A lot of the books I’ve been reading these past few weeks have fallen disappointingly short. 

And honestly? The same goes for a lot of the television and other forms of media I’ve been consuming.

Now, I should preface this by saying that my discretion when it comes to picking which books to read is very, very little, almost to the point of being non-existent: I will 100% pick up a random book and sit down and finish it in a handful of hours (I will caveat this by saying that I will and have unabashedly DNF’d quite a few books within the first few chapters).

But when I did that in the past, when I mindlessly read books in middle school or as a freshman or sophomore, even last year for that matter, it felt like what I was reading still had a story. It felt like there was still a message or a point or some weight to it.

Nowadays, a lot of the books I’m reading just feel… one-dimensional. They feel chockfull of flashy scenes and witty dialogues and all these elements that should make a good story, that have made a good story… but they don’t. Because there’s no actual substance.

Not to point fingers, but one very popular BookTok/Bookstagram book (or rather, series) comes to mind in particular: Powerless by Lauren Roberts. 

Setting aside the recent allegations of the series being a poor rewrite or plagiarization of Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen series, at least to me, the book could essentially be a case study of what is wrong with how we as a society approach media these days.

Like I said earlier, there is every reason for Powerless to have been a good book. It had a female main character you could root for, charismatic male leads, sarcastic and snappy exchanges, romance, cliffhangers… everything. And for all intents and purposes, it did well – it practically went viral online. 

But in terms of plot? There was absolutely nothing there. The central conflict of the dystopian society the series was set in was left more or less unresolved with the solution the author presented being a very… surface-level, topical remedy. It didn’t dig into the nuances of the issues or the ramifications of class divisions on the basis of an inherent factor someone can’t control.

And even though the author tried to amplify the stakes of the book and show just how depraved or warped the society and central villain were, it never landed. I never felt that sense of urgency or depth that dystopian or fantasy novels have routinely carried in the past.

And I think all of that comes back to a societal issue. We’ve traded content for convenience. We want to consume more and more and more and we’re demanding so much so fast that publishing houses and movie makers and production companies and influencers have started to latch on to those quirks and ideas we found so appealing in the past and just mass produce them as much as they can.

It’s like painting with glitter. If there’s actually paint on your canvas and you try to sprinkle some glitter on it, the glitter will stick and once it dries, it’ll sparkle beautifully. But if you dump a tube full of glitter onto an empty canvas and try to cover all the blank space, it might sparkle at the beginning. But slowly, it’ll all blow away, end up in the cracks and crevices of your house, and become a nuisance instead of a source for joy.

I guess the moral of the story is to be mindful of your consumption of media. We’re not built to just take and take and take mindlessly, day in and day out, and nor is it fulfilling in the long run. The more we consume, the worse the media we consume is going to become, which in turn will drive us to consume more and more to feel the same level of fulfillment.

So the next time you open up your phone to mindlessly watch another show or read a book based on overhyped microtropes, consider if what you’re consuming actually has More to the Story and if it will let you make a meaningful addition to your story.