What exactly happened with Billie Eilish at the Wall Street Journal Magazine Innovator awards last week? Look it up, and you have a perfect thumbnail of the modern information environment, its highs and lows. You can find out the exact words used by the event host, Stephen Colbert, as he introduced her and announced that the 23-year-old singer was giving away $11.5m (£8.8m) to fight food poverty and the climate crisis. You can find out the exact words she used after she took the stage. “We’re in a time right now where the world is really, really bad and really dark and people need empathy and help more than kind of ever, especially in our country,” she said. You can also get straight to the controversial bit. “Love you all, but there’s a few people in here that have a lot more money than me. If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but yeah, give your money away, shorties.”
You can get an instant read on Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction, at least if you believe the New York Post – he was there while his wife, Priscilla Chan, received an award, and he signalled his displeasure by reportedly refusing to clap. You can do a deep dive on what Eilish meant by “shortie” (was it a catcall, an endearment or a simple statement of that fact that Zuckerberg is 5ft 7in and, by sheer coincidence, so is Jeff Bezos?). And you’ll find plenty of global backlash, so familiar and predictable that it feels almost naive to question its assumptions. “As gen Z are wont to do,” one Sky News Australia presenter said, “she seems to be a bit of a socialist, despite the fact that she has millions and millions of dollars in the bank.” He segues straight to Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York City, noting that his biggest support is from “high-income earners”.
