was it We Didn't Start the Fire

No, but you're not the first to guess that!

don't leave us hanging--what's the video?

"Made me understand that, truly, they *didn't* start the fire"

Wow this is absolute goals. Also…was…was it “We Didn’t Start the Fire?”

This is what everyone is guessing! I hadn’t seen the video before @annakornbluh.bsky.social guessed it earlier today. It is amazing. I have no idea which video the student is referring to, since I have taught several.

🥰

was the video We Didn't Start The Fire, say the video was We Didn't Start The Fire

With images youtu.be/cDPnsTRAvIM?...

Fall Out Boy We didn’t start the fire update going back in time before LLMs. Cover song with new lyrics youtu.be/ijYSkpDoiFE?... Cambridge Analytica, 9/11

I also am dying to know the video! Was it Koyaanisqatsi???

Have never taught that. I don’t know which video they are referring to. Alas.

It was not. Sorry. I don’t know what it was. (I actually have used lots of music videos over the year. But never Billy Joel. Though now I’m gonna watch that video, which I have no memory of.)

Holy 😳 I could easily spend a week on that. The ‘80s section literally triggered me tho.

It’s so good!!!

The video is so much better than one of the (perhaps unfairly) most maligned songs in pop history.

For teaching purposes I might lean Allentown which BJ said he was surprised to learn people think has gay visual subtext (it's not sub at all).

I especially love that this is so unpolished. Kid didn’t even have to think about it.

🤯🤯🤯

To be fair, there is clearly a contingent of students who get stoned before my Media Studies classes. They think I don’t know. But I know. I just don’t think it’s doing me any disservice.

I want to know what the video was….? We Didn’t Start the Fire?

This is what everybody keeps guessing, but I have never taught it (nor seen it before today). I don't know the answer. I've taught several music videos over the years.

Side note: have you ever taught Connecticut Yankee? What’s your approach to the text? It’s so much longer and weirder than I remember from reading it in grad school 🤔

I teach it regularly in my gen-ed satire class, in a section of the syllabus called “Satire as Apocalypse.” It’s a big book, so a hard sell — trebly so in these post-pandemic days — but I’ve always been happy I did it.

Now that I’m into the rhythm of the book a bit more, I’m feeling more inclined to send the students on the full journey

The bicycle scene makes it all worthwhile.

Have never taught whole novel. Have taught excerpts in a Twain seminar. It is long & weird, the former of which students don’t like, the latter of which they do. I focused on the SciFi opening & the apocalyptic end, but that meant I lost a lot of the social development satire in the middle.

That’s what I’m wrestling with right now. They’re scheduled to read the whole but I’m considering shifting to just the beginning and end, but also feel the end hits so much harder if you’ve taken the whole journey 😩

💯 the gradual dehumanization which parallels technological progress is the power of the novel. And also the reason to teach it now!

My thought too! And they just read Time Machine, a book that quietly revels in the access to mechanical omniscience, so I love the idea of the two books staging the conversation concerning industrial “progress”

I would take that course. Sounds so interesting.

It’s a great pairing.

🙏🙏🙏

I would love evals like that! My goal is to be one of the eccentrics (maybe I am now with my 80s pop culture shirts & decor). But do something like gallop across campus to save time, have people ask "is that guy ok?" And my students respond "oh that's just Dr. H, he's uh, just kinda like that."