What's the Buzz?

Posted Mon Feb 15, 2010 in Ruminations

I now have an earworm¹. I’m reminded of the bit in Jesus Christ, Superstar where the disciples are singing “What’s the buzz, tell me what’s-a-happening…”

One thing about my use of “Yahoo!”: as a home page is the news “crawl” in the today box. I see a lot of things there that I would not normally see. I never managed to get my “Google”: homepage working that way. But, I see a headline and my curiosity makes me scan the contents. So, I find myself reading a mix of news and entertainment writing that is featured by Yahoo!.

An article about threats against Johnny Weir because of his fur-wearing was interesting. It’s not whether I care about his wearing fur or faux-fur a bit. I do care, though, that someone would threaten him for his choice of material. I’m disappointed, though, that he caved to the politically-correct no-fur position. That’s a shame.

The interesting part, though, is the amount of buzz generated by the article. When I checked, there were greater than 4,400 comments on the piece. That’s an incredible amount of commentary. Some of it was lively and intelligent, but most of drivel not worth the electrons it cost to send it down the pipe. (I didn’t spend much time reading — I never do because it’s a waste of time.)

The inability of people to reason, or perhaps their unwillingness to think before they post, is a poor testimony to the shape of human society. Maybe I expect too much. The bell curve is certainly in effect. But, I’d hate to measure the intellectual capacity of the median comment. I think it would be shockingly low.

Maybe we are a virus on the planet that should be eliminated. We don’t seem to be earning our keep…

¹ An earworm is a bit of music that is “in your head.” I love the word! It’s so descriptive.