Via oreillyradar:

Some lovely bits from Paul Ford’s excellent piece, “Facebook and the Epiphanator: An End to Endings?”

“There should be a word for that feeling you get when an older person — and not much older, so quickly are things changing — shames him or herself by telling young people how to live. I’d vote for Bedeutungslosigkeitschmach, or ‘irrelevance shame,’ (made up with the help of Google translate) or perhaps Rünschmerz, the horrifying gut pain one experiences watching Andy Rooney.”

“Google regularly announces initiatives to ‘save’ the newspaper and book industries — like a modern-day hunter who proclaims himself a conservationist.”

“I keep sensing some serious hurt feelings from the older-media side — ‘Why would you love that thing instead of me?’ They act like my wife would if I brought home a RealDoll. But it’s not like that. I don’t think people love Twitter or Facebook in the same way they might love Parks and Recreation or Twilight. Rather, we like the beer and tolerate the bottle. And even if we have those other browser tabs open, we’re still hungry for endings.”

Those are just highlights. This is a phenomenal essay.