What You Stopped Reading

What You Stopped Reading

A Brief

Every few months, a new list tells you what's worth buying. You skim it. You recognize nothing. You close the tab.

This isn't boredom. It's something else.

You remember when there was a magazine you actually read. Not for the recommendations — for the voice. Someone with opinions. Someone who assumed you were intelligent and busy and uninterested in being sold to. You read it the way you'd listen to a friend who had figured something out.

That's gone now. What replaced it is content. Beautiful, optimized, meaningless content. You scroll past it the way you scroll past everything.

And somewhere along the way, you started to wonder if the problem was you. If you'd become too picky. Too hard to please. If maybe you just didn't care about things the way you used to.

But that's not it.

You still know what you like. You own the proof. The coat. The lamp. The bag you've carried for nine years. The thing you bought once, correctly, and never thought about again.

Your taste didn't disappear. It just stopped being spoken to.

The magazines got louder. The recommendations got faster. Everything became a list, a rank, a "best of" — optimized for clicks, not for someone like you. Someone who doesn't want more options. Someone who wants fewer, better ones. Someone who wants to be told: this is worth your attention, and this is not, and here's why.

That voice used to exist. It went quiet.

So you stopped reading. Not because you changed. Because everything else did.

You're still here. Still paying attention. Still waiting for something worth it.

You already know what you like. You just forgot that anyone else remembered.

In the Record

• The Money She Has
• The Decade You Didn't Plan
• The Body After 37