That same New Yorker article, Twlight of the Books, says that it’s harder to watch a program you disagree with than it is to read an article you disagree with. I couldn’t agree more.
The viewer feels at home with his show, or else he changes the channel.
The closeness makes it hard to negotiate differences of opinion. It can
be amusing to read a magazine whose principles you despise, but it is
almost unbearable to watch such a television show. And so, in a culture
of secondary orality, we may be less likely to spend time with ideas we
disagree with.
So as I’ve written earlier, we are spending less time with people who aren’t like us and now we are spending less time with opinions we don’t agree with. What does that mean for us as a society? Will we become more isolated and more diversified? Or more similar and less tolerant? For sure, if we no longer mix diverse opinions, we’ll have fewer new and creative ideas.