20.08.2025

Reels vs. Reading: Does the gentleman’s library still define class?

In Malaysia’s age of reels and short videos, has the gentleman’s library lost its place as a marker of culture and class? A lament on how fleeting distractions erode patience, refinement, and the dignity once found in books.

Photo credit: Tengku Zafrul Instagram

(Photo for illustration only).


 

Dear GC,

I write to you as a man of fifty, a child of another Malaysia, when bookshelves were proudly kept in homes, and the weight of a good book lent gravitas to a household.

Today, I look around and see fewer homes with such markers of culture. Instead, the glow of the phone screen dominates our living rooms, our dinner tables, even our very silences.

My own son, bright and capable as he is, confided to me recently: he finds it difficult to sit through an orchestra. He admitted, almost apologetically, that reels and short videos have trained his mind to expect quick stimulation. The great arcs of Beethoven, the patience demanded by Brahms - it all feels “too long” for his generation.

I could not hide my sorrow.

In an age of TikTok reels and fleeting distractions, I find myself wondering if the curation of a private library still remains a mark of class. Is the ownership of rare books a mere hobby, or is it the quiet badge of the traditional elite?

And this, sir, is where my lament deepens. For when a society loses its ability to read deeply, to listen fully, to endure beauty beyond ten seconds, it risks losing not only culture but also class. We may yet become a people who consume flashes of spectacle but never cultivate reflection and refinement.

So I ask you a difficult question: in our Malaysian context, where the cultural tide seems to turn toward speed and superficiality, can the gentleman’s library still stand as a defensive wall? Can books and the patience they demand still define what it means to belong among the traditional elite? Or must we resign ourselves to a Malaysia where reels replace reading, and noise replaces nuance?

 

With warm regards,
Ravi

Answer by The Gent:

Dear Ravi,

Your lament strikes at the heart of something we too often shy away from saying aloud. Reels and endless scrolling offer immediacy, but rarely memory. They stimulate, but seldom cultivate.

We see it around us - Malaysia is reading less. Our attention spans are thinning. In 2023, Malaysians spent on average 8 hours and 6 minutes online daily, with 2 hours and 47 minutes of that devoted to social media (Source: Statista, KiteLeads). This places us among the highest in Asia-Pacific. With such habits, it is no surprise that many, including the younger generation, struggle to sit through an orchestra, to finish a book, or even to engage in deep, sustained reflection. Reels and quick videos train the mind for speed and novelty, not patience and depth.

History reminds us that the measure of a gentleman has never rested merely on wealth or appearances, but on breadth and depth of exposure. In Europe, the gentry’s “ideal man” was formed not only in country sports or at the dining table, but through The Grand Tour - absorbing languages, arts, architecture, and the philosophy of other civilizations. To possess books, and to have truly read them, was to possess a mirror of civilization itself. One’s library was a declaration: I am in dialogue not only with my contemporaries, but with the finest minds of centuries past.

This pattern is not uniquely European. In the Malay world, the aristocratic courts preserved manuscripts, "hikayat" and oral traditions as a mark of refinement. In Japan, the samurai was expected to be as versed in poetry as in the art of war; in China, the scholar-officials were esteemed above all for their command of the classics. Across cultures, the same thread weaves through: true class is inseparable from cultivated wisdom.

What does a book tell you? It tells you that time was set aside for reflection. That one has wrestled with another’s ideas, absorbed, questioned, and grown. It signals patience, seriousness, and the ability to hold a thought longer than a flickering reel allows.

We at GC still hold hope. The gentleman’s way has always been a minority pursuit, not the majority’s. To own, read, and live by books in this age is to make a statement. It is to stand apart. And perhaps, in standing apart, one quietly keeps alive the very standard that future generations may one day return to.

 

With sincere appreciation,

The Gent

 

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