Sad but true.

It was P.B. Shelley who once framed this faith with prophetic clarity: “Poets
are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Literature, to him, was a subversive parliament of feeling — moving hearts, unsettling moral certainties, giving form to what was yet to be imagined.

Today, that vision lies blurred. The poet, or novelist, or essayist is no longer a legislator but a content provider. What was once conjuration is now circulation. Writing has become an act of optimisation: for engagement, virality, screen rights. Writers no longer build worlds; they build visibility. In the age of reels and reaction videos, authors are no longer the axis around which meaning coheres. The authority that once emanated from the act of inscription is now dispersed, commodified, subject to the algorithm, the hashtag, the scroll thumb of a distracted public.

As a person who loves reading I don’t know how to feel about this post. While I agree with most of the problems in the post, the old world is dying, the new world is not only struggling to be born, but in many cases is trying to resist being aborted and in the interim, were forced to gawk at monsters.