āOh come, now, you donāt mean to let on that you like it?ā
The brush continued to move.
āLike it? Well, I donāt see why I oughtnāt to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?ā
That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forthāāāstepped back to note the effectāāāadded a touch here and thereāāācriticised the effect againāāāBen watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:
āSay, Tom, let me whitewash a little.ā
– Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
In 2003, a 19-year-old Harvard undergrad named Mark Zuckerberg had an idea: heād create a website for Harvard students to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of their classmates. He called it Facemash.
Later that year, Zuckerberg changed the name of the site to The Facebook, and, in 2005, the site was renamed, simply, āFacebook.ā
Tevye: Chicago, America? We are going to New York, America.
Lazar: Weāll be neighbors. My wife, Fruma Sarah, may she rest in peace, has a brother there.
Tevye: Thatās nice.
Lazar: I hate him, but a relative is a relative.
Collective Action Inaction inĀ Action
In the opening scenes of the 1971 film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof, the narrator, Tevye, introduces us to his village of Anatevka, which is a pretty fraught place where people are unhappy and danger is on the horizon. Nearly three hours and (spoiler alert) innumerable indignities and terrors later, Tevye and his neighbors leave the village, all to go their separate ways.