Week 2610

TIL my online writing style with copious ellipses, a careful ratio of periods and exclamation points, and emoji is optimized to alienate people of every generation.

It’s not “kids these days” that make me yell at clouds, but the dopamine cartel.

In 2008, I was angry about a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article that blamed a car, rather than driver, for a death.

16 years later, I tried to track down the broken URL and find their current headlines today are blaming cars for crashing into buildings and running over and dragging people.

I still want to be annoyed at this phenomenon; as ascribing sin to our tools helps motorists evade responsibility. But maybe I should embrace that we’re casting moral failings to “cars” so we might determine that they are evil and need to be banned from places with people.

EDIT: I recently redisovered Erica C. Barnett’s more articulate rant:

Imagine how the headlines would be different if the man who broke the girl’s legs with his SUV had done so with his bare hands.