By Brad McLeod
BURNABY — A local man believes that he is just as well informed and educated as any full newspaper reader by simply reading the headlines.
Joe Rubin, a self-described intellectual, is certain that he is as much “in-the-know” as anyone else by only reading a very small per cent of a periodical’s content.
“I find the bulk of newspapers is just filler and doesn’t really add anything to one’s understanding,” commented Rubin. “It’s usually just filled with some dumb quote from somebody who doesn’t really have anything to say, but they publish every single insufferable word, and then they add some asinine statistic that doesn’t really mean anything.”
Rubin isn’t alone in his opinion; a poll conducted by The Peak amongst the student population has found that up to 42 per cent of readers only read the headlines most or some of the time.
“The headline is a snapshot that captures everything you need to know,” Rubin continued. “If I see a story that says ‘Three hundred dead in tragic conga line accident’, I know exactly what the story’s about; how could that possibly require any additional explanation?”
Rubin has stated that he hasn’t read more than a headline in over 15 years and has now found the time to not only read all his local papers but almost every national and international publication in the world, a fact he is known to bring up often in conversation with close friends, family and total strangers.
“I know a lot of people who will waste their entire morning reading one newspaper cover to cover,” he said. “I can get all that information in five minutes, know everything that’s going on, and not be suffocated by all that rhetoric, opinion and useless ‘information.’ ”
So just what does Rubin do with all his free time? He says that without newspapers taking up so much of his time, he has plenty of time to focus on his real passions.
“I like to watch movies — well I stay through the trailers, so that only takes a couple minutes — and I love music, but I just skip to the choruses so that’s pretty quick,” he explained. “I was thinking of traveling, but I usually end up flipping through post cards for the highlights. I keep hearing about this thing called Twitter.”
Despite a wide array of “interests,” Rubin actually spends the majority of his time finding new ways to save time. He believes that because of his efficiency he is well on his way to becoming the most educated man on the planet, although the definition of irony seems to have evaded his education.
