A warning: I am about to earnestly talk about Harry Potter. If you follow me, you should already know that I don't stand for JKR's bigotry and am usually in the "let's just not give it any attention" camp. But I've been thinking lately about culture, and how those books affected the last couple generations, so please bear with me while I work this out on paper.
I read a bit of a book a while back that was meant to be a chapter-by-chapter guide to writing a novel, using the first HP book as an example. I didn't read very much of it, but even just from one chapter, I came away with a revelation: the reason people find the Harry Potter books so compelling and hard to put down is because each chapter resolves one mystery while introducing another. You're constantly getting the satisfaction of "solving" a puzzle, and you're also constantly intrigued by the next big question. Who is this character, what does this word mean, what does this object do - really simple questions that drag you forward as a reader.
But it's made me think a lot recently because I've been exploring algorithmic content more than I ever did before - watching Instagram reels, scrolling my reddit feed - and I've noticed that it provides a very similar feedback loop. Content will start with the creator introducing intrigue, clickbait titles or "watch til the end!" videos. It pulls you in with a mystery. In my case, a lot of the time the question is "is this worth my time?" which feels like a really silly thing to investigate over and over...but you do get hooked. The tiktok brainrot or whatever you want to call it - that impulse to move on to the next, to get another hit of whatever satisfaction or lack thereof you get from that question-and-answer cycle.
I think it would be a reach at best and conspiratorial thinking at worst to say that the format and success of the Harry Potter books actually paved the way for the later massive success of short-form content. But I would be very interested to see how the psychology compares. I remember staying up all night after a midnight book release, knowing I should sleep, barely able to keep my eyes open from exhaustion, but I just had to read one more chapter. And I have noticed that same feeling watching fucking...cat rescue reels on instagram.
Something else notable about Harry Potter is that it's basically a treasure trove for consumerism. So many named products, naturally when the books got big and the movies came out, there had to be actual chocolate frogs and Bertie Botts and butterbeer, not to mention wands and broomsticks and Hogwarts House attire... All things Harry buys within the first few chapters of the first book! In fact, the first thing he does after finding out he's a wizard is go shopping! And now we're navigating this world of hidden and hyper-visible ads and product placement... Like I said, I think it would be a reach to say that the one led to the other. But they feel related, linked by a common culture of consumerism if not direct cause-and-effect.
I know this is all a bit of a mess. I guess what I'm saying is that I can see how a society that embraced Harry Potter so wholeheartedly would naturally become a society that "consumes content."
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