Story 1, a weekday evening 1: the kids are finally asleep and you’re barely holding your eyes open. Any reasonable adult would just go to bed—especially after you spent the last hour reading three just-the-last-ones stories, assisting in toilet, bringing water, dimming light, but not too much, changing blanket to a lighter one… And above all, you were telling the kids many times they should be sleeping. Instead of being that responsible grown up, you decide to snatch a little something out of life. Hell, you deserve it! You turn on Netflix just for two or three quarters of an hour. You start with “my list”, a bit disguised that Netflix diluted it with things that are absolutely not yours. You scroll and read these one-sentence descriptions, thinking how bad they can be, especially in the 2nd quarter of XXI century, when any LLM would do better. They are particularly perplexing for the movies you know2. So you keep on scrolling. Nothing sticks, nothing seems to remotely meet your needs, rereading titles doesn’t help. Eventually you make no choice what to watch, you switch the TV off and go to sleep defeated, with 30min less of sleep credit for the coming night.
Story 2, a weekend afternoon: you go to the library just to return books. You still need to visit a shop that is closing in one hour. However, wouldn’t it be wasteful to be here and not to stroll between the shelves, just for a quarter? Maybe you will discover the next “Hillbilly Elegy”? So you jump between the shelves and start reading book necks. It is hard to read vertically. Different font on each neck does not make the task easier. You recognize some authors, you immediately recognize books you have already read. It feels like meeting an old friend, so you take the book in your hands, a form of saying “hello”. Ok, but don’t lose the goal from your sight. You are here to hunt, not to reread the familiar books. There is a shelf with less books, and therefore the books are a bit tilted. Diagonally is easier to read so you finally read some necks in full. Because of the same ease of access, you take one or two in your hands. You read a passage, check author’s bio, but quickly get discouraged by bombastic one-sentence reviews on the cover. You won’t be fooled by unknown author borrowing a name of his known reviewer. Your phone buzzes, you check the screen and realize that the shop you have to go to closes in 15 minutes. You leave the library in rush, with no book to stack next to your bed.
Library in Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Source: Wikipedia.
And now tell me, my dear reader, what is the difference between story 1 and story 2? Is there any? And why do I feel guilty in scenario 1, but not at all in scenario 2? Isn’t strolling a form of scrolling?
Also, don’t we grant social media an unfair priority for the invention of scrolling? Do you remember traditional television, when programme schedules were listed in newspapers? Eventually, commercial breaks started interrupting the shows. While the adverts already then had length of Tik-Tok videos, they were usually not so absorbing, so to speak. During commercial breaks I was switching channels, searching for something that would grab my attention. Or newspapers, these still in print. Throw a stone these of you who has never flipped through a magazine in the dentist’s waiting room.
Why didn’t it feel guilty in analogue, but it does in digital?
One of the reasons might be that we used to waste less time that way. Library is maybe once a month; dentist not more than twice a year, hopefully. TV with remote control was more available, but not as available as smartphone. Also, the scenarios I described are edge scenarios, because no choices were made. Instead, If I make a choice, I later spend some time with a book or with a movie. I would assume that the greater time allocation afterwards forgives a sin of scrolling prior.
There is a TED talk by Barry Schwartz, on the paradox of choice. He describes how buying jeans used to be simple: he was offered few fits and once he found a pair that fit reasonably well, he made a choice and was reasonably satisfied. Nowadays he is confronted with an overwhelming number of options—different cuts, washes, rises, and styles. During one of such jeans-hunting endeavours, after an hour of trying and using help from salesperson, he ended up with jeans that fit better than any jeans he had before, yet less satisfied. The abundance of options to choose from raised his expectations, made him more aware of trade offs, and led him to second guess his decision. Last but not least, the abundance made him also fully responsible for the quality of choice: if jeans did not fit before, he could not do anything, because supply was limited. Today, with practically unlimited offer, there is no one else to blame for not-so-perfect fit. Keep in mind that the talk was recorded in 2005: before streaming services, social platforms and smartphones.
In 2026, I can perfectly align myself with the conclusions drew by Schwartz. At the age of 37 I know myself quite well and I know, most of the times, how I make decisions. Netflix is doing no good by littering the curated “my list” with their proposals. The chance is much higher that I would stick to the TV for longer and choose something to actually watch if the list was shorter. Along the same lines, the chance is quite low that I will pick up a book in library at random.
Yet, both on Netflix and in library, I fall for a trap of discovery opportunity, of bringing meat to dinner 1st time this month. Hunters of the past were lucky to have their gatherer counterparts, a safety net that worked in case the hunt was not successful. What a comfortable situation to be in, right? If you bring some proteinaceous food it is great, if not we have berries and roots, so not a big deal. Still alive hunter in me, wonders: do I have a similar back up now?
Well, I have something much more endurant than the net. I have a pile. The pile of books next to my bed. There is no risk of going to sleep hungry; instead, again, I end up in a situation of excess. The issue is, I have no mechanisms wired in my blood to deal with surplus. I have to make deliberate effort to clean up next to my bed, and we all know how hard it is. With the status quo, I will be better off if I don’t bring any new book.
However, what if you ignore what is good for you, engage in the lost gamble and actually hunt something valuable, once in a blue moon? Unexpectedly!? Or maybe even against expectations? Then the reward is immense. Not so long ago it happened to me to find such a book during my regular stroll between the shelves. Ok, I recognized a name on the neck, but it wasn’t the name that most commonly associates with literature 3: JD Vance. I skimmed preface, became intrigued, then opened randomly and got completely hooked. When back at home (yes, kids finally sleeping) I could start reading properly, I only got confirmation that this non-fiction story is gripping and unsettling at the same time. And damn, how well it is written! Such mix led to a single outcome only: I went deeply in debt with my sleep credits and the next day I had to function at reduced capacity – grumbling but without remorse.
How do we come across such books or movies? Well, we don’t. They might just happen. To make it possible, we need to keep the discovery option open. And to make it more difficult, we need to discover on our own. I bet that if you now decide to read “Hillbilly elegy” I lifted your expectations and the book won’t be as rewarding for you as it was for me. However, to shift odds for discovery in my favour, I try to stroll between old books, the books that survived the trial of time. Strolling among old books have never been easier: the natural filter for old is presence in the public domain, and eg. being part of the project Guttenberg. In this case strolling becomes scrolling, and the circle is closed. Happy discovering and thank you for reading.
Footnotes
Definitely weekday. On weekends you give up and just go to sleep.↩︎
Erin Brockovich: “After unearthing a corporate attempt to cover up deadly water contamination, a tenacious single mother fights to seek justice for a suffering community”. Well, it is factually correct. And emotionally detached the same time. I thought that delivering information is a task of news anchors, not of actors, but apparently Netflix sees one of the best performances of Julia Roberts differently.↩︎
The book was first published in 2016.↩︎