With the New York primary in the rear window, let’s take a break to talk about something other than politics and, you know, the utter destruction of civilization.
Instead, let’s talk about the Internet and the utter destruction of civilization. I point you now to exhibit #5,742,337:
Mashable has a long-formish profile of Elliot and Jessica Tebele. They are, in descending order of importance, Millennials, New Yorkers, and Instagram celebrities.
What do their Instagram accounts do? They curate memes. And they have lots of “followers.” If you think this sounds insipid, you have no idea. Elliot started his Instagram account first. Mashable explains:
So, like, the happy couple keeps Instagramming and meming and then Justin Bieber texts Elliot and the whole thing is, like, basically The Decline and Chill of Rome condensed into 2,000 words. But with a bunch of artfully staged photos of the two hipsters.
Yet life isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. The couple describes how they had a falling out with another Instagram celebrity, Josh Ostrovsky (who goes by the handle The Fat Jewish). The friendship began when Jessica approached him at a wedding and accused him of stealing Elliot’s memes. (Which, it’s important to understand, are themselves taken from other people.) Ostrovsky, evidently, didn’t mind being accused of meme-theft in private:
There’s more—so much more—in the piece. Remember the old Buckley line about how he’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the phone book, rather than 2,000 members of the Harvard faculty? I’m not sure that holds any more; it’s probably a close call.
But ask yourself this: Even if you’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the phone book, how would you feel about the proposition if we were talking about the first 2,000 people on Instagram?
If you want to get really depressed, consider this: You think politics is ridiculous now with a reality TV star running for president? Just wait. In 20 years we’ll have social media stars running. And we’ll probably look back on 2016 as a golden age of high-minded civics.
