h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm fast becoming a fan of Twitter - mostly as a reader, although there's a Post challenge coming on 8 May that's entirely due to a contact...

The instant crowd over there will tell you the 'news' before it becomes news. The tweeters also provide raw data for any number of academic papers by sociologists, psychologists, and postmodernists of every stripe.

I enjoy mentally composing the titles for these papers. Such as the one in the subject line.

Yesterday, I observed gleefully, as did so many others, the near-apocalyptic collapse of something called the Fyre Festival. In case you don't know, Fyre Festival was an elites-only rock concert, billed to be held on a private island in the Bahamas, at the utterly exclusive price of around $12,000 per ticket. It was supposed to be the ultimate luxury experience, with only the hottest groups, superior-type A-list beautiful people, something called Instamodels...you get the idea.

Forget Woodstock: this was more like Disaster Area, complete with kamikaze black spaceship. Only it didn't exactly happen that way.

The 'big idea' people had envisioned something beautiful: a super-festival that would make them 'legends' (their word). They've probably become legends, all right. Just not in the way they would have liked.

The big take-home message here is: if you want to have a rock festival, you need to pay the artists. You need to put up tents, and rent buildings. You need to hire portable toilets. You need...oh, so many things. You need to organise the catering. (Go on Twitter for the photos of the cheese sandwiches attendees were served. Go on, you need a laugh.)

All of this work was too tedious for the 'big idea' people. They were sorely let down when the peons they hired failed to make their dreams come true - possibly because many quit when they suspected, probably correctly, that they would not be paid.

Fyre Festival turned into a disaster. You can read about it here:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/the-fyre-festival-was-a-luxury-nightmare

But Fyre Festival was far from a disaster for Twitter. The joint was buzzing. The tweets were oh-so-instructive. By reading yesterday's Twitter feed, I have discovered something vitally important about social media.

Thoughtful observers will point out that Twitter's favourite mode is outrage. Outrage is very popular on Twitter, as evidenced by the United Airlines flap a couple of weeks ago. But I have discovered the medium's secret passion, the meme it loves even better than outrage and 'x-shaming'...

Schadenfreude. Twitter loves Schadenfreude. Fyre Festival is all about Schadenfreude.

The event has allowed literature buffs to display their erudition. Many, many references could be spotted to 'Lord of the Flies'. Fair enough: finally, all those millennials had a use for that tedious book they had to read in school. I for one thoroughly enjoyed this JG Ballard pastiche, and I hope you will, too:

http://boingboing.net/2017/04/28/already-regretting-assigning-j.html

Personally, I don't think there IS a moral to Fyre Festival, but the resemblance of these people to clueless French aristocrats of the 1780s might yet prove me wrong...

I'm so glad Twitter brings me such insight and amusement, far from the scene of flying umbrellas and cheese-sandwich-fueled carnage.

Schadenfreude is one of my favourite words. I engineered its insertion into my latest PR venture by immersing myself into the mind of Jean-Luc Picard.

I will follow your links tomorrow (my day off) because I am intrigued. This is a new story on me, probably because I don't load Twitter now (even though I have an account) due to time constraints.

Please tell me you are going to write it up - possibly as an advert for the world's most beautiful* people only () - it could be hootoo's leading Fake News story!

*Beauty being in the eye of the beholder. Young people think that only young people can be beautiful. Wrinkles and lumpy bits can be beautiful too, to world-weary eyes. You should have seen Ian's face yesterday when I walked in after 4 days staying away due to the lurgy. I felt like Miss Universe

Yes, I like the word Schadenfreude too, and spotted it in the Q Entry - smoothly engineered!

Beautiful is another lovely word... My partner and I alone didn't think we were beautiful or handsome, but through each other's eyes we were beautiful and handsome, because the love in us shines out

Now, you two have just demonstrated something far more valuable than Schadenfreude, right there.

Just think about the power of love: it generates beauty where others are too dull to see it. Love can make reality, see?

Like my greatnephew, resplendent in his graduation robes last night, insisting on us aged relatives being in his photo, so he had the whole family...

I'll see if I can find enough info, GB - that's a thought, it would make a good lesson in fake news.

Congratulations to your great nephew,

And yes, love is beautiful I have been truly blessed

And on second thought, I think I'll leave the Fyre Festival alone - it's definitely sub judice now.

Not only lawsuits, but criminal charges.

sounds prudent!