They're not funny.
OK, fine, I admit that they're funny, but that's not the point anyways.
Can you remember the Before Time? Life without scrolling? The little pockets of time where we could be bored, be human?
Media is inaccurate in its depiction of dystopia; it has to be, because such depictions have to be foreign to us in order to work. But we already have one!!
It's watching little bits of video fed to you 10 seconds at a time, the next one determined by algorithm to be the most attention-grabbing. Not only does the medium itself encourage *only* the goal of taking up watch time, the content has started to reflect this too: flashy subtitles, "Subway Surfer" slop, bright colors, excessive movement, vulgar (hence easily compressed) humor. Books don't need to do this to capture your attention. If you scroll down on a book, what you get is the next page of the book.
Set aside the intent of scrolling. Is the act itself not unusual? We were not meant to hold little rectangles of light, occasionally flicking our pointer fingers upwards in search of a "good" reel. The world was meant to be experienced by us, not handed to us on an... indium tin oxide platter.
At birth, no one knows what it is like to scroll on reels. (Hopefully.) That means that if you scroll reels often, there was some point in your life when you were getting acclimated.
It's a good way to pass time: no doubt. It lets time pass, alright. Ideas come at you disjointed. The next reel cannot depend on the ideas of the last, except to keep you watching. And so the seconds (or should I say, videos) tick by, the vertical expanse of experience hidden by the tiny window of the screen, nothing lost, nothing gained.
An infinite well of endless, context-free information.