'Daily Show's' Jon Stewart on Instagram: 'Wow, that's really lame'

By Jessica Guynn

April 11, 2012 12 AM PT

Leave it to “The Daily Show”host Jon Stewart to express the collective shock over Facebook paying $1 billion for Instagram.

“What is Instagram?” Stewart asked.

When told it’s a mobile app that makes your photos look like they were taken with a Polaroid, he’s even more baffled at the blockbuster price tag.

“A billion dollars of money? For a thing that kind of ruins your pictures?” he exclaims. “The only Instagram worth a billion dollars would be an app that instantly gets you a gram.”

Stewart turns to his senior youth correspondent Jessica Williams to explain yet another technology story that makes absolutely no sense to him.

“How in god’s name is that worth a billion dollars?” he asked.

“What?” Williams retorted. “Because it’s awesome.”

“Before Instagram, if I wanted my pictures to look like they were taken in the ‘60s, I’d have to invent a time machine and travel back 50 years,” Williams said. “You know how much a time machine would cost to build?”

Probably a billion dollars, she adds, not to mention the risks of screwing up the space-time continuum.

Instagram’s price tag wasn’t the only rich part of the show.

Stewart also took on Google’s augmented reality glasses, which he called “a nose-mounted version of the Google we love,” before exploring the possible pitfalls of getting so up-close and personal, especially in New York City.

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