The thieves of time
One Friday in April 2016, as the American presidential race intensified, more than three million people watched two reporters wrap rubber bands around a watermelon. At the height of the 45-minute live broadcast on social media, 800,000 people were watching simultaneously as the pressure – both the psychological kind, and the physical pressure on the watermelon – ramped up. (Others watched the recorded version later.) After some 686 rubber bands, something unsurprising happened: the watermelon exploded, messily. The reporters highfived, and ate some watermelon. The broadcast ended. The world continued its orbit around the Sun.
The watermelon broadcast wasn’t culturally momentous in itself; indeed, looking at the internet today – with its Russian election interference, abusive trolling, fake news, and neo-Nazis – it feels like a throwback to
