Eat Fresh

The word forwarding has been used in many a context, however Id be willing to bet most in my generation associate "forwarding" with email and maybe the occasional text. It offers a quick, mindless way to get the information you've just read to a vast audience, that being anyone in your email contacts or phone book. Harris goes a step farther and uses the term as a writer "forwarding a text by taking words, images or ideas from it and putting them to use in new contexts." Its a way of taking someone elses ideas and expanding on them, or writing about the topics in a way that offer a new angle in the analysis of the situation/text.


The blog/online newspaper The Onion exemplifies this concept of "forwarding." They take a standard issue news headline and tweak it in a brilliant, satirical kind of way that appeals to everyone reading it. Obviously, much is lost in translation; The Onions whole agenda is to take just a small part of a story or idea and make ridiculously exaggerated points about it. So most of the truth part is gone. As in anything that is "forwarded", Harris argues that "although you may gain readers for a text [thanks to the internet], but you lose control of it once you send it to the public sphere." He references Plato in that he thought that
"texts can become fatherless, detached from their authors and interpreted recklessly." But its not all bad. In the example of The Onion, whats lost in the information not being completely truthful is gained by the piece being so funny! The best part is that its not only funny, but incredibly witty at the same time. As such, it has more of an intellectual vibe rather than just the likes of a comic strip.