There were so many words on the
internet
. Every second there were walls of text being generated by humans and machines alike. Thoughts. Ideas. Sentiments. Opinions. A lot of them were were indifferent in content and theme, although unique in arrangement. At one point the old man strived to consume as many words as possible. As a kid he was obsessed with reading, he swore that he would read all the books out there one day.
That dream went out the window once he was old enough to realize there were just too many books. Then came the quality of quantity era. He would only read the good books. He spent two decades reading literature. Until one day he snapped.
He no longer cared for qualiy. He sought curation of a certain kind. The
American
newspaper
.
You could pick one newspaper and read it throroughly. Could read every damn word on it everyday. And that's what he had done since four years prior. He had read every single damn issue of the
New York Times
. Every word. Most of the times he'd be here at Larry's. But today something was off. He was irritated. There was a group of kids. Loud. And on their fifth or sixth round of coffee refills. When the hell were they leaving, he wondered.
"Say what's wrong?"
"What's that Larry?" The old man looked over his reading glasses.
"You're face. You look like you just smelled something you don't like."
"Oh. Nothing. You know. Kids these days." he rolled his eyes at Larry over to the kids.
"Ha. Yeah. Loud. And self absorbed. But you know what? I miss having that kind of energy in here."
"You and I will have to agree to disagree on that one, Larry."