We see curiosity theater all around.

Audience members asking questions at panels that are actually mini-speeches. People at dinner name-dropping obscure books in conversation but never engaging with their core arguments. Folks on social media starting ‘learning projects’ and abandoning them after a week.

Then there’s curation theater.

Posting endless... See more

A performative reader treats books like accessories, lugging around canonical texts as a ploy to attract a romantic partner or as a way to revel in the pleasure of feeling superior to others. While everyone else is scrolling social media, the performative reader insists upon his intelligence with attention-seeking insincerity, begging to be noticed... See more

Now, I’m not so naive as to think that there was some lost golden age of reading. Probably at every moment in reading’s history, reading has been to a great extent the preserve of nerds and eggheads — it’s, almost by definition, what you do when you’re off on your own, when you don’t have anybody who at that moment wants to hang out with you. But... See more