The Death of Subtext

Second-Screen’ Viewing Is Flattening Our Stories

There’s a new directive quietly shaping the way film and television are written: keep it simple enough for the scrollers.

In the age of “second-screen viewing,” where audiences are half-watching and show while half-scrolling through instagram, many writers are being told, explicitly or implicitly, to build stories that can survive distraction. Characters repeat exposition. Emotional arcs are flatted. Complexity is treated like a liability. The result? A new genre of “ambient storytelling”: television that’s meant to hum in the background of your digital life, not demand the foreground of your mind.

The Erosion of Depth

When attention becomes fragmented, subtlety becomes risk.

Plot points are stated twice, emotions explained aloud, twists telegraphed miles ahead. The old art of “show, don’t tell” has been replaced with “show, tell, then tell again just in case they missed it.”

The erosion of complexity doesn’t just make stories simpler, it makes characters smaller. The messy contradiction that make people interesting are ironed out for fear they’ll be “confusing.” Motivation becomes literal. Dialogue turns didactic. And when every story beat is optimized for comprehension rat er than interpretation, something essential to art is lost: The space for the viewer to think, feel and wonder.