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The moment of impact at the famous Crush, Texas train wreck in 1896. Many of the 40,000 onlookers were injured by debris.
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Some of the best-attended spectator events of the 19th century were staged train wrecks. Decommissioned locomotives intentionally smashed into each other at high speed before grandstands of onlookers. Perhaps this love of calamity constitutes an antecedent for the phenomenon of “hate watching.” Yes, our species is so reliably bitchy that NBC strategically presumed a certain percentage of this week’s Peter Pan Live! audience would be snarky tweeters hoping for something to go wrong.
That reminds me of a few too many college committee meetings. You know how they are. Somebody presents a new idea. Maybe a curriculum upgrade, maybe the renaming of a course. And those around the table offer criticism. They almost always offer criticism. They offer criticism because it demonstrates they’ve read the agenda or studied the proposal. Much less often (in my own experience) do they say, simply, “I like it,” “Count me in,” or “Let’s move forward.”
