We Love the Internet 2019/33: The Dark power of fraternities edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Evidence, Please
• There’s An Underground Economy Selling Links From The New York Times, BBC, CNN, And Other Big News Sites
• Pizza Hut wants to remind you of childhood: Can nostalgia actually sell more pizza?
• Robot Hiveminds & Network Effects
• The hidden costs of automated thinking
• Bollywood Rapper Sets Viewer Record YouTube Isn’t Talking About

Reference points:

• Internal Documents Show Why the NYPD Tries to Be ‘Funny’ Online
• 82 Ways to Live Like Alejandro Jodorowsky
• Uber lost $5.2 billion in 3 months. Here’s where all that money went.
• How To Talk Comedy Writer

Longer reads:

• Growth: an overview of start-ups in the UK
• No Logo at 20: have we lost the battle against the total branding of our lives?

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• We Made A Human Tube Map
• Mitchie Brusco’s first-ever Big Air 1260
• A ‘Fast & Furious’ Guide: How Did We Get to ‘Hobbs & Shaw’?
• Every Space Shuttle ever launched, in order
• Simone Biles, in extreme slow motion.
• Parkour Runner Misses Jump And Falls Off High-Rise Roof, Catches Himself On Electric Wires

Things to look at/read:

• The tiny video store that survived Netflix
• The Modern Market for NBA Trading Cards
• How aggressively cute toys for adults became a $686 million business
• How the Manson family became a pop culture trope
• Cornhole (yes, cornhole) is going pro
• Boycotts, bruised egos: How players reacted to ‘Madden NFL 20’ ratings
• Birth of the cool: The story behind the ice cream sandwich, an icon at 120

Animal corner:

• Curious Cub Startles Sleeping Men
• Midnight snack…
• Wait for it waaaaaait for it
• Can’t we all just get along?
• Guy with thick chicago accent helps coyote pup
• Please take a moment out of your day to appreciate the poise, elegance and natural grace of the panda.

Tweets of the week:

• My favourite thing ever. You have seriously made my birthday
• When you see your customizable character in a cutscene
• oh my god, i need this to be me in 20 years
• Why can’t this guy be the witness for everything
• Why is the “Save” button on MS Excel represented by the picture of vending machine? (with purchased drink at the bottom)
• My boyfriend literally has no problem making friends with anybody…
• so the limit is 412 chicken nuggets
• Some people claim the Sistine Chapel is the peak of human made beauty

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The Dark Power of Fraternities
• Alan Dershowitz, Devil’s Advocate
• How Clown Pants Saved My Life
• The Matriarchs of ‘Succession’
• Five Lessons from History
• Love in the Time of Britney
• Drink up, stoners

sk

Advertisements

We Love the Internet 2019/32: The What is the spotify sound edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• In Search of Lost Time on YouTube
• Why Is Everyone So Scared of Disney?
• The Slackification of the American Home
• ‘Hard to justify investing resources’: Publishers still cautious on IGTV efforts with lack of ads
• Something Awful’s founder thinks YouTube sucks at moderation
• Does anyone want to hear a story???

Reference points:

• The Story Format Leaps from Instagram to Big Media
• Want to innovate like Amazon? Here’s their formula
• Russell Davies’s strategy advice

Longer reads:

• The Fall Of Mic Was A Warning
• The Great Race to Rule Streaming TV
• Inside Instagram’s War on Bullying
• Here’s What It’s Like To See Yourself In A Deepfake Porn Video
• He Cyberstalked Teen Girls for Years—Then They Fought Back

 

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• What Is the Spotify Sound?
• How Quentin Tarantino Steals From Other Movies
• This Trick To Free A Trapped Electrical Plug Is Pure Witchcraft
• Teen With Expert Hide-And-Seek Skills Evades The Police
• California’s 7.1 Magnitude Earthquake Interrupted This Comedian’s Stand Up Set, And She Handled It Perfectly
• Undercover Cop Runs Stop Sign And Causes Crash — And Then Arrests The Other Driver
• Big road gap tour of france
• Mini Desktop Trebuchet

Things to look at/read:

• The $60 Gadget That’s Changing Electronic Music
• What Internet Memes Get Wrong About Breezewood, Pennsylvania
• Let’s Stop Pretending Celebrity Dadbods Need Defending
• ‘Fast & Furious’ Stars’ Complicated Demand—I Never Want to Lose a Fight
• Behold, the millennial nuns
• Why do light-skinned women dominate the pop charts?
• The Rise Of The Rom-Com Schlub
• I’m a 65-Year-Old Dentist Who Left It All Behind to Work at America’s Best New Restaurant

Animal corner:

• Goats escape into the neighborhood!
• Is this worthy of a “dogs, bruh”
• Goodnight ¯\(ツ)/¯
• Therapy: Expensive This dog imitating all his pictures: Free
• Not EVERYTHING is bad.
• bath time
• I have watched this loop so many times, this made my day better

Tweets of the week:

• So, each episode of the Simpsons is dubbed into two different versions for French markets.
• KEOWOSKTLQODKRKWIKTRKKDTLJQKRTLKEKTPFKRJTKFLWNTBRLWLFNSKWÑGKTJKDÑDNRRKLWLDIGFND

 

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• They said you could leave electric scooters anywhere – then the repo men struck back
• The Man Who’s Going to Save Your Neighborhood Grocery Store
• The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge
• Generalise, don’t specialise: why focusing too narrowly is bad for us
• Sex, Drugs, Misogyny And Sleaze At The HQ Of Bumble’s Owner
• The Ham of Fate
• How Graffiti Became Gentrified
• Cain and Abel and Oil

sk

We Love the Internet 2019/31: The Books for the ages edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• For Men Who Hate Talking On The Phone, Games Keep Friendships Alive
• Chinese vertical dramas made for phone viewing show the future of mobile video
• Netflix and software
• Jake Paul and Tana Mongeau’s over-the-top ‘wedding’ is part of a bigger YouTube phenomenon
• A Wikipedia for Generation Z
• Have We Hit Peak Podcast?
• Blame Pewdiepie when someone dies raiding area 51
• Plex makes piracy just another streaming service

Reference points:

• Books for the ages
• Internet trends 2019
• 2019 new workers of the world
• 11 Years of Top-Selling Book Covers, Arranged by Visual Similarity
• Five Times Spotify Has U-turned on Its Content Strategy
• The 25 works of art that define the contemporary age

Longer reads:

• The Streaming Wars: Its Models, Surprises, and Remaining Opportunities
• The Mirage of Cloud Gaming (And How to Reach the Oasis)
• Viral and Loving It: The Thoroughly Modern Comedy of Demi Adejuyigbe
• YA Twitter Can Be Toxic, But It Also Points Out Real Problems
• Is Belle Delphine, a.k.a. Bathwater Gamer Girl, the Greatest Troll On the Internet?
• Can comedy survive in an age of outrage?
• Andy Ngo Has The Newest New Media Career. It’s Made Him A Victim And A Star.
• The Fight for the Future of YouTube

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Marvel Studios The Room
• Every Major Stranger Things Movie Reference Explained By the Duffer Brothers
• Fascinating Mysteries Solved by the Internet
• Woman Firebombs House Next Door — And Films Herself Doing So On Her Own Security Camera
• Guy Tries To Show Off The Acceleration Of His Vintage Chevy Chevelle, Instantly Regrets It
• Guy Lets His Kid Play With A Roman Candle Firework, Quickly Regrets It
• This Crazy Japanese Slide Is Not Recommended For Beginners
• What Happens When You Put Soda in a Humidifier?

Things to look at/read:

• Woodstock ’99: Remembering the Chaos 20 Years Later
• Inga Saffron and Stu Bykofsky Absolutely Savaged Each Other at Stu’s Farewell Party
• The 1% Nightmare Class Politics of Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down”
• Stirred Not Shaken: How Do You End Up With 50,000 Swizzle Sticks?
• Why Kevin Smith’s infamous wife tweet is still breaking brains – 10 years later
• It turns out that Juggalo makeup blocks facial recognition technology
• The big scoop: what a day with an ice-cream man taught me about modern Britain
• Ten Juicy Secrets About Restaurants I Learned Working as Nobu’s Maitre D’

Animal corner:

• Deep Sea Researchers Stunned When They Film A Grouper Swallowing A Shark Whole
• I couldn’t not add audio to this gif.
• therapy: expensive this video of a cat being bathed and blow dried: free
• Heard a sound come from the kitchen and noticed four fresh cookies went missing.
• Daisy puts herself to bed like this at least three or four times a day
• this dog has an important message for you … SMILE MORE
• Look how happy this puppy is, since he learned he is adopted
• I, a large wrinkle, have made these smaller wrinkles.

Tweets of the week:

• I have no friends so I like to take famous dance scenes from movies and put songs that are the same tempo on top of them.
• THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE
• Our gate can play ‘Mull of Kintyre’
• You throw like a girl
• yo this is some looney tunes logic and I love it with all of my chest
• CUT MY LIFE INTO PIECES, THIS IS MY LAST RESORT
• Holy moly
• my poor dad was so proud of the watermelon he grew… turns out it was a big ass cucumber

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Can a Dance Sensation’s Viral Moment Last Forever?
• Kanye’s Second Coming: Inside The Billion-Dollar Yeezy Empire
• Road tripping with the Amazon nomads
• Their Family Bought Land One Generation After Slavery.
• The electrifying rise and fall of tazer ball
• New Coke Didn’t Fail. It Was Murdered
• The rise and fall of French cuisine
• Inside JoJo Siwa’s Glitter-Covered Empire

sk

We Love the Internet 2019/30: The Stay in the game edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The Man Who Built The Retweet: “We Handed A Loaded Weapon To 4-Year-Olds”
• The Hotel Hackers Are Hiding in the Remote Control Curtains
• Bon Appétit’s Gourmet Makes is a great way to learn how to be productive at work
• Is this social start up the future of TV?
• I.P. Quartz Brief, the innovative mobile news app.
• Lights, camera, caption! Why subtitles are no longer just for the hard of hearing
• Shopify and the Power of Platforms

Reference points:

• 100 Things We’ve Learned About Language from The Allusionist
• On YouTube’s Biggest Channels, Videos With Keywords Like ‘Fortnite,’ ‘ASMR’ and ‘Insane’ Get Higher Views
• 44 African Americans who shook up the world
• Snapchat’s Gender-Swap and Baby Filters Doubled App Downloads
• Generation Z’s suicide epidemic

Longer reads:

• How ‘Overwatch’ Is Tackling the Esports Stats Problem
• The Wild Ride at Babe.Net
• Can Democrats win back the internet in the age of Trump?
• The Land Where the Internet Ends
• Slack Wants to Replace Email. Is That What We Want?
• TikTok Has A Predator Problem. A Network Of Young Women Is Fighting Back.
• Why the ending of Game of Thrones elevated the worst of fan culture
• At Work, Expertise Is Falling Out of Favor

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Storyline – the trend guessing game
• Two People Crash At ‘Mountain Of Hell’ Bike Race — And Then All Hell Really Does Break Loose
• How To Make A Cheese Ball Machine Gun
• Cassetteboy – Boris Johnson’s Leadership Bid
• The Alfonso Cuaron One-Shot Sequence

Things to look at/read:

• Stay in the game
• Romance Novel Model Jason Baca, 45, Retiring from the Genre After Posing on Over 630 Covers
• Meet the Guy Who Bought a Monorail For $1,000
• Wireless headphones are augmented reality devices
• A Brief History of the Movie-Summarizing End-Credits Rap
• What do people in solitary confinement want to see?

Animal corner:

• DogCoin Mining by 2 Labradors
• Doggy Stays Dry While Playing with Water
• Mother Skunk Helps Babies Climb over Curb
• Saint Bernard Makes Huge Mess and Chews Entire Paper Towel Roll
• I showed my cat the Cats trailer.
• I don’t care how small your advertising budget is.  Wonderful things can still be done.
• Brought home a new pet
• why does this dog look like richard gere

Tweets of the week:

• What is up with our timeline
• so we’re 2 hours into the races, and el comes and tells me someone has spilt red wine down her…
• this is terrifying
• I have watched this video of Ryan from last night 300 times 😂😭😂😭 cannot write this stuff
• This is my new favorite wild mommy post. It’s me, the millennial slut who just goes to Disney World to make children cry
• MONEY/IDIOT KLAXON.
• What kind of lasers were they fucking using?!
• For the last 800 days, @meganamram has posted this tweet every day.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• A Family Portrait: Brothers, Sisters, Strangers
• Subway Got Too Big. Franchisees Paid a Price.
• Hooked
• How Warped Tour led the consumerist music festival revolution
• Behind ‘The Mask’
• David Sackler pleads his case on the opioid epidemic
• The $500m family feud
• What Really Happened to Malaysia’s Missing Airplane

sk

We Love the Internet 2019/29: The Hired guns of Instagram edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Fans Are Better Than Tech at Organizing Information Online
• Everything we do, and everything we feel.
• eBay trashes Amazon Prime Day and promises to unlock more deals if the site crashes again
• They welcomed a robot into their family, now they’re mourning its death
• How ‘Toy Story 4’ and Pixar keep Don Rickles’ legacy alive two years after his death
• The Golden Age of Cord-Cutting Is Over. Now What?
• We hired three Fiverr workers to write about Fiverr’s IPO

Reference points:

• How Music Discovery Works Today, and What Artists Can Do To Stand Out
• At What Age Do People Switch Jobs
• Reflect, connect, learn: How video is fulfilling new roles in people’s lives

Longer reads:

• The hired guns of Instagram
• Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Pickpockets Target Oblivious Tourists, Don’t Notice That The Police Are Trailing Them
• billy corgan rides a rollercoaster
• Guy In Charge Of Pouring The Champagne Tower Has The Absolute Worst Day Of His Life
• Woman Tries To Body Surf Down A Dune, Fails To Account For The Effects Of Friction
• Oh Geez, This Is The Most (Literally) Painful Gender Reveal Ever
• This clip from the Fox show Beat Shazam is the bleakest thing on television. Darker than Euphoria or Chernobyl. I implore you to watch the entire clip

Things to look at/read:

• The Best Abortion Ever
• The Ultimate Guide To Every Hot Dog Style From Around The World

Animal corner:

• Tortoise Snaps Angrily at Girl’s Phone
• Fucks given: Zero.
• Dog Has Most Dramatic Reaction To Dropping Toy

Tweets of the week:

• dr strange: *opens the portals* dusted avengers:
• me when an email finds me well
• 50 years ago today, as we were camping in Canada, my dad used an aluminum canoe as an antennae so my brother and I could listen to the launch of Apollo 11
• phil mitchell saying “eh” to the tune of the eastenders theme is one of my favourite videos to ever exist
• If white characters were written the way white authors describe POC in novels:
• Thoughts and prayers for the woman in the brown top
• Lethal Weapon 5 looks shit….
• drunk woody harrelson being kept from his seats at wimbledon is a huge mood

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The Time I Went On A Lesbian Cruise And It Blew Up My Entire Life
• Judge Judy Is Still Judging You
• A dirty, rotten, double crossing (true) story of what happened to the Italian American mob

sk

We Love the Internet 2019/28: The I in we edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• A GIF Within a GIF of Another GIF
• Disruption Starts with Unhappy Customers, Not Technology
• The Ruthless Reality of Amazon’s One-Day Shipping
• The Real Difference Between Creators and Influencers
• Quibi: The next Go90, or streaming unicorn?
• Frigid Offices Might Be Killing Women’s Productivity
• How a video game community filled my nephew’s final days with joy
• Meaningful measurement

Reference points:

• Reuters digital news report
• Internet trends 2019
• The 100 Greatest Movie Quotes of the 21st Century
• Where are the places with the best (and the worst) weather in the United States
• The 30 Best Elaine Moments on Seinfeld

Longer reads:

• The I In We
• Big Mood Machine
• The unlikely origins of USB, the port that changed everything
• Bodies in seats
• On the Outside: The Harsh Reality of Life After ‘Love Island’
• Andreessen Horowitz Is Blowing Up The Venture Capital Model (Again)
• WeChat Is Watching

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• A Brief History Of Spotify
• HBO’s Chernobyl vs Reality – Footage Comparison
• Not A Single Word Is Needed For This Animated Short To Blow Your Damn Mind
• H.E.R.N.O.B.Y.L
• How To Fall Asleep In 2 Minutes
• Tank Runs Over Car At Top Speed And, Uh, Holy Crap
• Whoever Wrecked This Car Really Didn’t Think Through The Evidence Left Behind
• The Descent Into China’s Deepest Subway Station Is Comically Long

Things to look at/read:

• How Graffiti Became Gentrified
• Bird-killing, cancer-causing 5G is the internet’s new favourite conspiracy theory

Animal corner:

• Barking Bird Guards the House like a Dog
• A Very Cool Demonstration Of Owls’ Insane Flying Precision
• Dog Wearing Salami Mask
• Horse and Rider Jump Into Deceptively Deep Pool of Water
• Somehow all of the neighborhood cats managed to get into our trampoline…
• i’m not gonna ask you again, what the fuck is in your mouth

Tweets of the week:

• Why are the peas upside down. It’s fucking me up.
• Holy shit lmao.
• If you don’t use these EXACT character names when discussing Big Little Lies, you’re being confusing.
• Mikhail Gorbachev with the hair of Joe Kinnear and Ronald Reagan with the hair of Kenny Dalglish.
• My wife went straight savage in Waitrose. Fuck you, Doris, and your hatred of tattooed millennials.
• The #USWNT hammered after winning back 2 back world cups is honestly the best content I’ve ever seen
• The distinctive Rijksmuseum i & j digraph works well in *most* contexts.
• Amazing

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The mindfulness conspiracy
• The Death Of The Family Secret
• Mike Tyson Smokes the Toad

sk

We Love the Internet 2019/27: The Dark forest theory of the internet edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
• Seinfeld is 30 years old. Here are 5 ways it changed television.
• The Coalition Out to Kill Tech as We Know It
• The catch-22 that broke the internet
• When Grown-Ups Get Caught in Teens’ AirDrop Crossfire
• Hollywood is quietly using AI to help decide which movies to make
• The Best Ideas Are the Ones That Make the Least Sense
• Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

Reference points:

• Remake my day
• Why We Created a Gender-Inclusive Stock Photo Library
• What Do the Most GIF-able TV Shows Have in Common?
• How to speak Silicon Valley: 53 essential tech-bro terms explained

Longer reads:

• Uber’s Path of Destruction
• Destroyer of worlds
• How the pursuit of leisure drives internet use
• Investing in the Podcast Ecosystem in 2019
• Huawei’s Yearslong Rise Is Littered With Accusations of Theft and Dubious Ethics
• After 15 years the pirate bay still can’t be killed
• Donald Trump’s Wikipedia Entry Is a War Zone

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• How The Shawshank Redemption Humanizes Prisoners
• Draining a Flooded Street
• 80″ Symphonic Gong played by Paiste Gong Master Sven
• This Ingenious Man Has Created A ‘Tree Bike’ That Allows Him To Go Up 100-Foot-Tall Trees
• The Best Unexpected Technique for Whisking
• Video shows helicopter rescue of injured hiker
• Trine Softball Wins Super Regional With Hidden Ball Trick Play!
• This Disastrous Snowmobile Stunt Attempt Is The Most Canadian Video On The Internet

Things to look at/read:

• The dark side of Japan’s anime industry
• A Woman Leaned Over Beyoncé To Talk To Jay-Z — And The Beyhive Responded With A Wave Of Harassment
• I Promise This Clickbait Delivers: This Horrifying Florida Man Story Involves Boats, Guns, Cocaine, And Hostages
• Three comedians on how they cope with depression
• ‘Get Scavino in here’: Trump’s Twitter guru is the ultimate insider

Animal corner:

• Cat Feeder Machine
• Bride Sara Carson Devine / Dances with her “Best Dog” Hero
• Hello, new friend.
• Everything’s terrible so here’s a cat massaging a capybara
• Can everybody just Please look at this cat
• You haven’t lived until you get to 30 seconds
• This is the best thing you will see today
• So we had to put a cone on my dog again. My cat loves it

Tweets of the week:

• Giant weetabix
• There is no comment which can adequately describe this behaviour.
• Hit up graduation then I Woahh
• Honestly can’t stop reading this mental job advert. It’s an absolute dystopian masterpiece.
• Happy 21st birthday to this: the greatest 20 seconds of Glastonbury coverage ever broadcast…
• I know nobody wants political content on this account but it’s 2:30am and I am awake and putting Marianne Williamson’s speech to Twin Peaks music
• This really bothers me and yet I can’t stop watching it.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• How Many Bones Would You Break to Get Laid?
• The Grindr Grifter
• Would you leave your life behind for a house you saw on Instagram?
• The Artist Who Gave Up Her Daughter
• El Chapo: what the rise and fall of the kingpin reveals about the war on drugs
• Can CBD Really Do All That?

sk