We Love the Internet 2017/33: The Down the breitbart hole edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• How to stop professionalising ourselves to death
• ‘Raining clicks’: why we need better thinking on technology, data and journalism

Reference points

• Time traveller

Longer reads:

• Instagram’s Kevin Systrom Wants to Clean Up the Internet
• How SB Nation Profits Off An Army Of Exploited Workers
• When Silicon Valley Took Over Journalism
• Inside The Partisan Fight For Your News Feed
• We analyzed 17 months of Fox & Friends transcripts. It’s far weirder than state-run media

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Racist soap dispenser
• TWEET – The Animated Trump Parody Music Video
• Man Obliterates A Full Cord Of Wood With Double Axes
• Man suffering from horrible leg cramp.
• Garbage men fight the garbage can

Things to look at/read:

• Inside the Internet’s Obsession with “Slime” & “Oddly IKEA”: IKEA ASMR
• Punny Fantasy Football team names for every Premier League club
• How Air-Conditioning Conquered America (Even the Pacific Northwest)
• 12 Shocking Things I Learned by Working as a Butler at the Plaza Hotel

Animal corner

• A Corgi And Chicken Square Off In The Least Brutal Fight You’ll Ever See
• A Croissant-Shaped Pillow Was A Dream For This Hedgehog… Until It Became A Nightmare
• This Is, Uh, Not What You Want To See On A Hike
• the best thing you will see today
• so doggy school exists and this little guy is so excited to go

Tweets of the week:

• it’s 2017 grandpa we eat ass now
• I don’t know who originally came up ‘super callous fragile racist sexist nazi POTUS’), but I’d like to buy them a pint
• HISTORY OF US PRESIDENTS:
• “Tell Cersei. I want her to know it was me.”
• 1980: “I bet there will be flying cars in the future” 2017:
• The shameful legacy of Bullseye continues to blight our streets.
• no twitter drama will ever compare to my own father subtweeting me into the ground

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads

• Down the Breitbart Hole
• The Toxic Drama on YA Twitter
• Julian Assange, a man without a country
• To Catch a Counterfeiter
• Why do stars like Adele keep losing their voice?
• Unlearning the myth of American innocence
• Why we fell for clean eating

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We Love the Internet 2017/32: The How Instagram stories have changed dating forever edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• How Instagram Stories Have Changed Dating Forever
• How to End Google’s Monopoly
• We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in Reaction GIFs
• So, about this Googler’s manifesto.
• Segregated Valley: the ugly truth about Google and diversity in tech
• What do we talk about when we talk about Content (and media)?
• Capitalism the Apple Way vs. Capitalism the Google Way

Reference points

• Ten years ago
• A pretty long thread of some of my favourite innovative interactive narrative work lately

Longer reads:

• Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
• This Is How Your Fear and Outrage Are Being Sold for Profit
• This Is Probably The Only Story You Didn’t Hear About First From Bradd Jaffy And Kyle Griffin
• Can you trust the mainstream media?
• You are the product
• Firefox fights back
• How Two Brothers Turned Seven Lines of Code Into a $9.2 Billion Startup

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• H3VR Zero-G Akimbo Reloads Perfected!
• The History of Movie Title Sequences
• #Despacito with snoring
• Arrested Rebellion: Ron Howard’s Han Solo
• When you want to play solos like slash but your parents made you learn piano
• What Makes John Bonham Such a Good Drummer?

Things to look at/read:

• Our Broken Economy, in One Simple Chart
• The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
• Why Do Rich People Love Endurance Sports?
• Death of a F***ing Salesman
• A 100-tweet thread that will probs make most ppl in their 30s and 40s rethink their perspective on ALL relationships.

Animal corner

• This golden retriever can’t catch anything…
• Look, it’s Fiona the baby hippo!
• Elephant vs Goose
• Baby Goat Loves Ball
• Maybe Don’t Piss Off A Group Of Dead Leaf Mantises
• She trained her dog to block her head during a seizure, we don’t deserve dogs
• well this is highly satisfying

Tweets of the week:

• This actually is the worst opinion I’ve ever heard though
• I hereby call to order this meeting of the John Slattery Appreciation Society
• A concise argument for copy editors.
• i must go, my planet needs me
• Oh good god, no.
• Hey kid sorry your parents are straight up idiots but this was funny
• clare balding. just watched someone be gunned down on a pier.
• Sure, they had search high and low to find a jury who don’t hate Martin Shkreli. The sketch artist? Not held to the same standards

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads

• I joined a cult for four years and lost $1m. But maybe in the end I won.
• Why Are There No New Major Religions?
• Sunday Reads: The Filmography Of Jason Statham
• Film Crit Hulk SMASH: On Criticism In The Intersectional Age
• Aziz Ansari on Quitting the Internet, Loneliness, and Season 3 of Master of None
• What is a black professor in America allowed to say?
• Losing It in the Anti-Dieting Age

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We Love the Internet 2017/31: The Gillingham’s answer to 2 Fast 2 Furious edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• People Have Come Up With A Shameless Way To Generate Massive Video View Counts On Facebook
• Netflix is on the hook for $20 billion. Can it keep spending its way to success?
• Thousands of women try to make a living blogging and vlogging. Most fail.
• Why a Toaster Is a Design Triumph
• The Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed With YouTube
• Turn off your notifications. All of them.
• Only crap marketers mistake stereotypes for segments

Reference points

• Tech’s most dubious promises, from Bill Gates to Elon Musk
• Analyzing the Gender Representation of 34,476 Comic Book Characters
• The future of fake news: don’t believe everything you read, see or hear

Longer reads:

• For the New Far Right, YouTube Has Become the New Talk Radio
• South Park raised a generation of trolls
• The Worst Internet In America
• Zoë and the Trolls
• How to Make a Movie Out of Anything — Even a Mindless Phone Game

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Gillingham’s Answer To 2 Fast 2 Furious
• I’ve got a text! Love Island text message montage
• The sound illusion that makes Dunkirk so intense
• edgar wright and simon pegg on writing
• Don’t Stop Halfway Down A Waterslide. Just Don’t.

Things to look at/read:

• Why Americans Get Conned Again and Again
• The state of the boy band in 2017
• Norway anti-immigrant group mistakes bus seats for Muslim women in burkas
• The Stone Cold Stunner Is The Most Important Wrestling Move Of All Time
• Roger Ebert’s Zero-Star Movies
• How the fantasy of Peter Pan turned sinister
• People Who Tried to Take Panorama Shots and Ended Up Opening the Gates of Hell
• Nightmarish panoramic photo fails from across the internet

Animal corner

• the most normal thing in 2017 so far
• ok, this gif made my entire evening.
• This morning I’ve learned that the Otters See a Butterfly video is significantly improved by the addition of some Shostakovich.
• This is how an orphaned kangaroo goes to bed
• Cant believe how close i got to a deer!

Tweets of the week:

• When Theresa May met Justin Trudeau
• Any kid who finishes like this is a savage
• Mooch vs Reince
• BRUH WHY DIDNT YALL TELL ME THE NIGHT KING WAS SO SASSY
• New York reacts to magic! ( part 1)
• When the office water coolers get married.
• Her: I need me a man who can cook.. Me:
• Theresa May’s knee looks like Donald Trump. Pass it on.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads

• How ‘Sharknado’ Casts Its C-Listers and Nearly Landed Trump as President
• Why the scariest nuclear threat may be coming from inside the White House
• Strippers, Insane Asylums, Assassination, and Termites: Inside the Insane History of the World’s Greatest White House Replica
• Jon Ronson on bespoke porn: ‘Nothing is too weird. We consider all requests’
• Why I revisited every place I’ve ever lived

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We Love the Internet 2017/30: The Narrative patterns for data-driven storytelling edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• How BuzzFeed’s Tasty Conquered Online Food
• How “Game Of Thrones” Feeds Its Own Thinkpiece Industry
• I hacked my body for a future that never came
• How the L.A. Times used a serial narrative and smart design to bring in new subscribers
• Should America’s Tech Giants Be Broken Up?
• What Will Service Work Look Like Under Amazon?
• How Twitter Fuels Anxiety
• Instagram is pushing restaurants to be kitschy, colourful and irresistible to photographers

Reference points

• Narrative Patterns for Data-Driven Storytelling
• Top 20 slogans
• The Definitive Ranking of Email Greetings
• A Short History Of Classic Shows That Took Time To Get Good
• Taxonomy of Humans According to Twitter
• The future according to Elon Musk

Longer reads:

• The New Rules For Making It In Hollywood
• Take a trip to Los Angeles’ new internet celebrity summer camp
• The Future of College Is Facebook Meme Groups

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• 0 – 100 real quick!
• This Is The Strangest, Dumbest Minute Of Basketball We’ve Seen In A Long Time
• Perspective
• The Seinfeld theme but it’s made with a ruler but i don’t have a ruler.

Things to look at/read:

• One man’s two year quest to not finish Final Fantasy VII
• Louise Mensch’s Destructive Fantasies
• Disney is opening an immersive Star Wars Hotel where each guest gets a storyline
• On Repeat: Why People Watch Movies and Shows Over and Over
• In the ring with London’s feminist punk wrestlers
• The Mad Cheese Scientists Fighting to Save the Dairy Industry
• When athletes gotta go … where do they go?
• Baltimore Cop Doesn’t Realize His Body Camera Is Filming, Films Himself Planting Drugs At Crime Scene and The failure of police body cameras

Animal corner

• Hamster Has Epic Fail on Running Wheel
• Very disappointed with the results of his Schrodinger’s test
• “I’LL SAVE YOU”
• Here’s A Bush Full Of Kittens Playing Peekaboo Because You Deserve To Feel Happiness
• Just A Delightful Video Of Two Sea Lions Celebrating Their Release Back Into The Wild
• Doggy Is Overwhelmed With Doggy Emotion Upon Being Reunited With An Old Friend
• Goat breaks into Argonics’ Colorado office
• She gotta start learning what comes after the fun

Tweets of the week:

• When your straight friend Jean makes a funny joke
• pls never let this meme die
• Think we’ve finally found the definitive Danny Dyer interview.
• A DOG SHOULD BE ABLE TO PURSUE WHATEVER CAREER IT DAMN WELL WANTS.
• Hulk Hogan riding a motorcycle while some guy just chucks a dog into the river.
• Fixed the Thor Ragnarok poster
• my fav colour is also hitler
• Why you never wear GREEN on TV

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads

• The Hijacking of the Brillante Virtuoso
• How ‘Goal!’ Went from a Wild Idea to a Cult Movie Franchise for Football Fans
• The real cost of regeneration
• American culthoppers
• The Accent Whisperers of Hollywood
• The Rise and Fall of F. Lee Bailey, the Lawyer Who Set O.J. Simpson Free
• The Myth of Drug Expiration Dates

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We Love the Internet 2017/29: The Alex Jones rants as an indie folk song edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• We Live In The Peak TV World ‘Mad Men’ Created Ten Years Ago
• Content isn’t king
• Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets
• Who Killed The Encyclopedia?

Reference points

• Welcome to our start-up where everyone is twenty three years old
• The distribution of letters in English words

Longer reads:

• Back in action
• How Uber’s Hard-Charging Corporate Culture Left Employees Drained
• MTV Isn’t What It Used To Be
• The Netflix prize: How a $1m content changed binge watching forever

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Alex Jones Rants as an Indie Folk Song
• How to Survive in the World of Ice and Fire
• Motorcycle Garage Door Opener
• New York in Cinema – Supercut
• Blasting down bad track Doubleheader on the ND&W Railway
• A Supercut Of People Walking Into Stuff While Looking At Their Phones
• Husband Films His Wife Relaxing In The Ocean, Getting Wrecked By A Rogue Wave
• This is awesome. Diving to the bottom of the world’s deepest swimming pool in a single breath…

Things to look at/read:

• Is R. Kelly Finally Having His Bill Cosby Moment?
• The True Cost Of Our Avocado Obsession
• The Calibri Font Is Threatening to Bring Down Pakistan’s Government
• “Taylor Swift Smuggled out of Her Apartment in a Massive Suitcase” Is the Story We Want, Need, and Deserve
• Moneyball for Dead Celebs: This $5 Billion Business Sells Elvis and Michael Jackson
• Why Are We Suddenly Seeing Period Blood on TV?
• Nihilist start up haikus

Animal corner

• Boyfriend cleans out his girlfriend’s pet rat cage and quickly learns how mischievous they are.
• WATCH: A golden retriever noticed that a fawn was drowning. He jumped in to save it. What a good boy.
• The dog’s face says it all

Tweets of the week:

• This is the memorial for Steve the drowned security robot outside our office on his charging pad. The future is weird.
• Fans 1 Drone 0
• WHO CARES IF I FAILED SCIENCE I FOUND TWO BARRELS FULL OF FIDGET SPINNERS
• Lucky old June.
• WE NOW GO LIVE TO BREXIT
• The Smiths
• Star Wars, but all of the light saber sounds are Owen Wilson saying “wow”
• Trump’s lawyer and doctor are like a before and after of the Monopoly man getting addicted to peyote.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads

• The Oral History of EVO: The Story of the World’s Largest Fighting Game Tournament
• The 100 greatest props in movie history, and the stories behind them
• Under siege by liberals: the town where everyone owns a gun
• Jennifer Garner’s Good-Girl Image Has Become Her Business
• The Five-Buck Bump of Cocaine That Destroyed an Olympic Dream
• This Town Melts Down
• An 18-Year-Old Girl Died From a Synthetic Opioid She Bought Online. Here’s How Portland Police Cracked the Case.
• Globalisation: the rise and fall of an idea that swept the world

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We Love the Internet 2017/28: The It’s as if you were doing work edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• I’m a millennial and I share more music through Instagram Stories than any other medium
• Capitalism the Apple Way vs. Capitalism the Google Way
• So Game Of Thrones can’t surprise us anymore? In 2017, few shows can
• Why the Far Right Wants to Be the New ‘Alternative’ Culture
• Two factor authentication is a mess
• Designing democratic brands
• Factories, workshops and labs

Reference points

• The evolution of The Economist’s social media team
• 50 smartest companies 2017
• 13 fascinating people answer the question “what do you do?”

Longer reads:

• The future of football
• How to Sell a Billion-Dollar Myth Like a French Girl
• Spitting out the Red Pill: Former misogynists reveal how they were radicalised online

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• It’s as if you were doing work
• Wikipedia: The text adventure
• Hay bale jumping
• I Tried To Make The Most Difficult Omelet
• How To Pop A Beer With Only A Newspaper
• David Lynch on Where Great Ideas Come From
• The race to fifth
• Doug Fernandez gives up

Things to look at/read:

• How Jessica Mendoza Became ESPN’s First Female MLB Analyst
• Why Some Men Don’t Work: Video Games Have Gotten Really Good
• Communicating
• The Story Behind the World’s Most Famous Desktop Background
• Instagram Food Is a Sad, Sparkly Lie
• Many like it hot
• Accidental Wes Anderson
• Couple Asks Internet To Photoshop Out Shirtless Guy From Engagement Photo, Regrets It Immediately

Animal corner

• Should I take my dog to the vet
• Ugly bunny fracas is swiftly broken up by the chicken police.

Tweets of the week:

• The Bank Heist: A Scenario Thread.
• Worst Lethal Weapon remake ever
• When you already picked your character in Tekken & your brother still tryna decide.
• Love this.  r/soccer does analysis on the most popular words used in conjunction with football teams.
• When sequels go bad…
• ESPN just accidentally wrote a Radiohead song
• I have climbed the highest mountains. I have run through the fields I have scaled city walls But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads

• Home is a cup of tea
• Boom shaka laka
• America’s Future Is Texas
• Sex, Drugs, Gangsters and MMA: Remembering Pride, UFC’s Wild Predecessor
• How Gotham Gave Us Trump
• What will it take for the US to eradicate racist ideas?
• Naomi Klein: how power profits from disaster
• how to do nothing

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We Love the Internet 2017/27: The Rise of the thought leader edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• What “Pivoting to Video” Really Means
• Haunted by Data, Television News Edition
• The Coming Battle for Long Attention Patterns

Longer reads:

• The Rise of the Thought Leader
• MTV News: The Good, the Bad, and the Contradictions of an Ill-Fated Experiment
• Less Money, Mo’ Music & Lots of Problems: A Look at the Music Biz
• The classic American sitcom is exactly what we need in this fractured political moment
• The age of distributed truth

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Silicon Valley Title Sequence Breakdown
• Super Mario Bros Recreated as Life Size Augmented Reality Game
• Exploding Skateboard Wheels With A 60,000 PSI Waterjet Slow Motion
• Why Buy Things You Only Use Once? Enter the Subscription Economy | Kevin Kelly
• My homemade goggle “air goggle”

Things to look at/read:

• Foolproof Steps You Can Take to Become Instantly Charismatic
• The 15 Most Influential Video Game Characters of All Time
• Emmanuel Macron’s official portrait is a symbolic celebration of centrism
• A Brief History of Lego Hair
• The after-party: Inside the life of the modern professional athlete in retirement
• The Ideal Iceland May Only Exist in Your Mind
• 2017 big picture competition winners

Animal corner

• he crashed his bike
• Golden Retriever happily delivers water bottles to thirsty umpires.
• That wholesome feeling when you think you are contributing but you really have no idea what you are doing.
• The dog’s reaction when the cat jabs him
• At first you feel sorry for this dog, but then….

Tweets of the week:

• Did we learn nothing from the Trojan War?
• Masturbating man, Pompeii, 79 CE
• Another juggler gives up on his dreams…
• So my friend got her phone taken away and her dad slid this under her door
• DON’T SAY ANYTHING JUST RT
• Focus group. This could have been avoided with 1 focus group (of women).
• She can move in any direction you know…
• Trump and Putin meet today, and things could get seriously heated

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads

• One man’s quest to make 20 year old rum in just 6 days
• Lena Waithe Is What The Future Of Hollywood Looks Like
• The Great Power and Great Responsibility of Spider-Man
• Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?
• On London’s Streets, Black Cabs and Uber Fight for a Future
• The age of banter
• Serena Williams’s Love Match
• From Ptolemy to GPS, the Brief History of Maps

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