I’ve been reading “The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again” by Catherine Price, and it’s been quietly radicalizing my afternoons. Price’s thesis is simple, but unsettling: modern digital life — especially social media — is turbocharging our anxieties and splintering our attention spans, making what she calls “True Fun” feel increasingly elusive.

True Fun, as Price describes it, is the kind of play that swallows you whole. “Self-consciousness and judgment—whether from yourself or other people—are anathema to flow, as is any form of distraction,” she writes. Think of an athlete in the middle of a game, or a musician enraptured by a melody or the rare magic of getting lost in a project or conversation and realizing an hour has evaporated.

Price encourages a “fun audit”: noticing which act

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