You look across the living room and see your dog has fallen asleep in a rather absurd position next to its toys. Legs splayed out—hardly a care in the world. 

You type into YouTube: ‘cute puppy.’ The next 15 minutes watching adorable puppies do silly things are a roller coaster of emotions. 

Then, you come across a video of a puppy drenched in oil. The video shows a do-gooder YouTuber rescuing a starved puppy from an oil spill and slowly nursing it back to life over an accelerated 90-day timeline. Your eyes get a little misty.

Your roommate asks, ‘What’s wrong?’ You say, “Nothing, just allergies.”

Over the next few days, the algorithm takes over, and hungry oily puppy rescue videos spam your feed everywhere you look. You subscribe to the Youtuber to help her cause.

But, the following day, you awake to a video recommendation of your YouTuber vociferously defending herself against slanderous allegations, emphasizing her good intentions amidst the backlash. A quick Google search reveals that she is accused of abusing puppies for the sake of the videos.

The outrage machine has blown up. She’s trending on Twitter and is going on the podcast circuit to clear her name. You quietly unsubscribe… But, keep following the story…

After her podcast appearances, she announces a $1 million sponsorship with Petsmart, and you have given up all hope of goodness in the world.

You meet up with a friend who went hiking in Patagonia off-grid for three weeks. You regale them with the entire viral internet puppy drama and are surprised at their frank disinterest. You are jealous and wish you didn’t care either.

You return home feeling cynical and jaded about the world and yourself for caring. Open the door; your dog excitedly greets you. You reach down to pet it, but in your head, you think, ‘This whole thing is your fault…’

Yes, I jest. I may have dramatized it a bit. But, I call this the clicheification of everything.

News stories and entertainment follow the familiar rise and fall as before, but at a much faster clip.

Our ancestors lived in small tribes and villages. Once a month, they would gather for a feast, and the best singer would get in front of everyone and serenade the gathering with music that felt like it came straight from heaven. It would unite them in their mutual admiration of beauty. 

The best storyteller would enchant the tribe with tales of bravery and woe. Reminding them of the challenges they face and the great things they can accomplish together.

The world has changed. Our storytellers are film directors with a lifetime of training and a hundred million dollars at their disposal. Our singers are prodigies who work their whole lives perfecting the craft.

However, the most significant change is that art is now an individualized consumption act instead of a shared communal experience.

We slam the repeat button on the song we love and listen to it 50 times a week with our air pods shutting out the world. We choose one among thousands of selections on Netflix to watch within our homes. And it will be the thousandth movie we have watched. Let alone YouTube or TikTok videos, which we can scroll through dozens in an hour.

Two wheels have touched down on the dopamine highway, and the speed limit is 1000 miles per hour. What does this do to us? Why does it matter?

It fractures our most precious resource: our attention. We find building community in the real world difficult because we prefer screens. Most importantly, it disrupts the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Our self-narratives are shallower and more individual, leading to prolonged periods of cynicism and purposelessness. Whether it’s a cute puppy or a majestic mountain view, our moments of beautiful simplicity give way to hard intellectual takes. Or we repeat the beautiful song so many times that it loses meaning.

A few years ago, I despaired at the lack of good newly released films. A decade earlier, I had given up on superhero and alien space movies. Rom-Coms had cliched themselves to oblivion. Movies boldly putting forward big ideas were not getting made. Instead, we got timid films that were too cynical to give us anything but anger. 

Pop music, outside of Taylor Swift, mostly failed. I couldn’t find any good new music in my favorite genre of Indie Folk. It seemed like we ran out of songs to sing. Our new fragmented landscape reduced the depth of art we could create. 

I resigned to rewatching Lord of the Rings, Inception, and V for Vendetta. If I wanted something simple and beautiful, I’d have to rewatch Winnie the Pooh.

I was wrong. We can only stew in cliches for so long. There are new stories to be told. And they help us navigate the complex world we have entered. 

The Oscar nominees proved that this year. American Fiction was sharp, clever, and hilarious. Killers of the Flower Moon was heartbreaking. Past Lives was as purely romantic as a movie can be. Marcel the Shell with Shoes on was as simple and genuine as my old friend Winnie.

Some old dead guy, William F. Shakespeare, taught us principles of storytelling that never change: Stories should be told playfully or tragically or else not told at all. We only get stuck in our own cliches when we stop dreaming about tomorrow.

Life Update: Still enjoying Austin. Considering my next move.