it and actually putting it into real world use to help you on a task you are actively involved in at the moment.
Shopify actually says it better…
Look, though the term intellect porn is a word I made up of the top of my head, I believe it is a very serious problem. We already live in an attention-deficit world, and I don’t need more stuff to hinder me from getting “important shit done”. This compulsion we feel of jumping from article to article gives our brain little dopamine hits that creates the illusion of us being more productive, and of course makes us addicted to it as well.
“This is life now: one constant, never-ending stream of non sequiturs and self-referential garbage that passes in through our eyes and out of our brains at the speed of a touchscreen.”- Mark Manson , In the Future, Our Attention Will Be Sold.
I have a dream that we will regain our attention from this vice, that we will stop filling our minds and clouding our heads with more articles and stories. That we will choose quality over quantity. And most importantly, we will stop clicking on links to other stories every single damn time!!!
Ultimately, the choice lies with us. Some steps I have taken include:
- deleting the apps from my phone and using them on my tablet (I have limited access to my tablet during the day compared to my phone).
- unsubscribing from email newsletters of my favourite writers (if I want to read their latest posts, I am forced to make a conscious decision to visit their website instead).
- unsubscribing from almost all Medium notifications.
- bewaring of click-bait headlines (mostly)
- setting aside time for reading articles and other posts and adhering to it.
I advise you to find a method that works for you and stick to it. Good luck. You are going to need it!!!
I am The_Amuser and I am sharing insightful (and sometimes funny) musings about life through the eyes of a Kenyan IT college student on a tight budget :D
Feel free to support me on Patreon!!!
