From yojairyjaimee, a flawless, minute-long re-creation of some bizarre stage patter by Kanye West who now goes by Ye. From accountwashackedwith50m, twelve seconds of chocolate-covered strawberries, filmed from the vantage of a saxophonist in an R.
From notkenna, seven seconds of a dog made to look, with preposterously low-budget effects, as if it were flying on a broomstick.
If every video is a starburst of expression, an extended TikTok session is fireworks in your face for hours. Carr set off an avalanche. But read two more and the skeptical imp within you awakens. Hawthorne warns of the arrival of a technology so powerful that those born after it will lose the capacity for mature conversation.
They will seek separate corners rather than common spaces, he prophesies. The replacement of the open fireplace by the iron stove. You can even read previous grumbling as a measure of how bad things have become. Perhaps critics were correct to see danger in, say, television.
If it now appears benign, that just shows how much worse current media is. Hayes acknowledges the long history of such panics. Some seem laughable in hindsight, he concedes, like one in the nineteen-fifties about comic books.
