25 November 2019
Until the 2010s, if you were reading, it generally meant you weren't doing it online. Though change had been in the offing, this was the decade that irreversibly altered how we consume text - when the smartphone transformed from a marvel to a staple. Suddenly, the sharpest cultural and political analysis came in the form of a distracted boyfriend meme. Racists deployed a playful cartoon frog to sugar their messages. From the Arab Spring onward, the best reporters were often panicked bystanders with Twitter accounts.