Everyone is always talking about how our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, and they’re right! I know many people who can’t sit through a 90-minute movie without checking their phones. I can barely read for an hour without taking a quick break to catch up on what texts I missed. It’s amusing that in the past, novels and films were viewed as frivolous distractions from completing important work. Now, it’s a mark of sophistication if you watch movies in the movie theater instead of being on TikTok for 13 hours a day. Imagine how much we could accomplish if we had the same technological access available to an 18th-century wealthy scholar.

No matter what time period you are living in, there will always be those of us who struggle to focus on everything, including leisure activities like scrolling through hilarious lists of memes. If that’s you, let these memes be a challenge.