From "How TikTok Became a Best Seller Machine/#BookTok, where enthusiastic readers share reading recommendations, has gone from being a novelty to becoming an anchor in the publishing industry and a dominant driver of fiction sales" (NYT).
The top comment over there: "Truly — I don’t get TikTok. A direct feed to China, a few seconds of messaging, it’s like walking into a circus, with crowds, noise, sights, chaos, confusion. That it has taken off and become the vehicle of choice for young people says nothing good about our limited and shrinking attention span. Even if it’s pushing a book."
Yeah, whatever happened to "Booknotes" with Brian Lamb? Here's the last episode, from 2004: "Why Read?"
I love the way that commenter bitches about young people lacking the capacity to pay attention while seemingly admitting that all he did was take a quick look, perceive chaos, and adopt the opinion of not getting it.
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Brian Lamb is a national treasure.
I remember that episode.
From the transcript (after showing a clip of Milton Friedman talking about Hayek):
LAMB: He`s talking about "Road to Serfdom" - Hayek - a bible for people on the conservative political side.
EDMUNDSON: I`m glad to know about it. Until this moment, I`ve heard nothing about it. But I will write it down and give it a look.
LAMB: So, you`ve never read "Road to Serfdom."
EDMUNDSON: Never. Nor heard of it, until this moment.
Lol. The year is 2030. Suzy, after graduating Georgetown has landed her first big gig in DC working for a seemingly benign nonprofit doing economic and industry analysis that supports big thinktanks like Rand and Brookings. "This is it FR ON GOD", she thought, "my first rung on a ladder that leads to me being a real beltway player!"
One morning she's having her $15 pumpkin spice caramel macchiato with pride month sprinkles and browsing her soc feed. She notices something very peculiar. There are videos in her history she doesn't remember making, saying things and doing things that she doesn't remember doing. Damaging things. Hurtful things. Nasty things. Panic takes hold. She knows she didn't make that video, or that one, or that one! BUT THAT'S HER! A perfect her. Her image. Her voice. Her mannerisms. "This isn't possible!!!," she thinks, scrambling to delete them as fast as she finds them.
But they won't go away. And as soon as she deletes one of them, another takes it's place. "OMG OMG FR FR THIS IS NOT BUSSIN! MY CAREER IS RUINED!" she monologues internally. She runs to her car to get home as fast as possible to cry.
As she bawls uncontrollably slamming her forehead into the steering wheel of her a car, a notification on her phone alerts her to a new message. An unknown message, from someone she's never talked to before, telling her there's a solution to her problem, and help if she talks to him, or global shame if she doesn't. "Lol," says Suzy wiping eyes and chuckling, "LMFAO!"
"Surfing the internet" seems to mean floating on the constantly moving wave of new information and experiences. It's addictive and hard to get either beneath the surface or out of the water altogether.
But we will have that "familiarity with the outsides of books" that EM Forster wrote about in describing his ill-fated clerk, crushed to death by a bookcase -- was there really all that much difference between the outsides of books in Forster's writing years?
A friend in cybersecurity says Tik Tok is Chinese Swiss cheese software.
I can't imagine how watching a video of someone throwing a book across the room would have any entertainment value or instruct me as to whether I might like to read a book. I think my first thought would be to note the person's reading habits waste a lot of paper, take up valuable land for warehouses, and eat up fuel resources moving books around the country. An easy way to "go green" is to use eBooks. But then there's a real cost to throwing what you're reading across the floor. That might make a statement worth watching. Probably not.
I thought you had a “kids these days” tag.
Loved "Booknotes". One of the all-time best shows I've ever followed. Brian Lamb has been missed.
As for BookTok, what could possibly go wrong with the CCP manipulating what an entire generation of young Americans reads and approves of?
So Booknotes has been off the air longer than it was on the air.
I love the way that commenter bitches about young people lacking the capacity to pay attention while seemingly admitting that all he did was take a quick look, perceive chaos, and adopt the opinion of not getting it.
How much atonal music do I need to listen to before I can conclude that I don't like it?
Sometimes you can get the gist of a thing pretty quickly.
I used to love Booknotes, but Lamb could ask the most off-the-wall and/or naive questions--sometimes I wanted to throw a book at the TV. He deserves a lot of credit for CSpan in general, IIUC.
But In Depth is just as good or better, and CSpan's conference coverings are pretty good.
IYLTSOT.
Happy Fourth! Every year on this date I read Mencken's DoI in American. Genius.
" ... it’s like walking into a circus, with crowds, noise, sights, chaos, confusion."
Likely written by someone who has never walked into a circus.
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