Rives TED Talks - Part 2

This is the second half of my induction of Rives' TED Talks into the Permanent Collection. You can read part one here.

These two talks were given about seven years apart. The second continues the story, somehow, of the first.

The unhinged conspiracy theory that leads to nothing.

I love coincidences. I love connections. I love absurdity.

This talk is all three.

Rives goes on stage and presents to an audience of intellectuals who have spent the weekend listening to high-brow, cutting-edge talks, and captivates them with his charisma. The content is inconsequential. If you're going to say nothing, at least make it interesting. What sells it is the sincerity with which he delivers this hair-brained conspiracy theory.

On its own, I love this video. Imagine my delight when this next talk was uploaded:

The first video led Rives to create and curate a now-defunct website called fourinthemorning.com. (Rives, if you somehow are reading this, I am a web developer and would love to resurrect it.) The idea of "crowdsourcing" was novel. It was the idea of the positive communal power of the internet.

Side note: A Netflix queue, the order DVDs were sent to you, was shut down on September 29, 2023. RIP.

The turn of this video, where Rives is lightly reconnected with a college romance, is what secures its spot in my heart and the Permanent Collection. The idea that Twitter could connect you with your favorite authors, actors, or exes was alluring and not yet driven to toxicity by the algorithm.

When my now-wife and I were dating, I made her a scavenger hunt. It had codes hidden in a playlist that led her to our local bookstore, where a book was waiting for her. This was a delight to her, but also my personal ode to this video.

"This is just the kind of extravagance I used to take for granted even when I was extravagant."

I love this line. Extravagance often requires time, effort, and/or money, which often means that as we grow older, add responsibilities, and maybe get distracted, extravagances fall away. But I want to live extravagantly. I want to love extravagantly.

The internet is just another way we try to reach one another. So are mixtapes, playlists, books, and experiences, and those are often much more extravagant.

With that, I'd like to welcome Rives' 4 am videos to the Permanent Collection.