Vent: Watched my nephew flip through a brand new comic on his phone without even looking at the art

Handed him a copy of the issue that got me into collecting back in '92 and he just scrolled past the double page splash of the Avengers assembling like it was nothing, how do you even compete with that kind of short attention span?

3 comments

3 Comments

brookep622mo ago

...and honestly that's exactly how my nephew is with music too, I gave him my old Walkman and he just stared at the cassette like it was an artifact from a museum or something. But I get it, I really do. The problem isn't the kid or the comic, it's the way we're all wired now. I remember back when I'd sit in my room for hours just staring at a single page of a John Byrne X-Men issue, tracing the lines with my finger and inventing stories in my head between panels. Now everything's swiped through in three seconds flat, nobody's got that patience anymore because you're always waiting for the next dopamine hit. It's not just comics either, I saw a documentary about how people don't even watch movies the same way, they're on their phones the whole time. I don't know what the answer is but it kind of breaks my heart knowing those beautiful splash pages won't ever hit the same for the kids now.

mia_singh241mo ago

That line about "tracing the lines with my finger" really hit me. I actually read something recently about how scrolling and swiping changes the way our brains process visual information. It's not just about patience or attention spans, it's literally rewiring how we take in art. @linda658 mentioned the same thing about getting lost in a single panel, and I think that's the core of it. When you have to physically turn a page and sit with an image, your brain treats it differently than a feed where you can blink and miss ten things. I don't think the magic is gone for good, but I do think kids today have to almost unlearn the fast way before they can learn the slow way. It's like training a muscle that never got used in the first place.

linda6582mo ago

Ugh, this just hits me right in the gut. I mean, I get what you're saying completely, it's like they're living in a different world than we grew up in. Maybe it's just me but I remember the exact feeling of getting lost in a single panel, like the whole story was right there waiting for you. It's so sad to think that magic is probably gone for good with these new phones and endless scrolling. Honestly breaks my heart for them because they don't even know what they're missing.