@Daojoan Interesting read :) I do remember TED paving the way for more honest discussion around social topics on YouTube. They made it possible to say "Let me send you a TED talk on x issue" with less social taboo than was previously there. And for that I think it is worth celebrating.

I haven't followed them too closely for the last half-decade, but it does seem that either TED has changed, or the world has. Perhaps this is the changing of the millenial guard as you mentioned!

@Daojoan I remember watching one of these in college, where the speaker recommended folding a paper towel in half before drying your hands with it in order to reduce the number you use.

The crowd lost their minds fully and completely, like he’d just solved deforestation in front of them. I felt like there was a joke I wasn’t in on?

(I do still dry my hands that way today)

@Daojoan

I am a Boomer who was teaching Millennials at the time. I was teaching psychology and used the talks as summaries of the various chapters I was teaching. For the most part, I thought they reinforced what was in the text showing that working scientists were talking about the same things.

My students seemed to not care for the talks at all, it just added 20 minutes at the end of class. No one ever discussed anything. Maybe that is just the way it is at community college.

However, it turned out that (as you point out in your article) many of those "working scientists" were oversimplifying at best and were outright frauds at worst. Pretty much none of the TED talks I used in class have lasted.

The only two talks that I think still have value today that I showed in class were Ze Frank's "Am I Human" and the "4 AM Mystery," by Rives: https://www.ted.com/talks/rives_the_4_a_m_mystery?language=en

@Daojoan This is my favorite TED talk: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dDClQv1SeeE&pp=ygUidGVkIHRhbGsgbmF0aW9uYWxpc20gdnMgZ2xvYmFsaXNtIA%3D%3D

You know why I love it?

@Daojoan an interesting article!

I haven't watched TED talks for a while.
I used to, and a lot were quite interesting, although it did bug me that some of them could have been a lot longer.
They usually served as an introduction to the subject / project though.

Disappointingly, some of the projects mentioned never seemed to get to past the planning stages.
Obviously that's a risk with any start up, but it felt like a lot were little more than concepts.

There were some great ideas in them though 😞

@Daojoan Man, why does everything have to be a problem with you people?

TED talks aren't enabling poverty. You are by blaming TED talks for your indolence, selfishness ans cowardice. Go put guns to the heads of the GOP like you've been yearning to do all these years and then we can talk.

@Daojoan I hadn't before considered the connection between TED talks and the Millennial worldview, self view, and mode of media consumption. I suppose the rise of YouTube and video streaming in general is part of that same landscape.

I know the piece speaks to a different generation than me since I had to look up the word "Picotop"!

Urban dictionary says "The highest price an asset trades at over the course of a market cycle." Huh. Pico for me still suggests something tiny, not big. 🤷

@Daojoan

When I first heard of these things (#TEDTalks) I thought they were neat.