I’m not normally one for doom and gloom, everything is getting worse kind of thinking. However, one observation from the past few years in particular is exactly that thing, a specific kind of faulty media literacy.

Someone will read Lord of the Flies, for example, and come to the conclusion that it says something real about human nature. No dude, it’s just a story. Someone made it up. It’s not real. It can be interesting and insightful, even a useful mental framework or thought experiment, but it’s not proof or evidence at all! But I increasingly see people treat fiction as if it’s real things that actually happened, and that worries me.