Interesting Times: TikTok, Post-Literacy, and the Return of Charismatic Power

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You know that joke about not reading long posts? When that starts sounding like a cultural slogan, something deeper is changing.

Today we're looking at a fascinating conversation from Interesting Times, where Ross Douthat talks with James Marriott about what Marriott calls the "new dark ages," a slide into post-literacy. And here's the key thing Marriott emphasizes right away: "post-literate" doesn't mean "illiterate." It's about long-form text becoming far less central to daily life. The evidence is striking—reading for pleasure has fallen sharply in surveys across the US and UK, and the OECD reports literacy is actually stagnating or falling across much of the developed world. So we're moving away from the written word and toward the moving image. But why does that matter so much?

Marriott draws on Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and Walter Ong's work to show how unusual print culture really is. Reading demands effort, concentration, interpretation. Images? They're easier, faster, more passive. As phones became video machines, educators started noticing students struggling with what one called a "400-word wall." That's not just about attention spans, though, right? There's a deeper historical connection here. Exactly. Marriott links mass literacy to the Enlightenment, the scientific revolution, modern democracy itself. Print culture helped people compare sources, challenge authority, think in cumulative, logical ways. A more visual, emotionally charged environment brings back older forms of persuasion—more tribal, mystical, and autocratic.

Which is where politics enters the picture. Marriott argues that image-first platforms like TikTok reward personality over argument. Figures like Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele thrive as "heavy characters" with visual power. He even says Bukele's social media presence echoes the iconography of kingship. That's a chilling observation. The deeper warning is that modern democracy may be giving way to charismatic rule. We're talking about a fundamental shift in how political persuasion works.

So what's the solution? Can we reverse this? Douthat and Marriott close on a bleak but practical note. Communications revolutions can't be undone—as Marriott puts it, "it is impossible to uninvent the iPhone or television."

The main response may be individual resistance: reading more, guarding our attention, building a richer cognitive life before post-literate habits become universal. Personal responsibility in the face of massive technological change. Not the most comforting answer, but perhaps the most realistic one.