I’ve been called a snob and an elitist more than once, so it’s a good lesson, I suppose, to have the tables turned by my daughter, Rachel, the Internet snob. She’s the one who disparages the use of Papyrus (a font) and exclamation points and any excess of capitalization (let’s not even mention caps lock). Our new animated advertisements (such as the one for the Encyclopedia of China at the top of the Good Library Blog) and banners (I love this banner for our forthcoming World History Bytes, with little running archers) just barely pass muster. I showed her the video introductions that seem to be proliferating on websites and conference announcements, and suggested we could add some Chinese music, too. “You do that and I quit!” she said–with an exclamation point.
Internet snobbery rears its head
About the Author: Karen Christensen
Karen Christensen is an entrepreneur, environmentalist, and writer. She is the owner and CEO of Berkshire Publishing Group, a research associate of the Fairbank Center at Harvard, a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and founder of the Train Campaign. She was a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Press, Her Substack newsletter, The Way We Live Now, has over 12,000 subscribers: www.karenchristensen.substack.com.
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