Between the Scroll and the Silence

On speed, attention and the slow erosion of passive joy

Photo by Eugene Golovesov from Pexels

I watch less television these days.

There was a time when I loved it, really, really loved it. It was the sort of love that deep narrative arcs demand, with the slow unspooling of a character until it felt that you might bump into them on the street.

Good television was rare, but when I found it, it became a kind of devotion. I would rewatch favourite episodes and buy the DVDs for the commentaries and extras so I could linger for as long as I could.

It felt worth it.

All that time and attention, even the effort of engagement, was worth it because the pleasure it returned was intoxicating.

Something has shifted in me since the pandemic. I’m not entirely convinced it’s the obvious things around the lockdowns, the weight of caring and the unending discombobulation of that time.

Since then, a set of smaller forces, circling just out of sight, spiralled closer and closer, altering my behaviour without me acknowledging their presence until I was wrapped in them.

I don’t have the same patience as I once did. And yet, that’s not quite right either. I still read long novels. You know the ones, the kind with spirals and side quests, books with intricate threads of characters that knot and unknot across hundreds of pages. I can lose myself there completely. So it’s not that my attention span has been entirely eroded by the modern world.

But something about the way I interact with screens has changed.

I squirm more now.

I am impatient.

Moments of dramatic irony make me wince and scenes depicting awkwardness have me cringing behind a cushion. Sad moments settle too heavily in my belly. What once felt delicious now feels unbearable.

Perhaps it’s the accumulation of real-world uncertainty or the pressure to be present and correct in ways that are often contradictory. Whatever the cause, I can no longer hold those moments comfortably. I let them slip through my fingers and then wash away the uncomfortable slime.

Photo by Josh Hild from Pexels [cropped]

Meanwhile, the pace of the internet has quickened to a kind of clipped urgency.

On Instagram, silence in spoken videos is trimmed like an overgrown hedge. Each snippet is neatened, compressed, made efficient and crisp. It keeps me engaged, sure, but at a cost. The sheer speed at which I process information leaves me oddly breathless, like I’ve been sprinting on the spot.

If this sounds like the grumbling of someone who remembers the days when Google was new, well, fair enough.

But I hear the similar things from people much younger than me.

They consume content like whirlwinds (and what a magic word “content” is; it covers so much). There is nothing worth watching or listening to unless it’s sped up. They then collapse with a sudden, desperate need for deep rest.

Conversation, by comparison, begins to feel slow compared to our frenetic online existence.

Perhaps television suffers from the same problem: plots may have quickened but people there still speak at human speed and need to move through physical space. It can feel… insufficient.

And then there’s the problem of rest.

Or rather, the inability to.

The culture I inhabit leans so heavily towards constant productivity that I no longer know how to sit inside my own free time. If I am not learning, listening, improving, producing then what, exactly, am I doing?

The shift into this mindset was so gradual I barely noticed it happening. It was a shallow gradient, a slope that was easy to descend. Finally, I turned to look back and realised I could no longer see where I had started.

I crave rest and I crave it deeply.

Yet, I don’t seem to know how to access it without turning it into another task.

If it is not something structured or purposeful, then why bother? Even my hobby activities like baking and gardening have acquired an unnecessary sense of intent.

There are no more lazy Sunday afternoons. Not really. Television certainly doesn’t feel active enough to fill the space. Even programmes that I enjoy and will teach me something about history or nature, engineering or art, fail to pass the test.

Photo by Paréj Richárd on Unsplash

And finally: choice. Or rather, too much of it.

Before streaming, there was the TIVO box. I would record series as they aired, building a comfy little stack of things to watch. When I opened that list, I was choosing from things I had already chosen. There was abundance to start with, yes, but at the point where I was ready to watch something, my choices had been filtered by my own past self. It was a conversation with myself across time.

Streaming doesn’t work like that. Every platform has its own watchlist with its own system of interacting that you have to learn. Shows are scattered across services so there isn’t a single list to choose from.

When I do try to find something new, I stare into a kind of endless shelf. It’s the jam study made digital. There are too many options and I can’t be bothered with them. I know I could easily spend (waste!) my free time just in the choice. So I leave empty-handed more often than not.

Sometimes I miss the television.

Not the object but the feeling of really watching. I miss the immersion, the anticipation, the characters, the slow burn. And I miss the satisfaction of giving my time to something and feeling I got something interesting, perhaps even worthwhile, back.

The television hums quietly in the background from time to time and yes, I still have favourite shows to watch. But it occupies a much smaller space in my life.

Does it matter? Perhaps I can only figure that out by comparing what has replaced it and whether that exchange has left me richer, poorer, or simply level.