Billionaires read as many as 50 books per year: here's how.

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Reader, I saw this headline and I laughed out loud.

Is this what we've come to? That someone would think up that line of ad copy. And someone else would approve it. And it would be rendered in pixels. With a photo of a male model in half-light. And someone would pay money for some other people to put it up on a website. For people to read. And hope thereby to sell something to make more money.

And incidentally expect people to believe that one, billionaires read books, and two, there is some magical way that billionaires have of reading them faster and better, because, after all, you can acquire anything for money, even mental acuity. . .

Also, as one commenter put it, that reading 50 books a year was a lot. That's only a book a week. When I was a teenager, I read ten times that many. I know, because my mother complained about the weekly trip to the library. The limit on the card was ten. But billionaires are presumably busy: plotting the destruction of this planet and its inhabitants takes up a lot of their days, no doubt.

We all deplore the fact that these people are in our faces all the time with their foolishness. But people tend to think of these daily inanities as being like the rain: it falls on the just and unjust. There's nothing we can do about it.

Kids, there are such things as umbrellas.

Bluesky (today's user total: 21 million) has some really, really good ideas in place. Ideas that work on a website to discourage successful trolling and make it a better place. I would argue that those ideas could also be taken offline to make our lives better.

Here's one: on social media like Twitter or Bluesky, it is possible to comment on someone else's post by 'quote-tweet/skeeting' that post. Here's an example.

As you can see, this isn't the sort of quote-skeet anybody would object to. It's absolutely wonderful that Jen Mac liked my short story enough, not only to read it, but to share it. Which is more than what most of you bums would do. Of course I'm delighted to be quote-skeeted there. But what if the quote looked like this?

Larry the Cat is complaining about the prevalence of tweets from Elon Musk on the website owned by Mr Musk. There are much worse ways to quote-tweet/skeet: often, the quoter waxes ironic about the quoted content, thus infuriating the original poster. Long, pointless arguments ensue. You can grab your popcorn and watch, or move on: either way, the topic under discussion has been brought to your attention. This alone tends to sour my day.

Now look at what Bluesky hath wrought. I can't find you a screenshot, sorry, because I forgot to screenshot it when I saw it, so you'll have to take my word for it. When someone quotes your post to argue with it, you have the option of removing that quote from their grasp. When you do, your would-be interlocutor's post will read something like, 'Look at this stupid post! How dumb is this person?' followed by a little box that says, 'Removed' or 'Blocked'.

Kids, this is elegant. It means I don't have to read the original post! No longer can my online friends continually betray my trust by interrupting my morning coffee, thrusting some ridiculous opinion in my face and demanding that I get as outraged about it as they were. After all, they hunted a whole half-hour to find that bad opinion, and that person and their 15 followers need to be set straight! Do we need to quote that classic cartoon about 'someone is wrong on the internet'? Don't make us come down there.

The biggest troll problem on social media isn't the trolls.

It's that the so-called reasonable people get turned on by outrage. Turn off the outrage: trolls don't get attention. They go away.

Now, the problem on Bluesky will be keeping all the new people entertained. Those of us who went over there because we like to follow academics talking about their research, and play hashtag games with other writers, and look at bird and kitty photos, were doing fine until this latest lot showed up. You know, the ones who spent two or three days exclaiming, 'Oh, it's so nice here! No Elon. No politicians. No trolls!'

Today, they've all started talking about politics. I've already seen an entomologist's considered opinion on medium-range ballistic missiles. (I have since un-followed him because he hasn't gone back to posting bugs.) An industrial historian wants to talk about the president-elect's insane cabinet picks. Guys, if I have to mute you, I will. When someone does you a favour, say 'thank you.' And don't bring all that leftover baggage with you.

I think we can learn something from social media that can apply to RL here. It's all a matter of what – and who – you're listening to. I'm not suggesting we be Polyannas, shutting our ears to the 'negative' and failing to notice danger. I'm suggesting that we learn to amplify the salutary and refuse to give the idiotic breathing room. Normalise ignoring stupidity rather than calling it out. Its entertainment value is vastly overrated. Instead follow the old philosopher, who wrote, 'If anything is worthy of praise, think on that.' I'm pretty sure that if we do that, it will not even occur to anyone to lob missiles at their neighbour. Or throw away perfectly good vaccines.

Or, for that matter, wonder how many books billionaires read.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

02.12.24 Front Page

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