The New Yorker offers a decently interesting article about the new internet craze of things being "cursed." Loved it at first. Five paragraphs about the actual topic, headed by a simply amazing picture of many badgers on someone's back patio. (Really, I should forgive them everything because of that amazing picture.) It is a good thing, because it is by a (presumable) internet native who has a better feel for what's really happening than an old guy like me.
Then, oh dear! Two paragraphs of liberal-arts major filler to get your paper over 1,000 words. Not bad for what it is, but a serious deterioration, quickly. Then two paragraphs of liberal pieties, with especial emphasis on how terrible Trump has always been, as all of us here know. One reads this and goes sentence-by-sentence.
Huh?...Double huh?...No they aren't; and "basic" was passed decades ago, you liar...no he hasn't...Huh? (again)...no, that's unrelated...I don't even want to hear how you are connecting these two ideas...perversely, you are correct here. YOUR simulation of reality is breaking down, yet somehow you think that is the fault of the actual reality where the rest of us live...(New Paragraph) Not obvious to anyone looking at data, thanks...Yes, that's true, (heh)...no, they haven't...the children are not in danger and should go do something productive...Yes, it IS hard to take in all at once the overwhelming evidence that you are about 80% wrong in everything you believe about politics and culture, I will grant that. But we'll be patient if you just show some progress, Miss...and then a few sentences of airy, abstract philosophising, tied to no actual philosophy, but the sort of thing I used to say after having a couple of glasses of wine and staring into a candle at college parties, to the distress of my girlfriend who began to wonder if she really thought this was the best use of the word fiancee.
The photo is good, but hardly representative of what the article is discussing even in the first five paragraphs. Perhaps I'm an old fuddy-duddy or curmudgeon or whatever other name "old" people are now called, but this strikes me as trying to be subversively artsy. And I do mean "trying" in more than one sense. This is 'cake wrecks', 'there, I fixed it for you', and bad real estate photos taken to absurdity.
ReplyDeleteYou nailed it on the rest of the article.