This is funny.
It appeared in McSweeney's Gazette for Knowledge Workers with Ironic Sensibilites, though it could also have appeared in any number of boomer-oriented publications at any point during the past four decades, with only minor alterations. 'Those damned kids don't read' is the most evergreen of all think-piece/satirical feature topics. To illustrate this point, wherever Twitter/blogging/etc are referenced in Lanham's piece, replace said reference with any of the following:
1. Radio
2. Television
3. CB Radio
4. Atari 2600
5. Nintendo Entertainment System
6. Geocities
7. LiveJournal
You now have a piece of amusing parodic agitprop from the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, or '90s, archly making the case that kids nowadays don't read anymore because they're busy with their electronic whiz-bang gizmo boxes.
Why aren't kids reading? Here's a shot in the dark: BECAUSE KIDS HATE READING AND ALWAYS HAVE.
I was a literature major in college back in the olden era of the mid-to-late '90s. Guess what? I absolutely hated reading throughout most of my childhood and into my years as a member of MTV's target demographic. Hate may be a strong word: I disliked the experience but was compelled to do it nonetheless, due to a masochistic personality trait that comes from my parents' Depression-era view of the world. But even my begrudging attachment displayed more engagement to the process of reading than most people have, and identified me as an outlier, an outsider, a reader.
Yes, Yes, I know. You absolutely loved reading as a child, and it's a rewarding experience that you have continued to this very day, and blah blah blah. You're part of the (insert nominal figure here) percentile I speak of.
Those outliers still exist ('struth!), and yes they're Internetting and blogging and ripping digital leads to pre-recorded classic rock on a plastic stick plugged into a PS3, but they're also studying Pynchon at UIC or Northwestern or some Washington libarts college, recanting some Derrida claptrap and continuing in the noble tradition of being the outlier "reader" kid who will become a desk-shackled knowledge worker or librarian or humor columnist for McSweeney's Annual Register of Archaic Web Design.
The rest of the kids, the ones such alarmist thinkpieces/parodies bemoan, are doing beer bongs at University of Miami or the like, playing with their Guitar Heros and their Internets and whatnot, reading only to catch up on gossip via Perez Hilton or OK! or People, and unwind by doing the normal things that normal bibliophobic people like to do, such as body shots off co-eds' asses at Senor Frogs. Since they hate reading, they're studying banking or marketing or advertising or whatever so that they can be the architects of the next financial meltdown all while making a cool half million in real legal tender. Evil Twitter/Guitar Hero/whatever is not at fault. To paraphrase the Walt Disney Corporation, this is the circle of life, the way things have been and will be for time immemorial.
