Last week I speculated that New York Times executive editor Bill Keller has a bias against social networking because the executive editor of the New York Times is too busy fending off people trying to kiss his ass to spend a lot of time on Twitter and Facebook.
I Hate the New York Times has another theory behind Keller's rant, which is that the Gray Lady simply hates all forms of fun enjoyed by normal people, such as cursing and going to flea markets. Of course, this strengthens rather than competes with my theory of of Dumontesque elitism.
...for every bizarre activity [New York Times writers] praise, there is another relatively harmless pastime they disparage. Why? Maybe it’s too lowbrow. Maybe it’s because the fans of said pastime are presumed to be illiterate proles who don’t understand the consequences of their actions. Or maybe it’s for the opposite reason — the pastime is question has gotten too popular with the hip, trend-chasing urbanites whom the writers fondly imagine comprise their core readership. There must be something dangerous about it.
Thanks for the link! It's pretty elitist of Keller to think he knows more about what Twitter is really "doing to us" than the rest of the people who use it. The attitude is "I may be on Twitter like all these other people, but at least I can see how stupid they all sound!"
It's also sad that the executive editor of the Times is capable of writing something so muddle-headed. We're "upsourcing our brains to the cloud" and becoming cyborgs... based on what?
Posted by: Emily H. | May 25, 2011 at 10:39 PM