My Magazine Reading Paradox

Under my desk right now, I have a stack of about 52 unread magazines, and when I say “about”, I mean I just crawled under my desk, did a shoddy job of counting, and am not confident enough to give an exact number. But there are 52 of them.

I finished the September 2014 edition of “Discover” magazine and thoroughly enjoyed it. The “upcoming science events” section in the back felt dated, but the rest was interesting, including a story about reconstructing soldiers’ faces and a story about a medical tech lab using everyday items. As my backlog would indicate, I’m not very diligent about reading magazines, but I really enjoy them. My stack is a mix of “Discover”, “Wired”, “Popular Science”, “Stanford Magazine”, and a few “Makes” as well.

I have a hard time reconciling that fact with related feelings about magazines. For one, I generally dislike owning physical books and find them a burden to carry around or even own as they take space on my bookshelf. I only really like having physical copies of books that I really enjoy.

Also, I like completing things and checking them off my list. Books are big, discrete volumes that I look back at a sense of accomplishment having read this or that. Periodicals are, well, periodic, and one can never really be done reading them until they go out of business.

And most apparently, there’s a lot of stuff in magazines that I’m not really that interested in. On the internet, I will browse my reddit front page and click on a few links. On the rare occasion I have physical newspapers, I skim a lot of headlines. Magazines are also an amalgamation of topics that I would seem to skip as well, but I actually read them cover-to-cover and enjoy them thoroughly for it.

I’m not sure what the difference is with a magazine, but somehow, they are the cheese with my broccoli. I enjoy magazines because I’m willing to read all of the stories I would never select myself but often open my mind to new ideas and learn about totally different topics. They are my touch point with basic sciences, inventions in consumer electronics, and innovations in every discipline of engineering I never encountered. When I started college, I was excited about taking only computer science and psychology courses. Now, I find batteries and social dynamics just as interesting and wish I had gotten more breadth in my education.

Today, there’s a lot of concern about internet “filter bubbles” created by algorithms that feed you only information that reinforces your existing ideology. We also talk about the “echo chamber” of cable news where media outlets reinforce and amplify the same message through exclusive exposure. Selectivity in our media is very comfortable: I myself am a very picky redditor.

It feels like our media and communities have fragmented so much, but I wonder how big the gap really is. I think most people are curious. Although it takes some small amount of willpower to get there, we also enjoy the mental exercise of engaging with those ideas. Political polarization isn’t new, but types of media are, and I wonder whether we all just need to find our “magazines.”

These days, most magazines have an online presence as well with all of their print content replicated. I don’t think of myself as a nostalgic person. I honestly really can’t relate to people who enjoy the physicality of flipping through the pages of a book. Even so, there’s something really “right” about magazines that I uncomfortably can’t explain.

But I’ll still enjoy the heck out of them.

Also, if anyone in the bay area wants back issues of magazines, let me know. I have a stack of read magazines under my desk that I want to get rid of but just value too much to throw away.