Performative Reading?

Welcome back to the 'sleepless nights' series and today we're going to look at a discussion that has been pervasive when it comes to the younger generation: why the internet hates 'performative reading'. When we say 'the internet' we really mean the younger generations and those who are chronically online.

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On the 30th of June, the out-of-touch 'liberal newspaper' (and we use both of those terms loosely) The Guardian released an article titled "Is It OK to Read 'Infinite Jest' in Public? Why the Internet Hates 'Performative Reading" and expected nobody to have a problem with it even though I can probably wager that the person who wrote the article has perhaps not read a single book in the last decade - whether in public or not.

Stating that two 'twenty-somethings' approached her whilst she was reading alone in a bar stating they 'could never' is something I think most of the internet, (especially those of us who do go outside on the off-chance), has concluded: never happened. A relevant narrative which has been made up for the piece is something The Guardian is very used to. It cannot be proven and yet, it fits in so well with the irrelevant journey we are about to be taken on - almost too well.

The break-down of accounts such as @/hotdudesreading she recognises as humour, (the fact that a writer of The Guardian can recognise humour has earned this 'journalist' a gold star next to 'please write something of worth' for which she still has to earn her star). But then she goes off on one, discussing how it is now considered 'uncool' to read in public - describing a meme featuring the caption: “Poser art himbo on the subway barely 10 pages into his performative copy of Frankenstein.”

This not only hasn't been seen by the vast majority of the reading public on the internet as they don't really frequent younger Gen-Z and Alpha spaces (and I mean, those generations don't read anyway so who cares what they think?) and she has proven that she doesn't understand how a meme works. For all we know, that picture could have been posed for - which the internet is 99% of the time. This makes her point completely irrelevant as the two realities she seeks to explain don't even link together.

She then states this paragraph which makes me have faith in the fact that 'journalists' of The Guardian may not actually qualify as being literate:

It’s called performative reading not just because someone might be pretending to read, but rather that they want everyone to know they read. The presumption is that they’re performing for passersby, signaling they have the taste and attention span to pick up a physical book instead of putting in AirPods. And we’re not talking about Colleen Hoover’s latest or a romantasy title; the books that qualify are capital “L” literature: Faulkner, Nabokov, Franzen. The heavier the better.

My question is simply this: how do you know someone else's intention without speaking to them? Why do we now assume that everyone does everything to be recognised by other people?

For example: when I go out, I take a book with me with the intention of reading it if I am to sit down. I will tell you this: unless someone is screaming 'bloody murder', I would not be able to tell you what anyone looks like or what anyone is wearing around me. I genuinely look straight through people and don't see them - I could be reading, I could be walking, I could be doing absolutely anything. That is most likely true for almost 100% of the millennial-and-older population since the 'surveillance' and 'performance' culture of Gen-Z and Alpha has not infected them. In simpler terms: we don't care about anyone when we go outside. Other people are like bollards that get in the way of where you are going. When it comes to reading therefore, I and many others are looking to get lost in the book whatever book that may be - other people are just inconveniences.

We can’t even indulge in an innocent hobby without it being considered some sort of aesthetic curation.

The term 'aesthetic curation' or let's put it this way 'living a staged life' is something that is painfully Gen-Z and Gen Alpha mainly because they basically live for TikTok. The writer is correct here, but it takes her a bloody long time and a lot of cognitive dissonance to get there. The holier-than-thou that seeps through at the worst of times though is an altruism in which she is, ironically, being performative. For example: I don't understand what's wrong with the kids today, they're so concerned about what other people are doing. I was never like that as a kid. If you had half a brain cell, you could put this down to the rise in social media surveillance culture which has made them believe everyone is watching them at all times. It's like having paranoia but you've been made to believe it is a good thing. Turn everyone into a narcissist is the end goal - and it has worked.

She then goes on a 'personal odyssey' of carrying around Infinite Jest, choosing it because '(she's) never met someone who has finished it'. Another piece of performative irony in the 'I'm not like other girls' category. She's doing something but she has to give her two cents of a journalist, who most likely went to university, having never met someone who has finished Infinite Jest despite it being on a lot of modern literature university courses. Either she is stupid on purpose or by accident, I can't decide which.

Admitting that she thought she would be subject to something other than being asked whether she wanted a bag is such a weird statement as at the beginning of the article she definitely wanted herself to come off as a 'I don't care what people think of me' type, surprised at why non-existent people would come to talk to her whilst she reads at the bar. Now, all of a sudden she is the exact opposite person? Now she is paranoid for no reason. This woman cannot decide on her truths and it is appalling.

One of life’s simplest pleasures is falling into a story and tuning the world out. But to get there, you have to stop worrying about what someone’s going to think of you – or whether you’ll unwittingly end up in a bitchy TikTok. And as far as I know, I didn’t.

A writer of The Guardian has discovered that they enjoy reading and has earned another gold star. But, this article has very clearly been written for the older generations of millennial and upwards so my question is this: we aren't worried about ending up on TikTok because the normal people of our generations don't use it. Why do you think we care? Many of the older generations do not care what the younger generations think of them. In fact, many of the older Gen-Z's don't care either. This 'ending up on TikTok' problem is literally only a problem for people under a certain age. If this article is written for us then why is it preaching such an obvious message. Again, is the writer stupid by accident or on purpose?

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To conclude, the main message to 'read everywhere' and 'read often' is lost in the mashed potato of the main body, the writer's mind is a scrambled egg of made up stories to interest the reader (that really don't hold anything interesting at all) and proof that she can't even keep her own story straight. Again, it is a laughable attempt by a out-of-touch newspaper to try to stay relevant at a time when real people either don't care or have other problems to deal with.