The Unremarkable Decline of Cultural Significance The Saturday quiz recently asked readers to identify the artist who claimed "the most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald's.
" This seemingly innocuous question belies a broader cultural trend: the gradual erosion of our collective attention span and the devaluation of cultural significance.
We live in an era where high art and low culture have become increasingly indistinct, and it's precisely this kind of superficiality that allows a statement as vacuous as "McDonald's is the most beautiful thing in Florence" to be uttered without consequence.