I know I am a bit conservative with my media consumption – I still read printed books and occasionally even buy CD’s – and I understand that most people don't want to read long articles. Seen that, read some of it, clicked Like, now next. I can live that, but sometimes people’s superficial behavior on the web bothers me. You miss great things if you don't stop, search, discover and read on.
A good example is the Facebook post about the star violinist Joshua Bell playing at a metro station. It has been floating around for years, and why not, the story is interesting: Would anybody notice if the fiddler at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world?
It’s just that the post I have seen on Facebook is a poorly written summary of the event, and people don’t seem to care about finding out more. If you spent 30 seconds searching, you could find the actual article, which won a Pulitzer price for feature writing in 2008. Even listening to the whole violin performance is possible online (great background music for writing, by the way).
It is kind of ironic. A typical excuse from the people in the article for missing the exceptional free performance at the metro station was that they were too busy and had other things on their mind.