Why I Don't Do Audiobooks

A media ecological analysis of the audiobook question

I love to read. Ever since I was 16 years old, I have been in love with diving into books of all sizes and topics and expanding my horizons. Being one of my readers, you likely enjoy reading as well, and at the very least, you enjoy reading my analysis of interesting and important authors.

One question that has been repeatedly posed in the dissident literary space, both here on Substack and X, is whether or not audiobooks “count.” Are you reading if you are listening to audiobooks? An audiobook has the same words by the same author; the only difference is that the words are spoken aloud, and intake is aural rather than visual. What is the big deal if the content is the same?

I do not listen to audiobooks because the content is not the same. I have made a few exceptions, but my avoidance of audiobooks is more than a preference for a certain learning method. The difference between visual reading and aural reading is serious. To understand why, one must have a proper view of media.

This certifiably is a vibe.

The medium is the message. This is the famous adage from Canadian media ecologist Marshall McLuhan. Many have heard this statement, but few have taken the time to explore its ramifications and what it means. Media, as in mediation, are extensions of the human. They are bridges to the external world to bring information into the human sensorium and organize it in the mind. The method by which the information is brought into the mind determines the way it will be received and encoded.¹

Imagine the mind as a warehouse receiving packages. There are various ports in the warehouse, all of which are different shapes. One is a square, another a circle, and a third a star. Depending on which port the package enters, it will be stored according to different procedures and in a nearby yet distinct section of the warehouse. The medium can be understood as the shape of the package. Say that the same content is loaded into two different packages, one star-shaped and the other square. The warehouse does not care that the content is the same because procedures dictate that the shape of the package determines where it is entered and stored. Because the warehouse layout allows different bays to communicate, management will recognize that the content is the same and make a note of it, but it is in a different section nonetheless.

This analogy may seem excessive, but it is not. The difference between the written word and spoken word is so profoundly different that both Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong emphasize the dominance of one or the other is at the fundamental root of any given culture.

In Ong’s Orality and Literacy, he describes how speech and language are oral phenomena and will always be so. But writing adds another layer to language. The written word began to dominate the way that people thought. Ong uses Homer as an example of the dynamics in a culture dominated by the spoken word. Both the Odyssey and the Iliad were originally spoken aloud by bards. Reading or listening to these poems, one will quickly notice cadence and repetition. These features were put in place to enable bards to effectively memorize and recite the poem.

The written word functions completely differently, which is unsurprising: the medium directs the content. In the older poetic world, “hearing rather than sight had dominated…in significant ways.”² The shift from a spoken culture to a written culture makes the dominance of hearing yield to the dominance of sight. This yielding was accelerated with the printed word. Ong further states: “Print situates words in space more relentlessly than writing ever did. Writing moves words from the sound world to a world of visual space, but print locks words into position in this space.”³

He goes into more detail about how the dominance of print versus hearing formed the entire culture, but that is not the primary concern here. κρῠπτός has done some writing on Walter Ong, and perhaps I will write more about Ong in the future. What is important for now, though, is that the difference between hearing words and seeing words is so great that whichever one is primary in society has far-reaching consequences.

McLuhan describes how language detaches the intellect from reality. He states: “Language does for intelligence what the wheel does for the feet and the body. It enables them to move from thing to thing with greater ease and speed and ever less involvement. Language extends and amplifies man, but it also divides his faculties.”⁴

The cost of mediation is separation. But this is not necessarily bad, it simply is. McLuhan states that speech separates man from man. Man becomes both a radio receiver and transmitter, in which man moves his vocal cords to vibrate the air and send waves to a tiny bone in another man’s ear, which receives the vibrations and interprets them. McLuhan compares the spoken and written word:

Again, in speech we tend to react to each situation that occurs, reacting in tone and gesture even to our own act of speaking. But writing tends to be a kind of separate or specialist action in which there is little opportunity or call for reaction. The literate man or society develops the tremendous power of acting in any matter with considerable detachment from the feelings or emotional involvement that a nonliterate man or society would experience.⁵

The spoken word is a cool medium, inviting the listener to participate and even respond, whereas the written word is comparatively hot, asking only to be consumed directly. McLuhan states: “The same separation of sight and sound and meaning that is peculiar to the phonetic alphabet also extends to its social and psychological effects.”⁶

The media of written and printed words allows for the development of concepts that could not otherwise emerge in a culture dominated by speaking alone. Philosophy, economics, and many other academic disciplines could not develop and flourish in a culture without writing. In pre-literate cultures, concepts and truths about the depths of human nature must be couched and dressed up in narrative form to make them memorable. The book of Genesis is an example, as well as Homer’s poems. Explicit descriptions of long-run aggregate supply, the relationship between the Will and Idea, and behavioral psychology are only possible thanks to the written word.

So, to return to the question of audiobooks, I avoid them because concepts and ideas formed and dictated by the medium of the written word are best received by the human mind in the proper medium. I am not saying there is no place for audiobooks at all. Listening to Homer would probably enrich the experience of consuming the Odyssey. Some written works that take a conversational tone would also probably be fine to listen to. Narratives also often work fine as audiobooks, which is understandable considering the prevalence of narrative in orality-dominated cultures. But listening to Schopenhauer puts an unrealistic burden on the brain by mediating his words through the wrong medium. The content is in the wrong package and ends up in the wrong section of the warehouse. This forces the management (your conscious mind) to do a bunch of unfortunate proverbial paperwork to transfer the star-shaped box into the right section.

1. I write more about McLuhan’s understanding of media here:

2. Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy. London: Routledge, 2005. Page 117.

3. Ibid, Page 119.

4. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extension of Man. Berkeley: Gingko Press, 1964. Page 81.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid, Page 89.