

TED Is a God Damn Cult (2013) - edward
http://beyoungandshutup.com/2013/07/23/ted-is-a-god-damn-cult/

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TrevorJ
When you look at TED in context it's a lot harder to poke fun at it. It's a
vast improvement on most pop infotainment out there, if only because you
usually get to hear a brief survey of a subject right from the source.

Most TED talks amount to hearing somebody knowledgeable in a subject
articulate what makes them excited about their field. For the average person,
there's a lot of value in that.

On the spectrum of visual media with reality television at one end, and Online
MIT lectures at the other, TED provides something great: it's entertaining,
engaging, and more often then not you do learn one or two things that you want
to look into at a deeper level.

Nobody is pretending TED is a replacement for a true college level lecture on
a subject, are we really so cynical that we think it's somehow wrong to want
to get excited about some random corner of the sciences once in a while?

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Torgo
Criticize TED, cite "the 20 all-time worst TED talks" by a Buzzfeed editor who
also wrote "39 Things That Look Like Boobs."

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stephentmcm
I think the fact buzzfeed has a 20 worst TED talks is much more telling than
that the editor having written about boobs. Or maybe the fact they have
highlights the issue.

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LastZactionHero
I can't tell if this is satire...

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davekeck
For reference, the linked (and hilarious) Onion Talks video is satire:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s)

But the blog post itself isn't. Or at least I'm not sure how quotes like "TED
Talks are designed more to create an experience of feeling enlightened than to
actually enlighten" could be considered satire.

