A fun thing about the internet is how quickly things pop up and how quickly they fade away. It's all the usual human trends, but faster. It decades for T.V. to become the anchor of pop culture, its 3-channel heyday lasted for decades, and even in its current, sports-addled twilight, you still can't miss T.V.'s influence. Meanwhile, in the internet, Twitter's had a similar arc in about ten years.

Who wants excitement about the new Apple computer you can put on your face? In another year, it'll either be the new iPod (R.I.P., iPod) or the new P.D.A. (R.I.P., Palm Pilot). While one of those outcomes is better for Apple shareholders, neither is all that long-lasting. Our voracious appetite for change won't let things last. That's why trend pieces tend to be less interesting than trend requiems. 

For this week's reading, we have two nice pieces on the requiem front. The topics are diverse, journalists writing for pageviews and the metaverse, but the outcome is just the same: the time between hot-new status and old-dead status is pretty thin. The pervasiveness and evanescence of these trends show the strength of our species' flocking tendencies. We love finding a new fad only slightly less than we like declaring a fad passé.

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