Shutting The Lights On Literacy

Maybe the world would be better served by Read A Book Live.

“The potential power of Facebook’s platform has been evident in early experiments. In April, two BuzzFeed employees streamed a Facebook Live video showing them placing rubber bands around a watermelon until it exploded. It was Facebook’s most-watched live video, until it was beaten out by Facebook user Candace Payne, who in May filmed herself in her car, laughing uproariously over a noise-making Chewbacca mask. As of June 21, the nearly 45-minute watermelon video was viewed 10.8 million times; Ms. Payne’s four-minute video has been viewed 157.6 million times.”

— You know how whenever you bring up the incontestable fact that the Internet is making us stupider some suck-up to technology is all, “Well, Socrates said the written word would turn everyone dumb”? First off, fuck that guy, but second: LOOK AT THAT PARAGRAPH ABOVE — a paragraph that exists in a piece that begins with the news that BuzzFeed and the New York Times are going to spend the next year putting on little skits for less money than Mark Zuckerberg keeps zippered up in his KangaROOS just in case he gets mugged — and tell me that we are actually entering a world where our smart levels are somehow going up. You can’t do it with a straight face, right? (Also why is the Socrates guy always the same jackass who comes back with “Newspapers have horoscopes!” They sure do, you disingenuous fuckwad. Enjoy watching your exploding Chewbacca mask videos, because that’s what the future holds for you.)