We Love the Internet 2021/02: The Facebook kills the wrong likes edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Facebook Kills the Wrong Likes
• Bean Dad Is Twitter’s Final Form
• The Hollywood Escape Economy Is Just Around the Corner
• UK influencers scramble to justify exotic getaways

Reference points:

• Killed by google
• 100 tips for a better life
• Instant Search 2 Million Recipes

Longer reads:

• Notes on technology in the 2020s
• What ARGs Can Teach Us About QAnon

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• The game about the mad year 2020
• I replaced movie headlines with the Sunday Sport
• The Difference Between A Baby Boomer And A Millennial When They Get The Wrong Restaurant Order

Things to look at/read:

• A Brief History of Peanut Butter

Animal corner:

• Dog goes sledding in snow by himself
• no, you can’t eat a whole ass capybara
• WHY HE LOOK LIKE AMONG US AHHSOFHDHDJEB
• My wife’s parents sent this and it was too good not to share- taken today near Dumfries.
• they are really fuckin these snails up
• I thought I was being clever, putting the litter box on wheels

Tweets of the week:

• [extremely Rammstein voice]
• So lovely finding the hand painted stones whilst on a local walk
• My mam is out walking and has sent me a picture of this terrifying hedge
• For a Milk Hotel to be Neutral, at a time like this, is unconscionable
• I get a huge amount of enjoyment from the arc of long-running local news stories.
• Excuse me while I write 150,000 words on these two images
• crush: i like you too whatsapps HQ:
• The urge to add a “y” to the last line is why I’ll never be a proper grown-up

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• 21 Trends That Will Define the Lives of American Men in 2021
• Wall Street Eyes Billions in the Colorado’s Water

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We Love the Internet 2021/01: The Case for double dinner edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The Future of Music Journalism… Is on TikTok
• FarmVille Once Took Over Facebook. Now Everything Is FarmVille.
• The Tech That Will Invade Our Lives in 2021
• Life Without Amazon (Well, Almost)
• A ‘Great Cultural Depression’ Looms for Legions of Unemployed Performers

Reference points:

• The relentless 2020 news cycle in one chart
• Direct to streaming

Longer reads:

• Is Substack the media future we want?
• Where Does Comedy Go Now?

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Star Wars Prequel Trilogy **SPECIAL EDITION**
• Student Accidentally Submits Assignment In 360 View
• This Is Unarguably The Best Way To Cut A Bell Pepper
• Time of Our Lives: Songs from EVERY YEAR (1970-2020)
• A London Accent from the 14th to the 21st Centuries
• A Man Ate 100 Zinc Vitamin C Gummies Everyday. This Is What Happened To His Spinal Cord
• The Little-Known Patterns on British Streets
• How’d Mom get so many Viewers?

Things to look at/read:

• The Case for Double Dinner
• 74 of Our Favorite Facts for 2020
• Meet The Musician Turning Random Internet Drama Into TikTok Bops
• This Is the Year That Time Lost All Meaning
• 2020 was a difficult year for many, but according to historians, it’s not the most stressful year in U.S. history
• From TikTok to Depop: Fashion’s new trend funnel

Animal corner:

• She wants them to play so bad
• I’m not sure a better video will ever be made.
• I’ve made a special Lockdown Cinema for my laptop to replicate the big screen experience
• Somebody found this Corgi puppy laid out in a shop surrounded by claret. They thought he’d been attacked and was hurt and bleeding…
• another day another ice run
• Partying without me 😦
• Sta volta velocissima

Tweets of the week:

• Stoke Newington today. Crying out for a caption.
• Me trynna watch the battle of Winterfell:
• Waving at the end of every Zoom call like it’s the 1800’s and a big steam ship is leaving the harbor.
• all these years on this earth and i’ve never found a feeling that matches this one
• I don’t often get starstruck, but WOW!
• BREAKING NEWS Kendall Jenner just arrived at the U.S. Capitol
• Absolutely losing it over the fact folks think this asshole’s name is “Via Getty”
• Wife has been looking forward to stew in the slow cooker all day. Just realised I unplugged it earlier when I was plugging in Alexa to ask her how old Ronan Keating is.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The plague year
• The very real, totally bizarre bucatini shortage of 2020
• The Eight Pieces of Pop Culture That Defined the Trump Era
• Where will the pandemic take America in 2021?
• How COVID-19 Hollowed Out a Generation of Young Black Men
• The mask of doom
• Who Did JK Rowling Become?

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My five fives of 2020

Previous lists for 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010.

Top 5 Films

(Released in UK cinemas or on streaming services in 2020, which I have seen. Links point to IMDb)

1. Parasite
2. Uncut Gems
3. Bacurau
4. Soul
5. 1917

Top 5 Albums

(Released in the UK in 2020, which I have heard. Links point to Spotify)

1. Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher
2. Fiona Apple – Fetch The Bolt Cutters
3. Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud
4. Perfume Genius – Set My Heart On Fire Immediately
5. Run The Jewels – RTJ4

Top 5 TV series (non BBC)

(Released in the UK in 2020, that I watched. Links point to IMDb)

1. Better Call Saul S5
2. The Queen’s Gambit
3. Gangs Of London
4. I Hate Suzie
5. Dark S3

Top 5 Books

(That I read in 2020. Links point to Amazon)

1. The Haunting Of Hill House
2. Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race
3. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
4. Brit(ish)
5. Pachinko

Top 5 TV Series/Films released before 2020 (non BBC)

(That I watched for the first time in 2020. Thanks lockdown. Links point to IMDb)

1. BoJack Horseman
2. Money Heist
3. Shoplifters
4. Schitt’s Creek
5. Honeyland

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We Love the Internet 2020/53: The Our shared unsharing edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Our Shared Unsharing
• The Dub Conundrum
• Tone Is Hard to Grasp Online. Can Tone Indicators Help?
• The Harold Hill of Movie Making
• The New Influencer Capital of America

Reference points:

• Top 25 News Photos of 2020
• The 39 Most Defining Memes of 2020
• YouTube Provides Answers on Common Reach and Algorithm Distribution Queries
• Fjord trend 2021
• Year in Review: Most-Watched Television Networks — Ranking 2020’s Winners and Losers

Longer reads:

• The Tyranny of Terrazzo
• How venture capitalists are deforming capitalism
• The Sound & The Flurry: How Podcasts Are Becoming A Hollywood Gold Mine
• ‘Heroes’ Was Supposed to Be Leonard Roberts’ Big Break. Instead, It Nearly Broke Him.

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• The Funniest Joke In The World (statistically)
• Props you never knew existed
• Someone Put On Cardi B’s ‘WAP’ In The Family Car And Their Mom Nearly Had A Heart Attack
• Best News Bloopers 2020
• A Taste of Los Angeles
• This Is Why The Verrazzano Bridge In New York City Was Shut Down On Monday During A Storm
• Sky Drop Waterslide at Plopsaqua De Panne
• 13 Minutes of Cringy Influencers Caught in the Wild Compilation

Things to look at/read:

• What Explains the Decline of Serial Killers?
• Seriously, it’s time to get a ring light
• The Most Interesting Underpants in London
• Texas Wedding Photographers Have Seen Some $#!+
• How One Man Created The Biggest Virtual Pub Quiz In The World
• The rise and fall of the bank robbery capital of the world

Animal corner:

• Dog’s Mom Decorates His Cone Every Day To Help Him Feel Better
• Doggy slide.
• This Woman Thought A Cat Had Somehow Gotten Stuck In Her Christmas Tree. Turns Out It Was Very Much Not A Cat
• Somebody Inserted Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’ Into This Video Of A Golden Retriever Sliding Down A Ski Slope And It’s The Best Video Ever
• BOOM fuck you pal, I AM Christmas.
• Because you want to see a man saving a deer that is stuck on a frozen lake back to safety.

Tweets of the week:

• Think you had a bad tweet once? You have no idea
• I read this tweet entirely wrong and I want you to also
• Flavortown // Flavourtown
• I always awkwardly struggle to get to the end call button on video calls. So I made this
• Lol just passed through Oxford circus station
• Enjoying the German title of Bob Woodward’s “Rage”
• Morning lads, time for another gorgeous day in the UK
• Stoke Newington today. Crying out for a caption.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The Man Who Found Forrest Fenn’s Treasure
• The Party That Failed
• Super cubes: inside the (surprisingly) big business of packaged ice
• How Iceman Wim Hof Uncovered the Secrets to Our Health
• Bro Culture, Fitness, Chivalry, and American Identity
• Life Was Not a Peach
• Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses
• The Full(est Possible) Story of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping Press Conference

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We Love the Internet 2020/52: The Sports has a gen z problem edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• YouTube’s biggest kids show is about to take over streaming services
• We’re Never Going Back to the 1950s
• 2021’s Must-See Drama: Netflix Under Siege
• Where the Teens Are Hanging Out in Quarantine
• Disney+. Apple TV+. Paramount+. How the plus sign won the streaming wars
• The North Carolina Kid Who Cracked YouTube’s Secret Code

Reference points:

• What are underrated websites and what do you use them for?
• ‘Humaning’ and the greatest marketing bullshit of all time
• Predictions for journalism 2021

Longer reads:

• Sports has a Gen Z problem. The pandemic may accelerate it.
• Shigeru Miyamoto Wants To Create A Kinder World

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• 2014 1st China National Wushu Games
• Eminem except I’m a 1940s race caller

Things to look at/read:

• Your Brain Is Not for Thinking
• Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen. Big Booze wants to keep it that way.
• 20 Weird Japanese Inventions That We Definitely Need
• Tokyo: a wonder of the modern world fed by its konbini
• Why a Small Handful of Celebrities Dominated the Tabloids in 2020
• This Japanese Shop Is 1,020 Years Old. It Knows a Bit About Surviving Crises.
• You’re Showering Too Much

Animal corner:

• 2 Week Old Pupper Gets a Head Massage
• Dog Gets Mad At Owner For Telling An Unfavorable Story About Him
• “What else, what else… the covid vaccine. You heard about this?
• I put on some happy hardcore for the bird

Tweets of the week:

• what our packages are doing when tracking hasn’t been updated in 6 days:
• 2020 “what fresh hell is this” 2021 “what tinned hell is this”
• STAY NOW

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• She Stalked Her Daughter’s Killers Across Mexico, One by One
• Meet the new generation of puzzle-makers bringing mystery to your door

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We Love the Internet 2020/51: The Nuclear family was a mistake edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Apple TV Was Making a Show About Gawker. Then Tim Cook Found Out.
• U.S. Budget Stop-Gap Bill Contains Proposal to Make Streaming Copyrighted Material a Felony

Reference points:

• 52 things I learned in 2020
• The Year on TikTok: Top 100

Longer reads:

• 98 Million TikTok Followers Can’t Be Wrong
• Matt Drudge Logs Off

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• This Dad Hysterically Photobombs His Daughter’s Class Presentation
• One Thing Leads to Another
• Parkour VS Normal People In Real Life

Things to look at/read:

• Loneliness and me
• We have a winner in the world’s first quantum chess tournament
• ‘Sharleen is my homegirl’ – how Texas and Wu-Tang Clan became pop’s weirdest pals

Animal corner:

• Dogs having a group photo
• Man Saves Dog From Alligator By Prying Open Its Jaws In Tense Moment Caught On Camera
• Dog Suddenly Behaves Like He’s Seeing A Ghost In 100-Year-Old Farmhouse
• NEW FISH JUST DROPPED
• This is how drum breaks are made

Tweets of the week:

• Someone farts during a kids zoom…
• Why does Matt Hancock sit down like Woody in Toy Story when a human enters the room
• It’s a chemistree
• Once you see Cookie Monster, you can’t unsee it.
• That don’t impress me much.
• My da won’t have a shite when my girlfriend is in the house because he’s embarrassed

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake
• In Conversation: Francis Ford Coppola
• Embroiled in Multiple Hollywood Sex Scandals, Charlotte Kirk Breaks Her Silence
• The Promise That Tested My Parents Until the End

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We Love the Internet 2020/50: The How tag became a professional sport edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• How Microsoft crushed Slack
• The New Comedy of American Decline
• From Frameworks To Flywheels
• Facebook Struggles to Balance Civility and Growth
• OnlyFans Is a Billion-Dollar Media Giant Hiding in Plain Sight
• Let’s Talk About Simulated Sex: Intimacy Coordinators Two Years On

Reference points:

• Reddit’s 2020 Year in Review

Longer reads:

• Inside YouTube’s plan to win the music-streaming wars
• The home of the Sopranos is under siege: Inside the battle for the soul of HBO
• Will Hollywood Recover Fast, or Are We Going to Run Out of Stuff to Watch?

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• How tag became a professional sport
• Curved gravity roller treadmill.
• Mom’s dancing baby videos are giving us life

Things to look at/read:

• Early Modern Memes

Animal corner:

• Cat Seems Oddly Comfortable Standing Upright
• Cornflake the most adorable Burmese Python ever

Tweets of the week:

• Needed a new ID badge.  Rather happy with my description of being an anaesthetist. It is a kids hospital, after all.
• has to be my favourite shakespeare quote
• Jesus had a good run.
• Viewed a flat today and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop thinking about the back door…
• did someone say 3 Saturdays until Christmas??
• i’m at the mcmonolith, y’all want anything?

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• ‘Singing and dancing to their deaths’: football’s forgotten tragedy
• The curse of the buried treasure
• Tony Hsieh’s American Tragedy: The Self-Destructive Last Months Of The Zappos Visionary
• “He’s Radioactive”: Inside Johnny Depp’s Self-Made Implosion
• Murder in Mexico: journalists caught in the crosshairs

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We Love the Internet 2020/49: The Mobbed by Raccoons edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• ‘Tokenized’: Inside Black Workers’ Struggles at the King of Crypto Start-Ups
• What Happens When You Actually DM a ‘DM to Collab’ Instagram Scammer
• Why Amazon radically redesigned the Echo
• Why Is The Obscure B-Side “Harness Your Hopes” Pavement’s Top Song On Spotify? It’s Complicated.
• Quibi Is Officially Dead
• Five Months, 14 Shows, 300,000 Tickets Sold: How Driift Cracked Livestreaming
• The impact UK Government’s proposed ban on HFSS online advertising has on esports
• Spotify says it’s dominating the podcasting market because of a million-plus tiny podcasts

Reference points:

• The best inventions of 2020
• Social media companies all starting to look the same
• ‘Thumb-Stopping,’ ‘Humaning,’ ‘B4H’: The Strange Language of Modern Marketing.
• How This YouTuber Amassed 328k Followers In Less Than A Year

Longer reads:

• “Emily in Paris” and the rise of ambient tv
• The rise and fall of getting things done
• When ordinary people go viral, where’s the line between comedy and cruelty?
• How old, ambient Japanese music became a smash hit on YouTube

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Billie Eilish: Same Interview, The Fourth Year
• Here’s The Most Comprehensive Reconstruction Of The Beirut Port Explosion From All Available Photos And Videos
• The Bizarre Sport of Egg Boxing
• when you need to confirm you’re not a robot
• I created these simple animations to explain camera movement to students.

Things to look at/read:

• How Do You Chop 20 Stories Off a Too-Tall Building?
• Desperately seeking headbangers: the lonely hearts who found love in the back pages

Animal corner:

• Mobbed by Raccoons
• Dog Flips Out After Losing At Hot Dog Whack-A-Mole Game
• I taught my dog Yari to load the dishwasher
• Extremely Adorable Puppy Has A Quiet Way Of Getting Owner’s Attention
• c             ow

Tweets of the week:

• “look who decided to come out of their room!”
• Bit of spare time on my hands today so I audited the unopened Quality Street tin. Just 4 purples (4.7%) and yet a massive 11 (12.9%) orange ones. Another blow for 2020. Who do I complain to?
• The Coke advert but with Pfizer lorries instead of Coke ones.
• me: y does my back hurt my posture everyday from 9-6:
• it’s been a good year
• dating me is like pulling a Christmas cracker, shit jokes but a decent bang
• me going up to items in the “British” Museum: yeah but where are you really from?

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• ‘I was at war with my body’: my year as a day patient on an eating disorders ward
• The Last Children of Down Syndrome
• ‘Like Being Grilled Alive’: The Fear of Living With a Hackable Heart
• 20 days of fantasy and failure: Inside Trump’s quest to overturn the election
• How a deadly police force ruled a city

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We Love the Internet 2020/48: The Substackerati edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The Social Media Managers Are Not Okay
• Five years on – the very silly launch of TIDAL
• Right-Wing Social Media Finalizes Its Divorce From Reality
• A College Student Behind A Massively Popular Paint-Mixing TikTok Page Was Fired From Sherwin-Williams
• Netflix Pulls ‘Chappelle’s Show’ at Dave Chappelle’s Request
• Why streaming devices and streaming networks are fighting over your eyeballs

Longer reads:

• The Substackerati
• Copying (is the way design works)
• The Scammer Who Wanted to Save His Country

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• 10-Year-Old Gives Hysterical Relationship Advice To Her Nanny

Things to look at/read:

• The Hyper-Regional Chippy Traditions of Britain and Ireland
• The Distinguished Medieval Penis Investigators
• Q: What Is a Hole? A: We’re Not Sure!
• 7 Of History’s Most Unbelievable Heists, From D.B. Cooper To The Lufthansa Robbery

Animal corner:

• Dog Instantly Spits Out Food After He Sees His Toy Drop Dead
• Alpacas Don’t Know What To Make Of This Human Baby
• BUSTY. FIFE. SQUIRREL.
• I’ll be watching you

Tweets of the week:

• If fruit had human skin, would peeling it feel even more satisfying?
• Someone just shown me this. And it’s perfect
• I keep getting pushed ads for this bed. I believe the model is called “I’ve Given Up.”
• Baby, it’s on
• I love the NFL because both of these humans play the same sport professionally
• another day of staring at the big screen while scrolling through my little screen so as to reward myself for staring at the medium screen all week
• Me mixing together the Pfizer, Moderna AND AstraZeneca vaccines together

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• ‘I just want to see the person I always saw in my head’: the story of a face
• My Priceless Summer on a Maine Lobster Boat
• How “I’m So Excited” Became the Most Ridiculous—and Iconic—‘Saved by the Bell’ Moment

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We Love the Internet 2020/47: The Meet the professional memers edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Meet the professional memers
• In Twitch’s fight with the music industry, streamers are paying the price
• Ink-Stained Wretches: The Battle for the Soul of Digital Freedom Taking Place Inside Your Printer
• Can Spotify be the one to convince people to pay for podcasts?
• A Teen’s TikToks Are Changing the Way Her Record Label Looks at Marketing
• At The Ringer, Staff Writers Say They Are Second-String

Reference points:

• Ofcom and FT competition for students: winners announced!

Longer reads:

• Times Change
• How Discord (somewhat accidentally) invented the future of the internet
• One Clear Casualty of the Streaming Wars: Profit
• How Amazon became a pandemic giant – and why that could be a threat to us all
• Elon Musk’s Totally Awful, Batshit-Crazy, Completely Bonkers, Most Excellent Year

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• The joy of messing up: in praise of the TV blooper reel
• Keeping your refrigerator stocked will get you many women
• Satirical ad for Dunning-Kruger Alcohol by Dr. Rohin Francis
• Abandoned Mega Mansion – Indoor Waterslide, Home Theater & more
• Grant Holloway’s Head Stabilized Through the Hurdles
• This PS1 Secret Feature remained hidden for 26 years… Until now

Things to look at/read:

• The Death of the $15 Salad
• Hanson Is Facing a Mutiny From Its Own Fans
• A Surreal New Bookstore Has Just Opened in China
• Zillow Surfing Is the Escape We All Need Right Now

Animal corner:

• Golden Retriever VS Very Terrifying Kitten
• Dog Has Goofiest Reaction To Being On A Diet
• Dog’s epic reaction to owner after coughing
• i would take a bullet for this cat
• This is my tree
• Caption this
• Zählt das als „Köpper“?
• Run fast and fly fast！

Tweets of the week:

• This Maori baby learning the Haka Dance is everything i want to see from the internet
• I’m sorry but the fact that Dionne Warwick tweeted this is making me HOLLER
• dunno how Beverly Callard’s gonna do with cockroaches when she gets frightened by someone doing sign language
• Fox News and Facebook did to our parents what they said video games would do to us.
• Oh no, not my calculator too!!!
• Me watching the opening of The Simpsons
• PAPA SHANGO PUT THE CURSE ON RUDY GIULIANI
• In case you’re confused- here’s how to tell the social media apps apart.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Why Obama Fears for Our Democracy
• Under pressure: why athletes choke
• The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse
• A Nameless Hiker and the Case the Internet Can’t Crack
• Conspiracy theories, explained

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