We Love the Internet 2021/41: The Couch guy and the nightmare of going viral edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Couch Guy and the nightmare of going viral
• You shouldn’t have a favourite murder
• Facebook Will Not Fix Itself
• The dying art of the hatchet job

Reference points:

• 197 TikTok trends from early 2021
• Seven principles of effective marketing communication
• What I Learned About My Writing By Seeing Only The Punctuation
• Pitchfork Reviews: Rescored
• The 25 Most Iconic Book Covers in History

Longer reads:

• Slackers of the world, unite!
• Dave Chappelle vs. trans people vs. Netflix
• How This Founder Closed the Deal That Changed Esports Forever

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Prank finds its way into Henrico School Board meeting
• Guy Launches Himself From One Swing To Another
• Exposing FRAUD And DECEPTION In The Retro Video Game Market
• for the last 45 years cinema has been living in the shadow of these 42 superlative seconds
• Coldest vid I’ve seen today!

Things to look at/read:

• What if We Aren’t the First Advanced Civilization on Earth?
• Ready, steady … oh. Can a life coach shake me out of my pandemic-induced ennui?
• Give Phoebe Robinson the Title She Deserves: Boss

Animal corner:

• Camels Get the Hump When Man Refuses to Share Bread With Them
• 16-Foot Python Is So Gentle With Her Favorite Girl
• this cat just asked me to go in the shop and get him 20 lambert and butler
• Go to the petting zoo they said, it’ll be fun they said
• Cat interacts with toddler. Lolll
• It’s a love/hate relationship with fruit
• Parrot winding up the neighbours cat

Tweets of the week:

• Kid really sells it.
• I think we can guess which crew members aren’t coming back
• Sally Rooney books but they’re Wayne Rooney tweets.
• I just know u ain’t fart underwater
• [*Profuse sweating*]
• Babe are you okay you’ve not even opened your Heinz sauce selection box
• when you try putting tresemme through as a bread roll
• I love the internet fr man

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The disastrous voyage of Satoshi, the world’s first cryptocurrency cruise ship
• John Mulaney and the Great Celebrity-Sympathy Overcorrection
• The education of a part-time punk
• Cases of missing trans people are rarely solved. A married pair of forensic genealogists is hoping to change that
• Ben Affleck Plays Himself

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We Love the Internet 2021/40: The Facebook political problems edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The Sopranos vs. the end of history
• Bob Iger’s Long Goodbye

Reference points:

• Understanding How Facebook Disappeared from the Internet
• Thumbnail artwork is actually NFLX’s most effective lever to influence a viewer’s choice

Longer reads:

• Facebook Political Problems
• Pokimane Has Done Enough—and Has So Much Left to Do

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• How Animals Would Run if They Were People
• The fastest man on two hands
• I spent more time on this than I should have
• The Horror Short Film In Spider-Man 2

Things to look at/read:

• ‘They stole from us’: the New York taxi drivers mired in debt over medallions
• Plight of the pickled onion: how pub snacks went from simple nosh to properly posh
• Ordinary People

Animal corner:

• The New York subway has banned dogs that don’t fit in a bag and the results are the best thing you’ll see online today.
• GUYS A BEAR FOUND A GOPRO AND TURNED IT ON
• This continues to be the greatest squirrel feeder ever
• Cat party
• Breakfast
• Tell me your dog doesn’t like to share toys, I’ll go first.
• It’s a love/hate relationship with fruit

Tweets of the week:

• bro tripped so hard his t-shirt changed colour
• I think my boyfriend is a fan of music festivals now
• This is my ideal outfit
• Baby are you okay?  You’ve barely touched your Char-spookerie.
• netflix writers now that the zodiac killer has been identified:
• *writes in notebook* Red
• correct use of disposable income, no notes
• Happiness is temporary

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The Vegan Food Wars of DC

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We Love the Internet 2021/39: The Unwritten rules of black tv edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The Largest Autocracy on Earth
• From the Real Housewives to Love Is Blind: how reunions took over reality TV
• Are the Britney Spears Documentaries Exploiting Her All Over Again?

Reference points:

• The Biggest Album Release Dates in Modern Music History, Ranked
• FanDuel Parlays Fantasy Sports Into a $1.9 Billion Betting Boom
• Openmoji

Longer reads:

• The unwritten rules of black tv
• How This Art Student Became The Weirdest, Funniest Guy On TikTok

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Photographing Babish: The Man Behind the Tiny Whisk
• The Full Story of MrBeast
• How To Cut Every Cheese
• The Most Difficult Shot in Movie History (And Why It Matters)

Things to look at/read:

• Cooperative Overlap
• Disgustingly Beautiful Mold Art

Animal corner:

• Panic! At the Groomers
• never been more scared of a dog
• Cat vs vacuum 3
• if y’all haven’t done this with your dogs yet, please do
• boom
• He’s got too much catitude
• He don’t know it but he’s working out
• Life is good

Tweets of the week:

• Saving up my points for the big prize.
• Accidently called a power point presentation a power point presentation instead of a slide deck and now everyone in this meeting knows I’m 40.
• Raised by the French
• British Museum nicking stuff twitter is the best twitter
• Don’t matter she ready
• I see my mother is now writing copy for the MTA….
• Divine punishment for selling Moses and Abraham and then buying Saul.
• Yo me see this and just scream cause WHAAT!?

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The great sperm heist: ‘They were playing with people’s lives’
• Nirvana In Bloom
• How Do You Follow The Sopranos?

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We Love the Internet 2021/38: The File not found edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• File not found
• How Lil Nas X Mastered the Modern Art of Attention
• At Top Magazines, Black Representation Remains a Work in Progress
• Video Games’ Sensory Revolution: How Haptics Reinvented the Controller
• Good Deal, Bad Strategy: Why the Paramount+ and Showtime Bundle Is a Mess

Reference points:

• The 12^th China ugliest buildings survey
• Search the internet

Longer reads:

• Wall Street Influencers Are Making $500,000, Topping Even Bankers
• Decentralized Autonomous Organizations and the Promise of Utopia

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Why Gluggle Jugs Are So Weird
• “Adults Returning to Work” spoof is hilariously spot-on.
• Washing machine brick bouncing on trampoline
• 1 Week to Create an Animated TV Show

Things to look at/read:

• Generation X are heavy, risky drinkers. Will anything ever persuade us to stop?
• Nirvana’s teen spirit will never get old

Animal corner:

• Can I please have a French fry
• Let me be your lesson
• Pet
• I just took a DNA test
• basically pitch perfect
• yeti is learning to skateboard before me
• One of my favorites one so far

Tweets of the week:

• My question is, how do you even find out you can do this?
• Sounds exactly like something a haunted trunk would say.
• Oh no.
• Crying and throwing up right now someone help me
• TAKING A SHIT IN MY SKOILET RIGHT NOW
• Well this fucks up my plans to Bingus
• My love language is removing tracking parts from URLs before sharing them.
• Hey buddy

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• ‘I Helped Destroy People’
• Every Single Reason to Catch Up on ‘The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’ Right Now

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We Love the Internet 2021/37: The Rise of aesthetics edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The surprisingly big business of library e-books
• “Rewilding Your Attention”
• Dear Influencers, Always Sign A Contract

Reference points:

• The Rise of Aesthetics

Longer reads:

• Wellness Mommy Bloggers and the Cultish Language They Use

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• How Mushroom Time-Lapses Are Filmed
• Why You’ll Fail the Milk Crate Challenge
• Draining A Massive Flooded Street 2021, Again

Things to look at/read:

• The English Food Store
• In Fashion, Copying Is Now Cool

Animal corner:

• Office Pittie Has The Best Attitude About Going To Work
• Partners in crime: Dog in China helps girl keep a lookout so she can watch TV
• dude made catch of the year then held the cat up like f’in Simba. what a legend
• Poor Bailey just got spayed
• It’s true, she has 5 legs

Tweets of the week:

• The @sainsburys  near me has a new sign and look where they’ve put the bloody apostrophe.
• damn…….. the dress worked
• It’s one banana Michael
• everyone has “I wonder what would happen if” thoughts, but toddlers actually do the shit. I respect that.
• A bot wrote this obituary and I’m losing my mind
• College football creates the most insane GIFS. I don’t know how you top the yin/yang of this:
• wtf our fridge just emailed us to say we opened its door too many times in the past month

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Has Covid ended the neoliberal era?

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We Love the Internet 2021/36: The TikTok smells like Gen X spirit edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• TikTok Smells Like Gen X Spirit
• This startup is building the Pixar of the internet one TikTok at a time
• France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books.
• Nielsen’s Grip Over TV Ratings Loosens Amid Streaming Boom

Reference points:

• How 15 People in Their 20s Built Million-Dollar Businesses
• Niche museums
• Cerebras trounces Moore’s Law with first working wafer-scale chip

Longer reads:

• A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps
• Turns Out The Hardest Part of Making a Game Is…Everything
• The song behind the scene: How teen TV’s most iconic music moments are made
• Swallowing the Red Pill: a journey to the heart of modern misogyny
• At 40, MTV Is Officially Over the Hill

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Marvel or font?
• Intensively Back-Twerking

Things to look at/read:

• New Japanese business cards beat pandemic masking with beaming smiles
• Simu Liu Modeled For Stock Images Before He Was Famous, And These Photos Have Blessed My Soul
• Stores in Japan ask customers to prove they’re real Pokemon fans when buying cards to stop scalpers

Animal corner:

• Seven years since I photographed this dog through the hole in his garden gate.
• Here you go, a dog in Chile with a beautifully anticipated diving header to brighten up your day
• We need to normalize shampooing cows
• Rolling dog
• He means biz
• Copycat
• Ears are too long to bite

Tweets of the week:

• Did not create this meme but I have laughed at it for 120 seconds
• Man: You have the quiver on backwards in your photo. Me: *cracks knuckles*
• We usd 2 txt lyk dis cos txts usd 2b 40p p/txt & we ddnt wnt 2go ova da 160 letr lim. Der is absltly 0 rezon 2 typ lyk dis in 2021.
• Oh my fucking god this is great
• Me laughing at the people who thought we’d flop
• soap when u drop it in the shower be like
• New favourite TikTok creator: this guy who is able to pin down the date that globes were designed to literally a single month based on history and geopolitics
• The way my soul would’ve just evaporated

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Are cities making animals smarter?
• Lorde Is Proof That Even Pop Stars Get Burnout
• Life After White Collar Crime
• The Diapers.com Guy Wants to Build a Utopian Megalopolis

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We Love the Internet 2021/35: The Welcome to Nestflix edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Why games became luxury fashion’s NFT on-ramp
• The Pandemic Has Been Very, Very Good for the Creator Economy
• The viral Milk Crate Challenge has left people injured. Doctors are begging them to stop.
• ‘YouTube magic dust’: How America’s second-largest social platform ducks controversies
• Why no one wants their holiday to last forever
• The Meme Lords Who Are Taking Over the C-Suite
• Newsletters; or, an enormous rant about writing on the web that doesn’t really go anywhere and that’s okay with me

Reference points:

• Welcome to Nestflix
• The Netflix Secret Codes Cheat Sheet
• Which Singers Have the Biggest Vocabularies?
• Why CAPTCHA Pictures Are So Unbearably Depressing
• 5 Commonly Used Idioms in the Tech Industry

Longer reads:

• Netflix and Video Games
• A people’s history of Black Twitter
• Who Actually Gets to Create Black Pop Culture?
• The Jessica Simulation: Love and loss in the age of A.I

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Did Olivia Rodrigo steal from Paramore?
• Drama vs reality
• Type the alphabet
• Learning the Baseball Bat Trick
• The Wildly Lucrative World of Ice Cream TikTok
• Why Mexico City’s Geography SUCKS
• guessing his job on the first try

Things to look at/read:

• A Brief History of Musicians Being Sued by Their Album Cover Subjects
• Why Do American Grocery Stores Still Have an Ethnic Aisle?
• Her Name Is Not Honey Boo Boo

Animal corner:

• Panda Wants A Hug From Nanny, But Nanny Is Working
• Here’s A Supercut Of A Real-Life Garfield Cat On A Food Rampage
• My new favourite WFH problem. I don’t know why, it just gets funnier
• DAY 6 AND STILL NO ONE SUSPECTS!!
• Cat greetings are just incredible
• Me thinking I don’t need a basket when I pop into Tesco Metro
• Because you want to see a doggy, at a bar, watching 101 Dalmatians

Tweets of the week:

• i got fooled. i got fucking clowned on and embarrassed
• “Nobody can tell me to wear a mask but I can tell you must have a child”
• Not sure I’ve ever seen a better sign in a museum
• They saw an opportunity and they took it
• WHAT IS IN THAT BOTTLE
• Uh huh.
• The most incredible invoice ever. Hang this in the National gallery.
• The new 8 Mile looks shit

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• “All Roads Lead to Mar-a-Lago”: Inside the Fury and Fantasy of Donald Trump’s Florida
• “The Truth Doesn’t Recognize Retreat”: The Oral History of System of a Down’s ‘Toxicity’
• The real CEO of Succession
• Good luck, morons
• The Dresden Job
• The Spine Collector

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We Love the Internet 2021/34: The Parallel parking job that ignited the internet edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Get off my lawn. Ageism in advertising. A giant pain in my ass
• He predicted the dark side of the Internet 30 years ago. Why did no one listen?

Reference points:

• Joe Rogan, confined to Spotify, is losing influence
• Spreadsheet mistakes – news stories

Longer reads:

• The trillion-dollar gambling game

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• You Can Make a Netflix Style Doco About Literally Anything
• Kiteboarder Catches Sick Air In The Nick Of Time To Make An Epic Leap Over A Road
• A Special Look at CM Punks first Appearance in AEW

Things to look at/read:

• The Parallel-Parking Job That Ignited the Internet
• A taxonomy of celebrity alcohol brands
• Typos, tricks and misprints

Animal corner:

• Golden Retriever wants to play with dog on TV
• A life as Sadie
• He’s a drama king
• Can you tell this is his favourite song?
• scared but ✨SPicEy
• dog

Tweets of the week:

• I think this finally settles the argument deciding if the Beatles were any good
• There’s something so perfect about this relic I found in my parents’ house. It has an incredible energy to it, like touching a talisman of an ancient religion
• He came from Greece he scored the first for norwich
• Showed my brother the video of that Nice v Marseille madness last night, and all he said was, “if you turn OGC on its side, it would look like a stick man having a wank.”
• If you’re in the Loop, you must visit the Blue Screen of Death Fountain
• Just remembering all the times when my mom would be like “you guys and your dad go without me, I’ll just stay here and read” and we truly felt sorry for her and WAIT A MINUTE
• If England fans do it we’re “hooligans” and “embarrassing”, if French fans do it they’re “Nice”? Double standards
• this is my favorite sports highlight of the year

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• This Man Does Not Make Poppers
• Jonah Hill Is SuperGood
• Infinite Self
• “This Is Going to Change the World”
• Why New York Can’t Have Nice Things

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We Love the Internet 2021/33: The Rise of must-read TV

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The rise of must-read TV
• TV’s White Guys Are in Crisis
• The future of social media looks a lot like QVC

Reference points:

• 20 alternative interfaces for creating and editing images and text

Longer reads:

• How gambling swallowed sports media
• Deconstructing Among Us’ TikTok Strategy
• The Jessica Simulation

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Terms & Conditions Apply
• Doodle Champion Island Games
• Summer Grill
• Fresh Guacamole
• Cutting lock with pressure water
• This guy combined obstacle course, Chain reaction, and gymnastics. All in one in less than a minute. Brilliant!!
• Here’s how I made *all* the videos of me turning into random objects.

Things to look at/read:

• A sad, slowed-down breakdown of trailercore
• Me and Gary Vee down by the schoolyard
• Why Millennials Have a Weird Relationship with Water
• Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning
• This is legitimately one of my favourite standalone comic strips

Animal corner:

• Cockatoos are figuring out how to open bins by copying each other
• Jump Around Dog in Box
• Wild Groundhog Won’t Let Woman Go Home Without Her
• My friends daughters hamster has been missing and feared dead for almost 2 weeks now.
• Wee s**t
• I’M ALIVE!!! Fuck you, Schrödinger!
• she’s excited because she matches her new blankie
• The dining table at our rental house is glass. This is what I see for the entire meal.

Tweets of the week:

• We tried to deliver *GRANDMA* today but no one was in. We will try and redeliver on the next working day.
• Obsessed with this picture from the Boston Globe of a lobsterwoman yeeting one that wasn’t big enough
• Someone please find the girl that tried to neck a Guinness last night cause I haven’t stopped creasing
• first time I’ve laughed since Monday
• Been reminded of when Reading services banned alcohol consumption throughout the known universe, which I feel was overstepping their authority somewhat
• Statue of Edward Colston (2020)
• If you left your sword at the Fulton St Wendy’s, it’s still here.
• people who have Twitter but never tweet anything

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Horsehistory study and the automated discovery of new areas of thought
• What China Wants and Why
• Who Actually Gets to Create Black Pop Culture?
• This Man Does Not Make Poppers

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We Love the Internet 2021/30: The Why are you asking me this edition

The next edition will be in three weeks.

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Instagram Has Become SkyMall
• What newsrooms still don’t understand about the internet
• Netflix Enters Middle Age. Brace for Speed Bumps.
• The Inevitable Weaponization of App Data Is Here
• Meet China’s new gaming underclass
• The Day the Good Internet Died

Reference points:

• Here’s The Most ‘Unforgettable Reddit Posts That Everyone Needs To Read’ As Voted By Users
• How to jump on TikTok trends

Longer reads:

• No cults, no politics, no ghouls: how China censors the video game world
• Concern trolls and power grabs: Inside Big Tech’s angry, geeky, often petty war for your privacy
• Can Silicon Valley Find God?

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• YouTube culture and trends report
• How TikTok’s Algorithm Figures You Out

Things to look at/read:

• Why are you asking me this?
• Those Were the Days of Our Lives
• Shein is the future of fast fashion. Is that a good thing?

Animal corner:

• When a MANTIS SHRIMP PUNCHES A HUMAN
• Imagine getting slept by a fish
• Cat games
• My dog got pricked by a cactus
• Animals being jerks
• Cat fight

Tweets of the week:

• Mathematics be like
• Fred Durst deleted all his insta posts and is rebranding!
• This image looks like the front cover on the box of a Sims game where they’re trying to show off how many different characters you can create
• so Beyond Meat sausages are growers not showers?
• That went downhill rapidly…
• I can tell you what happened here
• I love that NZ is small enough that I see the PM at least once a month.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Sucks to be him! How Henry the vacuum cleaner became an accidental design icon
• How AstraZeneca threw away its shot
• The Untold Stories of Wes Studi
• The rise and fall of an American tech giant

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