McSweeney’s List (13 May 2026)
THE GREAT DISTRACTION AND THE BRAIN DRAIN
It's funny -- in a laugh so I don't cry way -- to notice how people are getting dumber. Yes, social skills have crumbled (ask anyone who's worked in the service industry, or with the public long enough to see), and we can blame the whole internet for that. But the internet, once billed as the information super highway, had the potential to make us smarter. Instead, IQs have been dropping since the mid 90s.
The best place to start is the Flynn Effect. James Flynn observed that IQs had been steadily rising since the end of the second world war, peaking with those born in 1975. (Here I sit as a 1978 baby, with the knowledge that if my parents had gotten around to making me faster, I could've been empirically smarter.) Things stayed steady for a bit, and then started to decline.
Enter the Reverse Flynn Effect (I'm not even kidding, that's what it's called).
Theories as to why include things like changes to our diet, and changes to the education system, but a popular theory is that the move from tangible print to digital content is to blame. James Mariott, a critic and columnist for The Times of London put it concisely when he said that “a really significant feature of books is that if you make a case in print, you have to make it logically add up. You can’t just assert things in the way you can on TikTok or on YouTube”.
That's a cop out: there are plenty of coherent and logical things to read on the internet, things that will inarguably boost your brain. There are courses available online, articles, books, and other articles and books that counter the first ones. We have access to pretty well everything written up to this point, and even apps to translate works into our preferred language. Don't even get me started on the countless online venues where we can see great works of art and historical artifacts from everywhere in the world, making the internet a cultural all access pass.
But people aren't choosing that content. In fact, reading for fun (i.e. when no one's making you) dropped by 40% over the past 20 years in the U.S. It's easy to get cocky, as statistically Canadian adults get their kicks from books, but studies show Canadian youth literacy rates have fallen over the past 20 years as well, along with the rates of kids who read for fun.
Video might’ve killed the radio star, and the literary star too, but again, when people turn to YouTube, they aren't watching documentaries or Carl Sagan lectures. They're watching people fall down, or content creators rehashing a video of someone falling down frame by frame. They're watching AI slop, and humans pandering to the algorithm. Videos aren't the problem: it's the videos that people are choosing. Which brings us back to why. Why are people choosing dumb shit?
A funny thing happened in the 1990s. The occasional corporate investments to public schools moved to a “systemic partnership” model. This meant that companies bought their way into schools in a shocking new way. Schools received high tech AV equipment in return for showing certain programs that included commercials. Schools sold exclusive advertising rights in places like cafeterias, gyms, and sporting events. Regardless of what they're promoting, being inundated with advertising actually reduces our capacity for critical thinking as well as cognitive processing. Consider the captive audience with as-of-yet undeveloped brains, add the power play that these ads are coming from their trusted source of information (the school), and it's hard to imagine a more fertile target. I found a concise quote from the American National Library of Medicine that said “Critical reasoning abilities did not appear to be fully developed during adolescence and not found to be protective against the impact of advertising”.
Corporations also infiltrated school lunches, including getting “pour rights” where certain beverage brands would buy the right to be the only brand on offer. This allowed companies to create brand loyalty before the kids knew what the options were. It's fair to say that these weren't farmers selling fruits and veg, so the whole thing added to a slow-motion nutritional crisis. (Nutrition impacts everything from the structure of the brain to cognitive function, and mood, so it's no small thing. I’ll let you research that on your own time.)
When Exxon (now ExxonMobil) started partnering with schools in the U.S., I remember thinking that society was fucked. Freshly out of high school myself, the ramifications seemed so obvious, I remember wondering where the adults in the room had run off to. Exxon, by the way, knew about climate change in 1981, 7 years before the public did. They continued to pay climate deniers to spread lies for another 27 years.
Business community giants including IBM, invested so they could train future employees for the “new economy”. That included a focus on standardized testing (we can assume such tests make it easier to headhunt fresh talent). Standardized testing leads to “teaching to the test”, favoring memorization over critical thinking skills. Students quickly learned to recite things by rote, but not figure out answers for themselves.
While the school system as we know it had been built as a slow boil to get people prepped for their future lives in factory jobs, the new school system was prepping people to repeat the company line, while leaving them incapable of questioning it.
And then came the internet. The internet doesn't exist without our attention and interaction, and it didn't take very long before people realized that by that logic, there really was no such thing as bad publicity. If you get attention for lying, or disputing, or burning your team jersey, that attention has as much value as interactions garnered from factual info, uplifting content, and thoughtful writing. People love arguments, battles of Good vs Evil, and trainwrecks in general, so it's easy to get attention that way. It took us so long to understand the grift, that ragebait only recently got the moniker despite existing since words on paper. Despite the fact that misinformation for profit already existed, and despite a previously held opinion that “you can't believe everything you read”, a whole bunch of people forgot the mission and decided that if it showed up on the internet – anywhere on the internet – it must be true. Having lived through it, I can tell you that a whack of folks stopped cross referencing their facts, and began to take the most random shit as gospel.
Aaand enter AI. Now you can ask a question, get an answer (phrased like there's a li'l dude in your computer answering directly. That's how I used to think computers worked when I was 3, and the idea of a gnomish little guy running things from the inside like a modern Flintstones contraption made me giddy). People are now citing falsehoods (both intentional lies and AI errors) with the confidence of someone who actually researched something. They ask offhand questions to a Large Learning Model capable only of citing the work of others, and taking the answer as the whole truth without another thought.
While the environmental impact of AI in its various forms is coming to light, so is the fact that people don't dive deeper than the succinct answers that AI provides. Fam, the citations are right there in the answer for you to peruse, compare, and research further. There is no excuse for lawyers who submit lawsuits riddled with AI hallucinations, only the explanation: they didn't check their work. Because checking would take effort, and integrity, and dare I say, some curiosity on the part of the person asking.
Another fun thing I learned while trying to figure out why people are painfully dumb, is that information overload is itself an effective obfuscation. We get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information presented to us on a daily basis, and our brains crap out of the critical thinking process (you know, the process that schools used to focus on, and then decided wasn't beneficial to the future as they saw it).
We start to rely on who is presenting the facts without looking into the facts ourselves (much like learning to memorize instead of how to think). We’ve gotten so attached to our sources, that we've elevated them to unimpeachable status, unwilling to consider other perspectives, let alone seek them out. We refuse to admit that a broken clock is right twice a day, as we refuse to acknowledge that two working clocks still have slight variances. In fact, a doctor put it simply for me when he said “in the sciences, the results are the results, and then it's up to interpretation”.
As things stand, if someone says “gravity is real”, we don't look at the statement as much as we do the person saying it. If you don't like the person saying it, you’ll likely disagree with the statement, or as is popular, divert from the subject entirely. If I say gravity is real, someone who doesn't like me might comment, “well, I saw you fall down drunk in front of Biftek once, so obviously you don't know shit.” Cool cool, ya, that was me, and gravity is still real.
If you find an article called Gravity Is Real, it won't be long before another pops up called Gravity Isn't Real, and then readers of the articles can fight it out, racking up engagement points for each source, and distracting people from things that are probably way more relevant. Jack Handey (who I thought was a fictional character until just now, as I was checking my facts) once said “Consider the daffodil…and while you do that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.” He was being funny, of course, but in today's reality, it's important to remember that just about everything you see on the internet is a daffodil.
Ideally, the intellectually curious will scroll past the debate and get to a more interesting article, probably called something like Why the Hell Haven't We Explained Gravity Yet?
Karl Marx famously said “Religion is the opium of the people” (oft misquoted, I looked up the actual quote before I typed this). He couldn't have foreseen the statistical drop in believers nor the way media as a whole, and the internet in particular, has taken its place from an opiate perspective. And yet, here we are. We choose our doctrines, and our clergy, and we seldom crack the book itself.
Listen, I'm not mad at stupid people. They're great at a ton of shit that's vital to the functioning of every society, and they're great people at the same rate as smart folks. I don't need to see your IQ score to know you're amazing at stuff; talented, skilled, valuable, and important. We don't actually need a ton of astrophysicists, and life would lose its beauty if we were all the same. But it's fair to say that the person in the room with the most brains and the least morals will inevitably take advantage of the rest. That being the case, the dumber we are as a society, the more screwed we are in the long run.
Stay curious. Cross check facts (that includes news reporting). Read widely: the stuff you like and don't like, agree with and don't, so you can flesh out your brain, and build informed ideas. And very importantly, remember to read for fun.
(Oooh, you just read a long form essay for kicks! You're doing great! Keep it up.
ON NOW
“How can I be racist? I’m vegan!”
The thought-provoking comedy Wine & Halva is back after a sold-out run. Here, the unlikely friendship between Derya, a Turkish woman, and Farias, a Canadian gay white man, reveals the quiet power of friendship as an act of resistance. There are talkbacks after each show. Audiences are invited for a pre-show cup of Turkish coffee and coffee grounds fortune readings.
Doors open 30 minutes before each performance.
Accessible pricing includes pay-what-you-can tickets at the door May 13 & 14, or to reserve a ticket for PWYC dates, send an email to tickets@teesriduniyatheatre.com
WHAT: Wine & Halva
WHERE: Teesri Duniya Theatre, 251 des Pins Ave. W., #148, Montreal, H2W 1R6
WHEN: On now through Saturday, May 23, multiple showtimes
METRO: Sherbrooke (Orange)
TICKETS: Zeffy
READING IS THE NEW NOT READING
JOIN US IN CELEBRATING QUEER THEATRE AT THE 2026 QUEER READING SERIES.
The Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal (PWM), in partnership with Centaur Theatre, invites you to join us for two readings of dynamic new works-in-progress by Queer artists. The Queer Reading Series continues for its 6th year amplifying the voices of early-career 2SLGBTQIA+ playwrights.
On May 14 and 15 at 7:30PM, Centaur Theatre will host Not Just Empty Space by Sarah Danielle Pitman and Dylan’s Song by Anna Morreale. Each performance will be followed by a conversation with the creative team.
The Queer Reading Series is a FREE event. Donations help us keep our programming free to artists, and will be gratefully accepted at the door.
Both readings will be presented with English captions, and the conversations will be presented with auto-generated captioning, for accessibility purposes.
Join us to uplift exciting new works-in-progress and support Queer voices exploring the intersections of queerness and artistic practice.
WHAT: 2026 Queer Reading Series
WHERE: Centaur Theatre, 453 St. François-Xavier St., Montreal, H2Y 2T1
WHEN: Thursday, May 14 & Friday, May 15 @ 730 PM
METRO: Place-d’Armes (Orange)
RSVP: CentaurTheatre
I'M PICTURING A POUTINE PIZZA
https://pouzzafest.com/en/bands/
Pouzzafest is back with three days of international (and local) punk, hardcore, and indie rock! From Buzzcocks to Bedouin Soundclash, Cancer Bats to The Planet Smashers, the lineup is pretty crazy! Shows are at various spots, including classic venues like Turbo Haüs, Foufs, and Café Cleopatra.
Pay for shows as you go, or buy a three day pass and make it your own personalized festival!
WHAT: Pouzzafest
WHERE: Various venues
WHEN: Friday, May 15 - Sunday, May 17, Various showtimes
DETAILS: Pouzzafest
WORD ON THE STREET
The Montreal Comic Arts Festival (MCAF) is kicking off their 15th edition, and the program is completely free! This year's theme is “ALIVE!”. Come and discover over 350 artists and 190 exhibitors under the tents!
MCAF is Canada’s largest comic book festival, featuring a 1.2 km pedestrian street lined with activities, exhibitions, and encounters, rain or shine. The Festival site is easily accessible by public transit or bicycle.
WHAT: The Montreal Comic Arts Festival
WHERE: On Saint-Denis Street, between Gilford and Roy
WHEN: Friday, May 15 - Sunday, May 17
METRO: Laurier (Orange)
DETAILS: fbdm-mcaf
BALCONVILLE
It must be spring, because it's Porchfest time! Come celebrate the 10th edition!
Stroll the hood, and catch the tunes from regular balconies briefly transformed into stages. It's a great way to hear local musicians you didn't know you were missing, meet your neighbors, and get to know NDG! With almost 50 mini-concerts over the weekend (I counted 47), there's something for everyone! Bring a chair, some bevvies, and kids if you have some on hand.
This year, Porchfest is delighted to be raising funds for Head & Hands, specifically their youth centre, The Rec, which offers kids hands-on experience in creating and recording their own music! Be sure to donate at some of the shows you see! And then, join us at 6pm on Sunday, May 17th, for the closing show, hosted by Head and Hands, where a whole lineup of talented young people will be performing!
BINGO & BAHAHAHA
Come one, come all to a fun night of bingo and comedy presented by Laugh Knights!
The night starts with bingo! Have some fun and friendly competition!
Then there's an awesome comedy show, starring a fun lineup of locals saying things, and trying stuff.
Samson Cooperman headlines a night hosted by Claudio Capri, featuring Grant Brooks, Erik Intrevado, Dawn McSweeney, Collin Ryan, Sara Meleika, Ivan Murcia and more!
Sit back and enjoy delicious food, drinks and laughs.
WHAT: Laugh Knights presents Bingo & Comedy Night
WHERE: Café Eevee, 1251 Rue St. Zotique St. E., Montreal, H2S 1N8
WHEN: Saturday, May 16, Bingo @ 7 PM, Comedy @ 8 PM
METRO: Beaubien (Orange)
RSVP: Eventbrite
POETS GOT GAME
Join Accent Open Mic at the ever faithful Bar Le Record for another evening of poetry and prose hijinks featuring guest readings by Devon Gallant, Rose Maloukis, and Natalie Co. As always, sign up for the open mic at the door! The theme is Play.
WHAT: Accent Open Mic Vol. 137: "Play" with Devon Gallant, Rose Maloukis & Natalie Co
WHERE: Bar Le Record, 7622 St. Hubert St., Montreal, H2R 2N6
WHEN: Sunday, May 17 @ 8 PM
METRO: Jean-Talon (Orange)
DETAILS: Facebook
World’s Smallest Comedy Night has so many cool things happening, so here are their events this week in order!
What Do You Know? Like, Seriously…
Tonight! Come to Hurley's for Trivia Night, and get bonus laughter! Enjoy delicious pub fare, and get ready to show off your trivia skills. Grab your team, and enjoy this night of comedy, friendly competition, and great company!
This edition is hosted by Vance Michel, featuring Nazeer Khan, James Mancini, and Miguel McKenna.
WHAT: Trivia Night at Hurley's
WHERE: Hurley's Irish Pub, 1225 Crescent St., Montreal, H3G 2B1
WHEN: Every Wednesday @ 8 PM
METRO: Lucien l'Allier (Orange) & Guy-Concordia (Green)
RSVP: Eventbrite
Classic Coke
Beat the Monday Blues with WSC’s OG offering, The World's Smallest Comedy Night!
Enjoy a showcase of the best comedians in the city, hot up-and-comers, national and international touring comics, and surprises!
Hosted by Vance Michel, this edition features Aarti Adv, Gabe Mollica, Anna Claringbould, Sam Adamo, Miguel McKenna, Charles Montgomery, Julie Santini, Carlin Potter, Dayna Lieberman, Manisha Bansal, and Stephanie Grinner.
WHAT: World's Smallest Comedy Night
WHERE: Hurley's Irish Pub, 1225 Crescent St., Montreal, H3G 2B1
WHEN: Every Monday, Doors @ 7 PM, Show @ 8 PM
METRO: Lucien l'Allier (Orange) & Guy-Concordia (Green)
TICKETS: Eventbrite
Dirty Monday
The Monday Night Dirty Mic is the place to be! Hosted by Vance Michel, every show is an unpredictable and unique experience as a hilarious collection of comedians from newbs to pros take the stage. See the best before anyone else, and catch seasoned locals doing their freshest funnies!
Comics: show-up, sign-up
WHAT: Monday Night Dirty Mic
WHERE: Hurley's Irish Pub, 1225 Crescent St., Montreal, H3G 2B1
WHEN: Every Monday, Sign-up @ 10 PM, Show @ 1030 PM
METRO: Lucien l'Allier (Orange) & Guy-Concordia (Green)
DETAILS: Facebook
