The Death Of Awe In The Age Of Awesome

It was a seemingly innocuous YouTube clip that got me thinking. A fellow toddler-parent showed it to me, with the accompanying explanation that it had become a highly effective way of pacifying her daughter, like a sort-of video-tranquilizer.

Look, she said, and, presenting her phone to our pair of two-year-olds, bid me watch as their expressions began to glaze over. On the screen, a dozen or so Kinder-egg-style treats were arrayed in two neat lines. Then a woman’s manicured hands — belonging to “a Brazilian ex-pornstar,” my friend informed me, absently — reached in, and began to open egg after egg after egg.

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