Margaret Atwood on Doomscrolling: ‘I Want to Keep Up With the Latest Doom’
NEWS | 09 January 2026
I do, but it reads as maybe more imminent than how I think about death. No. It's not imminent. Well, no, let's not plan on that. [But] not in the far distant future. Do you plan to keep writing? You don't plan to keep writing. You just do. You keep writing and then you can make plans about that. But you actually don't control whether any of your fantastically brilliant ideas is going to turn into a book. You have to discover that through the process of doing it. Do you think about your legacy, about how you're remembered and talked about? Do you care? I don't care. You don't care at all. No, because I'm not gonna be here. Also, looking at the lives of writers, usually they die, then there's a little flurry of interest in their work, then they go down, and then there might be a revival, but it usually follows the same trajectory. And it is generational, so you know, “Oh, my mom read that. Ick.” So it usually does that thing of going down, and then if you're lucky it comes up again. But it's not gonna be your luck, it's gonna be your estate's luck. To me, I think something I've always appreciated about writing and about books is there is a permanence to that. Maybe a more fleeting permanence than I'm willing to admit, or want to admit. More chancy, a chancier permanence. Yeah. By which you mean maybe it sticks … By which I mean there were a lot more Greek classical plays than we have, and we know about them, they existed, but we don't have any copies anymore. So ultimately it's too much to worry about, and what do we care when we're dead? What would I do about it? I can't control the future, contrary to popular opinion. So it's one of those things of “why worry?” because you can't do anything about it anyway. This brings me to the perfect place to end, which is with this short game I'm gonna force you to play. You think you're gonna force me to do something? I'm gonna try. The short game I'm going to politely request you to play is called Control, Alt, Delete. So, what piece of technology would you love to control? What piece would you alt, so alter or change? And what would you delete? What would you vanquish from the earth if given the opportunity? Oh, that's interesting. So the first one is, what one would I like to be able to control? Yeah. Do I get atomic bombs? Yes. OK, I'll choose that. Well, I would do nothing with them, but I would be in control of that nothing. I would be in control of whether anything got done with them or not. So if they're all under my control, the world would be safe from them. OK. What would you alter? What would you wanna change? What would I want to change? OK. I think I would like to change the very nasty turn that social media took after that initial period when it was fun. Because it was fun at first.
Author: Katie Drummond.
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