From the department of sticklers

By now, the Internet-savvy among you surely have noticed a trend: parodying Facebook news feeds to provide a laugh at the expense of some literary, political, or divine figure. Always good for a chortle, and nobody enjoys a chortle more than me. But look closer; doesn’t something about these strike as you as jarring, dissonant—just plain wrong? That’s right, the feeds go in the wrong direction! All the world knows that you read a Facebook feed in reverse chronological order—from the bottom up. And yet these spoofs are written from the top down! O tempora! O mores! Even the University of Chicago Magazine isn’t immune. What’s next? Will cats marry dogs? Aristotelians become Platonists?

You could gnash your teeth in woe or spam editors Mary Ruth Yoe and Amy Puma with hate mail. But why not join the U of C Magazine fan page on Facebook? If every one of you joins, perhaps we can show them the folly of their ways.

Benjamin Recchie, AB’03

May 7, 2009