Selma von den Hoff

onesie GSIS Newsletter, Junior Editor

With the start of 2026, many influencers’ New Year’s resolutions included phrases such as “be offline,” “go analog,” and “less doomscrolling.” Being offline and highly educated has become the new cool-girl trend, while at the same time these influencers are still posting their “offline” content online. At the same time, there has been a rise in videos talking about “how to become the pretty but smart girl” and “how to become disgustingly educated.” While these trends are, in

themselves, rather positive, as we are currently in both an intellectual and literacy crisis due to AI and social media, they have come at a cost: the creation of a hierarchy of knowledge and people’s perceived education level. Suddenly, a master’s degree does not only mean that your opinion on that topic is more valid than that of someone with a high school diploma; it also seems to imply that you hold the only right opinion on it. This divergence away from differing opinions, as everyone reads the same nonfiction books, Substacks, research papers, or self-help books, is not only harmful but also deepens the existing split within society.

The videos “how to become educated,” “how to doomscroll less,” or “how to be the smartest person in the room” all start the same way: “Follow these steps if you want to be the smartest person in the room” or “here are some books that automatically make you smarter.” The tips often include reading classics and nonfiction books, but also listening to science podcasts or reading self-help books such as Atomic Habits. They include phrases such as “you should read Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky” or “start with fiction and work your way up to nonfiction books,” often excluding the actual difficulty of reading these books and understanding them, while at the same time undermining and shaming fiction books. However, it is often the core of why reading is important that these videos forget to mention: understanding the deeper contexts and the underlying meanings of both fiction and nonfiction books. Reading and finishing a set amount of books does not make a person an intellectual, nor does it make them educated. It is understanding the content and critically thinking about and dissecting the text where the formation of intellect occurs.

But in the age of social media, Letterboxd, and Goodreads, having diverging opinions is not seen as a good thing; it means you understood the subtext wrong. These apps often reflect the perfectly curated watch and reading list, meant to present someone as well-rounded and educated. Seldom do people, especially public figures, rate and comment on a movie or book that is not seen as fitting their persona. At the same time, these platforms have created the notion of

reading for the sake of checking off another book on your “want to read” list and making sure that you hit the one-book-a-month challenge. However, the problem is: are you actually trying to understand the author, or just what people have told you the author means by it?

Is performative intellectualism actually bad, because it at least is making people read? With performative intellectualism, the problem arises from the perceived superiority of one form of content, book, or movie over that of another. It is looking down on one form of books, often fiction, when the other form can’t even be understood. It is the notion of “I’m not like the others [...]” or what creates this feeling of a moral high ground, simply because people have read Dostoevsky and not the newest BookTok romance novel. It is okay to read bad books and to want to read bad or fiction books and not just classics and non-fiction. People can read the top ten most influential books and still be stupid, just as they can have a PhD and still not be intellectuals. It is not the content that matters; it is about dissecting the text and forming your own understanding of it. In the age of social media, where everyone can have the “right” opinion of everything or simply have more credentials to have an opinion on a certain issue, not one person is less intellectual than the other simply because of their background. At the same time, being more educated or intellectual does not give you the right to dismiss other people’s opinions, no matter how stupid they might seem to you.

This article was inspired by an Instagram reel I saw, in which someone with a master’s degree in International Relations dismissed and outright looked annoyed at, according to him, “some [other] political opinions,” insinuating opinions relating to populism, which in my opinion sums up the problem of online intellectualism perfectly. Simply because you have a higher education or read more than others, does not mean that you have a high ground in morals, nor do your

opinions matter more. In a time where intellectualism is often linked to what you read and how much you read, compassion for one another is needed, alongside dialogue, so as to not contribute to the literacy and anti-intellectual crisis yourself.