This week’s Coffee & Conversation topic: Cinnamon Toast Crunch, NFTs, and the Future of Art, Truth, and Ownership. Join us on Zoom this Friday, April 2 at 3 PM EST.
Twitter’s monster of the week last week was a cinnamon toasted-shrimp. Or the man who claims to have found one in his box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. The truth remains to be seen.
Twitter users became consumed by the unimaginably gross accusations levied by writer and podcast host Jensen Karp, which included finding shrimp tails, bits of rope, and more odds and ends inside his cereal box. Armchair investigators determined the most likely explanation was an undetected rat’s nest at the processing site.
As the story gained national attention, former romantic partners and friends of Karp came forward with accusations that Karp has a history of deception and manipulation for personal gain. These accusations not only raised questions about his credibility in the case of the cinnamon toasted-shrimp but also about credibility and truth online in general.
Has the internet and social media forever broken our ability to trust new information? What role has the increased prevalence of conspiracy theories in popular culture played in breaking this trust? Can we ever build it back?
When Twitter acts as a people’s courtroom, as it did with Karp’s character witnesses, who can be believed? How do we decide?
How much research is an average person expected to do to find the truth online and vet information? Do social media platforms owe us better oversight of content?
Would we be better off with a centralized agency that fact-checks content before things can be published online (or elsewhere)? Is it better for a large number of people to be potentially misinformed than it is for a small group of people to control content for all?
On Friday, we will also discuss the burgeoning NFT market, and what it means for the future of art and ownership. We’ll ask questions like: who gets to own a moment? How can we begin to understand that concept? Are moments worth $70M?
Suggested Reading:
- The Curious Case of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch Box (The New York Times)
- The Cinnamon Toast Crunch-Shrimp Saga is Getting Dark (New York Magazine)
- Ars Technica’s Non-Fungible Guide to NFTs (Ars Technica)
- How two friends made art history buying a $70M digital work (Associated Press)