The Age of Anti-Intellectualism and the Death of Media Literacy
By Alice Simon, Features Editor
It has been increasingly difficult for me to pinpoint where it all went wrong regarding anti-intellectualism; when did everyone decide critical thinking was out of fashion? Was it when Elon Musk took over as the CEO of Twitter? Or maybe it was the rise of AI, making tools that would annihilate the purpose of creativity too accessible? I can’t be too sure, but it’s here, and it’s staying for a while.
My first encounter with this anti-movement was summoned in the form of a seemingly harmless Tik-Tok trend where new readers would share their favorite texts and associate them with a certain aesthetic. What seemed like harmless fun, quickly deteriorated into the inevitable commodification of literature. Mean Girls-style, if you weren’t reading what everyone else was, you simply couldn’t sit with the cool clique. Thinking there had to be an intellectual value to the books that were being pushed into my periphery, I decided to pick up one of Booktok’s most notorious darlings: Colleen Hoover. It Ends With Us - which was incorrectly marketed as a romance - came with a plethora of trigger warnings that I hoped would be explored in good faith. I have never been so wrong.
At every page turn, I wondered why this was portrayed as a love story in my algorithm. Had I picked up the wrong book without realising it? Unfortunately, I hadn’t, and this would keep happening again and again. Nonetheless, most people who participate – whether willingly or unwillingly – in the trend of anti-intellectualism will constantly hide behind the guise of ‘let people enjoy things’.
To be perfectly clear, I think judging anyone for their interests is so last decade, and that is not what I’m trying to get to at all. Considering most people who get flamed for their interests online and offline are still young women, it would be dishonest for me to claim that there isn’t some element of gatekeeping and inherent sexism to what we let girls enjoy. That is not to say that it shouldn’t go without criticism or a deeper analysis, as I firmly believe that the new rise of ‘choice’ feminism is directly entwined with a lack of critical thinking. Throughout the last couple of years, we’ve all seen the popularity of the ‘I’m just a girl’ and ‘girl math’ memes skyrocket.
Although they were harmless at first and aimed to ironically poke fun at the stereotyping of young women, as all things on the internet do they have adopted more concerning identities as of late. Spending money on useless trinkets (yes, calico critters are my weakness) and being a ‘pillow princess’ were the first main traits associated with the ‘I’m just a girl’ phenomenon, but those very rapidly morphed into a strange mob-mentality that would fire back at any criticism of the movement at all. As Booktok started to develop into a more popular mode for sharing literary recommendations, the rise in demand for erotic fantasy/romance novels spread like an unforgiving plague. Nevermind that many of the authors behind these works would portray relationships between students and teachers as something to aspire to, or other similar concerning relationship dynamics. Nevermind that most if not all of them would include vaguely consensual sex scenes with concerning power dynamics. Throw all of that out the window, because we have to let people enjoy things, otherwise we’re overly cynical crones that should get off the internet immediately.
You might think that’s true, and I could definitely just log out and my frustration would deflate, but as someone who aspires to have a career in academia, it is definitely not that simple anymore. I have noticed a clear association between the people who stand behind this genre of books and their usage of platforms like ChatGPT. In fact, I’ve met one too many people throughout the course of my undergraduate journey that proudly embrace both, while showing disdain for the texts we are forced to read for our modules. I’m not a purist. I think there should be a space for erotica to succeed in literature. In fact, there are probably so many works going unnoticed because of the plethora of mediocre texts taking up space. But if the algorithm only promotes the Colleen Hoovers and the Sarah J. Maases, how are those texts ever going to gain visibility and traction? In this current era of anti-intellectualism, they aren’t. I’d like to be hopeful and think that this trend, like most others, will die down at some point, but as right-wing propaganda is gaining traction worldwide, I wonder if this will become a bigger issue until it spirals fully out of our control.
