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The Onion's joyous crucifixion of social media gurus

After SNL had already suggested that social media experts were bags full of wind, The Onion offers a TED talk parody in which the truth about social media's value is revealed: "Nobody knows."

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read
The Onion/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

The present is social. The future is social. Media is social.

It's quite amazing that people still manage to hate each other so much.

Perhaps things are a little more complex than we first thought -- or perhaps social media experts truly are the troubling bags of wind that "Saturday Night Live" recently suggested they might be.

Less leaping on the bandwagon and more skewering the still-twitching carcass, The Onion has just released a video that masquerades as a TED talk.

I am grateful to TechCrunch for spotting this phenomenon, in which a sprightly intellectual young thing explains that social media is "the driving force behind the new economy."

You see? And you thought it was unemployment.

He then asks: "What does that mean?" as a slide emerges with the words: "Nobody Knows."

"I'm a successful social media consultant," he continues, "even though I've never had a thought or an original idea in my life."

He prides himself on putting social media on so many of the world's tongues.

"Social media eliminates the need to provide value to anyone," he declares, in a fit of spectacular honesty.

"Using your brains to think of an idea and your skills to implement it, that's the old model," he explains.

Anything that's old and requires effort is, quite simply, inefficient.

The whole thing is an utter joy, a celebration of "looking like you're doing work and people will pay you for it."

I am sure this is a life-motto that many of you will like and retweet in the coming minutes and hours.