I've become a lazy consumer. I think a lot of us have. I'll read your quick piece about your terrible ex-boyfriend but write a 5000-word commentary on Simone de Beauvoir and I’ll add it to my saves and never think of it again. I'm often consuming these bits of writing while scrolling on my phone, and that makes me mindless. And as for the work itself, the novel or the show or the album: stories about lives similiar to the writer's are likely to be stories about lives similar to my own, and that means that there is very little imaginative heavylifting to do. It's easier to decode meaning and lessons when you can draw a straightforward parallel between a character and yourself.