"And nothing can stop it?" "Nothing I know of," he replied sadly. "The best way to stop this is to not allow it to start—sort of a minimum entry requ… - Jasper Fforde

My father said it was a delightfully odd—and dangerously self-destructive—quirk of humans that we were far more interested in pointless trivia then in genuine news stories.

“James Crometty!” demanded Bowden. “Did you kill him?”
“I kill a lot of people,” whispered Felix7. “I don’t remember names.”
“You shot him six times in the face.”
The dying killer smiled.
“That I remember.”
“Six times! Why?”
Felix7 frowned and started to shiver.
“Six was all I had,” he answered simply.

“Incredibly enough, reality TV has just gotten worse.”
“Is that possible? I asked. “Wasn’t Celebrity Trainee Pathologist the pits?” I thought for a moment. “Actually, Whose Life Support Do We Switch Off? was worse. Or maybe Sell Your Granny. Wow, the choice these days makes it also tricky to decide.
Bowden laughed.
“I’ll agree that Granny lowered the bar for distasteful program makers everywhere, but RTA-TV, never one to shrink from a challenge, has devised Samaritan Kidney Swap. Ten renal-failure patients take turns trying to convince a tissue-typed donor—and the voting viewers—which one should have his spare kidney.”
I groaned. Reality TV was to me the worst form of entertainment—the modern equivalent of paying sixpence to watch lunatics howling at the wall down at the local madhouse.