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2745 Redefining America Slaven Vlasic/Getty ImagesOn the Internet, We%u2019re Always Famous Chris Hayes Chris Hayes (b. 1979) hosts a weekday news show and a weekly podcast for MSNBC. An author, news anchor, and political commentator, Hayes earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy from Brown University. He has written four books, including the best seller Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy (2012). His television show, All In with Chris Hayes , has won two Emmy Awards. He is an editor at large at The Nation . KEY CONTEXT Hayes wrote the following essay for a 2021 issue of the New Yorker , at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. With many schools and businesses closed, social media influencers and internet communities had risen to even greater prominence in many Americans%u2019 daily lives. KEY CONTEXT Hayes wrote the following essay for a 2021 issue of the The fennec fox is the smallest fox on earth and cute as a button. It has mischievous dark eyes, a small black nose, and impish sixinch ears %u2014 each several times larger than its head. The fennec is native to the Sahara, where its comically oversized auricles play two key roles: they keep the fox cool in the baking sun (blood runs through the ears, releases heat, and circulates back through the body, now cooler), and they give the fox astoundingly good hearing, allowing it to pick up the comings and goings of the insects and reptiles it hunts for food. The children%u2019s section of the Bronx Zoo features a human-sized pair of fennec-fox ears that give an approximation of the fox%u2019s hearing. Generations of New Yorkers have pictures of themselves with their chins resting on a bar between the two enormous, sculptural ears, taking in the sounds around them. I first encountered the ears as a kid, in the eighties. In my memory, inhabiting the fox%u2019s hearing is disquieting. The exhibit is not in the middle of the Sahara on a moonlit night. The soundscape is not deathly quiet, dusted by the echoes of a lizard whooshing through the sand. The effect is instant sensory overload. You suddenly hear everything at once %u2014 snippets of conversation, shrieks, footsteps %u2014 all of it too much and too loud. Imagine, for a moment, you find yourself equipped with fennec-fox-level hearing at a work function or a cocktail party. It%u2019s hard to focus amid the cacophony, but with some effort you can eavesdrop on each and every conversation. At first you are thrilled, because it is thrilling to peer into the private world of another person. Anyone who has ever snuck a peek at a diary or spent a day in the archives sifting through personal papers knows that. Humans, as a rule, crave getting up in people%u2019s business. But something starts to happen. First, you hear something slightly titillating, a bit of gossip you didn%u2019t know. A couple has separated, someone says. %u201cThey%u2019ve been keeping it secret. But now Angie%u2019s dating Charles%u2019s ex!%u201d Then What parallels does Hayes draw between the fennec fox%u2019s ears and the effects of the internet?11Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.