A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

by David Foster Wallace

Television, from the surface on down, is about desire. And, fiction-wise, desire is the sugar in human food.

For 360 minutes per diem, we receive unconscious reinforcement of the deep thesis that the most significant quality of truly alive persons is watchableness, and that genuine human worth is not just identical with but rooted in the phenomenon of watching.

But something is malignantly addictive if (1) it causes real problems for the addict, and (2) it offers itself as a relief from the very problems it causes.

“Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.”