Seriously, I’m not the only person who gets a HAL from 2001 feeling from Facebook’s new attempt to be “personal,” right?
“I Can’t Let You Do That, Dave”
They Say Your Friends Won’t Tell You
Take One of These Tablets and See Me in The Morning
Since the rise of the Internet, print media — most notably newspapers — have faced a big problem with younger readers. But according to a new study released today by the Pew Research Center and The Economist Group, when you look specifically at the devices they love — the smartphones in their pockets — young adults rival or even surpass their parents and grandparents as news consumers.
According to the report from Pew’s Project in Excellence in Journalism, 37 percent of smartphone owners between the ages of 18 and 29 get news on their devices daily, along with 40 percent of smartphone owners aged 30 to 49. Those are slightly higher than the equivalent rates for 50-64 (31 percent) and 65-plus (25 percent). Among tablet owners, news consumption numbers were broadly similar across age groups, with 50- to 64-year-olds being the peak news consumers.
From here.
I admit, I read the Guardian, Slate and Talking Points Memo daily over breakfast on a tablet, and sometimes the Oregonian, too. Pre-tablet, my news consumption was far lower.
Heartsick and Rambling
I could try to explain it, but I’m sure I would fail. There’s no words that I could come up with that would even come close to describing the sheer terror of hearing that your son is in a place, or your child’s in a place, where there’s been violence. You don’t know the details of that violence, you don’t know the condition of your child and you can’t do anything to immediately help them or protect them. It is a powerless and terrifying experience.
From here, a parent of a student at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT talking about hearing about the shooting this morning.
News like this just derails everything else; I find it hard to think about other things, to care about what I’m supposed to write about, and so on. It’s exhausting, horrible, unthinkable; describing it as “powerless and terrifying” is something that fits most people’s experience with the news, I suspect. I think that’s why the response on social media that I’ve been tracking has been do… vitriolic, for want of a better word. We don’t want to accept our powerlessness, so we’ll rail loudly about gun control and the lack of mental health care and other (important, worthy) issues, because at least then it feels like we’re doing something.
(That said, to everyone who says things like “Now is not the time to talk about gun control”: No, now is exactly the time. There have been two mass shootings in a week. What other sign do you need that this needs to be addressed?)
(Also, I feel simultaneously aghast at, and jealous of, those who seem to be perfectly capable of having a normal day on Twitter today, making jokes and going “Woo!” about things. Would that I could do the same.)
He’s The Non-Entity With All The Toys
I was 8 the first—and only—time I spoiled Santa for a believer. My parents had come clean about the Santa myth to me a year or two earlier because I was offended that the jolly geezer didn’t care about me, a Christmas carol-singing Jew from the northern Chicago suburbs. Why did he only leap down the chimneys of my Christian friends? What had I done to deserve this prejudicial treatment? My parents finally cracked, and I was relieved. My friends weren’t more special than me after all!
I knew, of course, that most kids my age were not privy to this knowledge. Possessing the secret made me feel deliciously superior. I understood the cruel, complicated world a little better than my third-grade buddies. Unfortunately, my newfound sophistication didn’t enhance my secret-keeping abilities.
From here.
I had Santa ruined for me when I was… Five? Four, maybe? Young, I remember; a friend came over on Christmas Day to show off his toy haul, and when I attempted to show him what Santa had brought me, he laughed at me for even mentioning Old Saint Nick. “There isn’t a Santa! It’s just your mum and dad pretending!” he told me. On Christmas Day.
Ah, the casual cruelty of youth.
All Around Us
And We’ll Keep On Fightin’ – Till The Ennnnnnnd
So, this random discovery today made me happy:
Not only is Wait, What? – the weekly(ish) comics podcast I do with the fantastic Jeff Lester – the first result on the iTunes store if you search for “Wait, What?” (I know, not entirely surprising, but bear with me), but apparently individual episodes of the show entirely dominate the podcast episode results. We are the kings of the podcasting.
Fun with Cognitive Dissonance
From io9, on Monday, explaining why the site has pulled theFan Fiction Friday column after two posts:
When io9 makes fun of Damon Lindelof or the latest episode of Beauty and the Beast, we are picking on targets who are our own size or bigger… Our goal as satirists is to mock targets our size or bigger — or, alternatively, to criticize ideas rather than individuals.
From io9 on Tuesday:
Admittedly, it’s not what it seems – the headline/pic is misleading, because (a) that’s not the “worst Star Wars fan in the entire world” in that pic, and (b) the post is actually complaining about a quote from an anonymous fan from Deadline Hollywood, and is actually a pro-fandom piece in spirit – but still: That the latter headline/pic combo made it onto the site the day after the “We only go after bigger targets” post is one of those “How did that get through?!?” moments.
“Planets are SPACESHIPS All”
Platforms Are Important
What the findings suggest, Holton said, is that the news platforms a person is using can play a bigger role in making them feel overwhelmed than the sheer number of news sources being consumed. So even if you read The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, The New York Times, and ESPN in a day, you may not feel as inundated with news if you read on your phone instead of on your desktop (with 40 tabs open, no doubt). The more contained, or even constrained, a platform feels, the more it can contribute to people feeling less overwhelmed, Holton said. A news app or mobile site, for instance, is an isolated experience that emphasizes reading with minimal links or other distractions. Compared with reading on the web at your computer, your options seem smaller.
“There was no connection between the number of news outlets people were using, so it made us think it was the device,” Holton told me. “You see less of a statistically significance between outlets and more between platforms.”
From here.
Hmmm.