We Love the Internet 2023/04: The Why do British people love to abbreviate things edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The ‘Tumblrification’ of social media
• Netflix’s New Chapter

Reference points:

• 5 numbers that will come to define the music business in 2023
• 2022: The year in weird and stupid futures

Longer reads:

• The Volume of News
• “We Had to Learn Everything Over Again”: How FX Survived the Streaming Wars

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Correct the internet
• Spielberg in 30 Shots
• I made this to explain the Aaron Taylor-Johnson & Joey King cheating rumor scandal to my friends. Hope it helps!
• This TikTok deserves to be in the Oscars

Things to look at/read:

• Why do British people love to abbreviate things? An investy g
• American Nepo Babies Have Nothing on the British
• How Many Clothes Should We Own, Exactly?
• The warm glow of the blog rock era
• A brief history of horrific things space travel does to the human body

Animal corner:

• she goes 0 to 100 real quick
• We were not expecting that!!

Tweets of the week:

• I got to the Airbnb where I’m staying in Vienna this week, and found a framed print out of my profile picture in the bedroom
• incredible how the french have truly *perfected* the art of striking
• Named after your dad attempting to order a large beer on holiday.
• What they would have wanted..
• Photoshop paddington into a movie, game, or TV show until I forget: Day 686
• Shakira’s jam watching Piqué’s mistress reach for the jar
• Senators to tech bosses: “What is internet?” Senators to Ticketmaster:
• Stephanie Hsu will forever go down in history as the first original cast member of The Spongebob Squarepants Musical to be nominated for an Academy Award

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The boring journey of Matt Yglesias
• Negative Equivalent

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We Love the Internet 2023/03: The Extremely hardcore edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• A Writer Used AI To Plagiarize Me. Now What?
• Television Is Going Exactly the Wrong Direction. I Know the Solution.
• Keep It Real or Lose Gen Z
• The internet
• Twitter officially bans third-party clients with new developer rules

Reference points:

• The Best Opening Title Sequences of 2022
• A WIRED compendium

Longer reads:

• Extremely Hardcore
• The Strangely Beautiful Experience of Google Reviews

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• 10 typos
• Spotify’s Mathematical System For Determining Your Music Taste
• Magnetic Accelerators
• FPV Dive Burj Khalifa Top to Bottom

Things to look at/read:

• Writing wrongs: how true crime authors can fall victim to tragedy
• The Year We Wanted to Be Fancy Little Bitches

Animal corner:

• “This is the life” – PuppyYoga in Toronto
• Oh Rocky
• Just a dog walking up a ladder!
• Weekend ready

Tweets of the week:

• Danny Ings with Claret & Blue clubs
• Wait a minute…
• “Now we all are aware that her hips don’t lie, and clearly … neither does the jam.”
• I am BEGGING you to watch this TikTok a dude has rarely rocked even half this hard
• I’ve got my eye on you M’threegan
• There’s nothing funnier than a fully grown man carrying a rucksack. Got all your little things in there have you mate? Grow up

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Violent delights
• Last orders: how we fell out of love with alcohol

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We Love the Internet 2023/02: The How much Netflix can the world absorb edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• I open the book with trepidation. My name is on it, but I didn’t write it
• India cinema-goers’ pivot to streaming films online instead: ‘a disaster for Bollywood’?
• The Instagram reels gold rush
• How TikTok Has Changed What Fans Expect From Pop Stars
• Streaming Changed TV. Is TV Changing Streaming Back?
• AI’s Islamophobia problem

Reference points:

• What each streaming service has up its sleeve in 2023
• Sports events account for all but six of the top 100 telecasts of 2022

Longer reads:

• How much Netflix can the world absorb?
• Your stuff is actually worse now

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Jerry Seinfeld in Pulp Fiction

Things to look at/read:

• British Drinking Culture, Meet Cost of Living Crisis
• How the Music Community Is Fighting the Drug Overdose Epidemic
• Here’s How Author James Patterson Writes 31 Books at the Same Time

Animal corner:

• She be on Vibrate
• Pinche firulais

Tweets of the week:

• ITS TOPHER
• This is a frightening visual for me.
• Wout Wout It’s the sound of the set piece
• presenting the Idea Title Slide

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The Education of X González
• The truffle industry is a big scam. Not just truffle oil, everything

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We Love the Internet 2023/01: The Why does Taylor Swift hold her pen like that edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• What Can We Learn from Barnes & Noble’s Surprising Turnaround?
• Last Year Was Brutal for Hollywood. Will 2023 Be Any Better?

Reference points:

• 9 Forecasts for The Near Future, With Implications
• 6 reasons for optimism about media in 2023
• 10 Lessons From 10 Years in Email

Longer reads:

• A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook?

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• I Spent 3 Years Alone Building A Log Cabin
• The 2022 Food Trends We Never Need to See Again

Things to look at/read:

• Why Does Taylor Swift Hold Her Pen Like That?
• Forget the World Cup: The Darts Are the Ultimate Sporting Event
• Why do the rich get richer — even during global crises?
• The Crying Game

Animal corner:

• I love my dog
• Orange?
• Benny enjoying his first cinnamon roll
• Just a reminder ladies, if he wanted to he would.
• Our Frenchie helping my husband hammer

Tweets of the week:

• very likely the most cursed thing I will see all 2023
• bro what is tom brady on these days
• Dunkin’ Donuts near me in Cumming Georgia
• it’s nearly that time
• guy in the airport has a henry hat like the hoover

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The Cheesecake Factory knows what you want
• Why Not Mars

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My five fives of 2022

Previous lists for 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010.

Top 5 Films (Cinema)

(Released in UK cinemas in 2022, which I have seen. Links point to IMDb)

1. The Banshees Of Inisherin
2. Top Gun: Maverick
3. Everything Everywhere All At Once
4. Parallel Mothers
5. Triangle of Sadness

Top 5 Films (Home)

(Watched for the first time in 2022. Links point to IMDb)

1. RRR
2. Athena
3. Catherine Called Birdy
4. Prey
5. Do Revenge

Top 5 Albums

(Released in the UK in 20229, which I have heard. Links point to Spotify)

1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Cool It Down
2. Beyonce – Renaissance
3. Alvvays – Blue Rev
4. Yard Act – The Overload
5. FKA Twigs – Caprisongs

Top 5 TV series (non BBC)

(Released in the UK in 2022, that I watched. Links point to IMDb)

1. The Bear
2. Severance
3. Pachinko
4. My Brilliant Friend S3
5. The White Lotus S2

Top 5 Books

(That I read in 2022. Links point to Amazon)

1. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
2. Children Of Dune by Frank Herbert
3. We Begin At The End by Chris Whitaker
4. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
5. Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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We Love the Internet 2022/52: The Most people names for dogs edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• How Reality TV Got Meta
• How TikTok warped the fame game in 2022
• A community isn’t a garden, it’s a bar.
• Instagram Is Over
• The Most Vulnerable Place on the Internet
• AI
• A24 Did Right By Gen Z in 2022

Reference points:

• Why the super rich are inevitable
• my favorite trends of the year!
• Jealously list 2022
• How DALL-E works, plain English, no math
• 99 Good News Stories You Probably Didn’t Hear About in 2022

Longer reads:

• Web3, the Metaverse, and the Lack of Useful Innovation
• Becoming a chatbot: my life as a real estate AI’s human backup
• ‘Made My Blood Run Cold’: Unmasking a TikTok Creator Who Doesn’t Really Exist

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Spotify’s Mathematical System For Determining Your Music Taste

Things to look at/read:

• Why Hot Wheels are one of the most inflation-proof toys in American history

Animal corner:

• The most people names for dogs
• Noodle, The Pug Who Went Viral For “No Bones” Days, Has Died
• This went on for a while. Our cheeks hurt from laughing so much
• You guys asked to see the dogs getting on the bus
• Lmaoo this cat

Tweets of the week:

• I watch a lot of TikToks (you might have noticed). Here are my favourite ten from the year
• Happy 6th birthday to the time my parents brought over wine in a plastic box because Mum was “increasingly wary of glass”.
• Getting ready to tackle the 5th Yorkshire pudding of the day
• what if we pronounced bob iger like we pronounce bon iver
• 🚨🚨 #DHOTYA2022 Entry & Group Stage Draw Announcement 🚨🚨
• 2 multiplied by 10 plus 1..
• Andrew Tate’s Wikipedia has been updated …

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The despair of generation “Notti Bop”
• The secret lives of MI6’s top female spies
• Nicolas Cage and John Carpenter are cinema’s most studious eccentrics
• The enduring metal genius of Metallica
• Quinta Brunson Missed the Quiet-Quitting Memo

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We Love the Internet 2022/51: The Golden age of streaming TV is over edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The golden age of streaming TV is over
• A Totally Normal Interview With Author Emily St. John Mandel
• Can you get sued for using a meme?

Reference points:

• The 20 Best Memes of 2022
• An All But Definitive Guide to the Hollywood Nepo-Verse

Longer reads:

• Is Live Music Broken? It’s Not Just Ticketmaster, It’s Everything.
• You’ve Met MrBeast, the YouTuber. Now Meet Jimmy, the Business Mogul.
• How Did We Get So Obsessed with Streaks?
• How Facebook designed the like button—and made social media into a popularity contest
• Bob Iger vs. Bob Chapek: Inside the Disney Coup
• Picture Limitless Creativity at Your Fingertips

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• CX Conversations: The Launch of ITVX
• Every Bone in the Human Body and How they Break (Explained Using John Wick)

Things to look at/read:

• The billionaire vibe shift
• Who Really Owns/Brews Your Favourite Beer?
• Inside the Wild Life of Footballers’ Luxury Assistants
• London life is now made-to-order – and it’s nauseating

Animal corner:

• OVER AGAIN
• The attitude
• Just a #birthdayboy enjoying his #birthdaycake. Happy 45th birthday Azy!

Tweets of the week:

• asked for cheesy chips and basically got chip lasagne, chippy shop in its icon era x
• Love being your Christmas Danny.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• How a Nepo Baby Is Born
• The beautiful, brutal world of Bonsai
• Putin’s War
• ‘Who remembers proper binmen?’ The nostalgia memes that help explain Britain today
• Life in the Slow Lane

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We Love the Internet 2022/50: The Has the internet reached peak clickability edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Has the Internet Reached Peak Clickability?
• What Moneyball-for-Everything Has Done to American Culture
• Defector’s most successful promo email was too “creepy” to repeat
• Elon Musk Is a Far-Right Activist
• She Spent a Decade Writing Fake Russian History. Wikipedia Just Noticed.
• The Streaming Era Pauses for an Ad Break
• The Age of Social Media Is Ending

Reference points:

• The best inventions of 2022
• Clip interrogator
• Tesla has lost almost $700 billion of market value in the past year – the equivalent of 3 Disneys, 4 Nikes, or 6 Starbucks

Longer reads:

• Bad Reputation
• How to Build A Winning Paid Membership Program
• How to buy a social network, with Tumblr CEO Matt Mullenweg

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• The pickleball craze, explained
• What Were America’s Christmas Monorails?
• Downloading Music on the Internet in 2000
• How 2 Million Children Are Fed Daily By The World’s Biggest Free School Meal Provider

Things to look at/read:

• My Eight Deranged Days on the Gone Girl Cruise
• Last of the Cockney criminals
• The mysterious rise of food allergies
• How to Be Unremarkably Average

Animal corner:

• Get a staffy they said.. it’ll be fun they said
• Scarlette is droppin it!
• Poor fatty

Tweets of the week:

• Just remains a great list
• It’s the time of year we must all take a quiet moment to remember the “Leave it, Tony, he’s not worth it” Christmas card.
• Stanley Tucci is the best-dressed man on telly. Why? Because he dresses like the best-dressed people on earth: Italian pensioners. Here’s how he does it…

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The Weirdest Roadside Attraction in Every State
• The $30m lottery scam
• Megalopolis: how coastal west Africa will shape the coming century
• An American Girl
• “It’s Going to Be Epic”: The Oral History of James Cameron

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We Love the Internet 2022/49: The Growing old online edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Growing Old Online
• What if failure is the plan?
• This artist is dominating AI-generated art. And he’s not happy about it.
• TikTok Is Changing the Way We Talk About ADHD—For Better and Worse
• At the Athletic and New York Times, a marriage with promise and tension

Reference points:

• 52 things I learned in 2022
• “The Curse of ITV”: A Deeper Dive

Longer reads:

• Tech futurism’s blind spot
• Two minutes of the Simpsons

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Most Popular Social Networks 2003 – 2022
• Abraham got to meet Jack Black and sign his favorite part to his Favorite movie “School of Rock”

Things to look at/read:

• Hacked to bits
• Why Are Kids So Sad?
• The Good Morning America anchors made cheating scandals fun again
• Your Section-by-Section Guide to Storing Foods in the Fridge, From the Upper Shelves to the Crisper Drawers

Animal corner:

• never change
• Excuse me ??
• We’re gonna share our daily Pidge wrangling
• Don’t think their new sweaters are going to work out

Tweets of the week:

• FINALLY found the commemorative manhole cover celebrating the defeat of the Whitechapel fatberg, after 5 years of looking for it.
• boss makes a dollar i make a dime thats why i make babybel cheese wax crab on company time
• Mind games already won ahead of the quarter-final here
• If you haven’t seen this yet, great Christmas movie for the whole family
• hereditary (2018)
• Bruh Stephen a smith & Michael Irvin got me crying on first take
• SEND THEM TO THE HAGUE
• Europe, 1918-23:

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Rod McKuen Was the Bestselling Poet in American History. What Happened?

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We Love the Internet 2022/48: The Someone is pretending to be me edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• This is why streaming Netflix, Disney Plus, and HBO Max keeps getting more expensive
• Stop watching movie trailers
• Pop Stars Are Mugging for TikTok. Fans Are Loving It.
• Streamers Use Playlists to Control the Music Industry

Reference points:

• Predicting The FIFA World Cup 2022 With a Simple Model using Python
• From quitting to blocking: How to protect yourself on Musk’s Twitter

Longer reads:

• Someone is pretending to be me.
• Better Call Brad: Hollywood’s Secret Problem Solver Speaks

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Why Japan’s internet is weirdly designed
• Billie Eilish: Same Interview, The Sixth Year
• The Cruelest Rulers In History

Things to look at/read:

• The Complicated History of the ‘Magdeburg Unicorn’
• The New Vocabulary of Beer
• How to film a burger falling “per-fect-ly” into a model’s hand: Chuck Studios explains all

Animal corner:

• Cheeto!!!
• Oh no
• Excited for thanksgiving dinner
• The workout journey is starting slow
• Don’t think their new sweaters are going to work out
• i swear shes a smart dog….lolll

Tweets of the week:

• He hit him with the reverse card
• Phil Foden as a cat.
• This made me laugh so hard and I don’t know why
• We’re all thinking it right?
• “For Iran it’s probably their biggest win since Iron Sheikh beat Bob Backlund at WrestleMania!”

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Why inheritance is the dirty secret of the middle classes – harder to talk about than sex
• ‘The Godfather, Saudi-style’: inside the palace coup that brought MBS to power
• Collision course

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