This short piece didn't go at all where I expected it to. In fact, its closing point is well-taken:

...Throw in Avatar, the Team Coco late-night wars, the recent return of American Idol—“Pants on the Ground”!—and the upcoming Super Bowl, and it’s actually been a pretty good stretch for mass culture.

Most remarkable about last Wednesday, though, was how much of our collective conversation preceded, rather than followed, these events.... In the age of social media, the analysis cycle has been reversed: We spend more time talking about what we think we’ll think than what we thought....

As it turns out, social media are just that—social. And all our Twitter feeds and Tumblrs need a parade of shared experiences in order to thrive. No wonder we’ve shifted the emphasis from post-event breakdown to pre-event build-up: Analysis (here’s what it is) is finite compared to speculation (what will it be?), which is inexhaustible. Once we experience something en masse—or even as we experience it—we splinter off to our myriad forums to broadcast our personal takes. Then we look quickly toward the next mass event on the horizon, and wonder what everyone will say about that.