VANCOUVER - Reports are in that an otherwise interesting TED talk titled “How Friendship Will Transform Democracy” has ceased to relay information about its topic and is currently spending a minute and forty-five seconds on a fucking word cloud.

 

“We asked people throughout the country to write which words come to their mind when we say ‘friendship’, and this is what we got,” said the presenter Dr Mark Sonderson, switching the slide over to a word cloud, apparently believing that this would convince his audience more than sharing his research, results, evidence, or methodology.

 

He proceeded to go over individual words in the word cloud, as though his audience could not read or process basic visual information. The word “friend” was written very large in the center. “But notice how nobody wrote the word ‘Democracy’,” said Sonderson, whose tone of voice made it seem like he really thought he was communicating something interesting to his audience.

 

At press time, Sonderson moved on to his next slide, an graph with unlabeled axes titled “Change”.