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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We Love the Internet 2017/26: The Time for sushi edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• How to use data to drive business growth at every level
• ‘Life is not fair’: How Salon regrouped after Facebook decimated its traffic
• Inside Discord, the Chat App That’s Changing How Gamers Communicate
• Upworthy Was One Of The Hottest Sites Ever. You Won’t Believe What Happened Next

Reference points:

• Burger King’s Five Tips For Marketers On How To Suck Less
• Weirdbox
• Spurious correlations

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• time for sushi
• Theresa May and the Holy Grail
• Coke habit
• Polishing a Rusty Knife
• Insane Footage Of A Propane Tank Explosion Throwing Firefighters On Their Backs
• The Seven Year Pilgrimage to Enlightenment

Things to look at/read:

• Piers Morgan Just Got Beautifully Owned By His Morning Show Co-Host And It’s Iconic
• Who owns black pain?
• All the “wellness” products Americans love to buy are sold on both Infowars and Goop

Animal corner

• Man’s Best Friend
• Baby elephant chasing birds

Tweets of the week:

• I’ve sold Brexits to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook and by gum, it put them on the map
• I made my kitten a sweater so he wouldn’t get chilly with the A/C on and now he thinks he’s a stud
• When your twitter bio says scholar/lawyer/fashionista/influencer.
• MAXIMUM PARTRIDGE HAS BEEN ACHIEVED REPEAT MAXIMUM PARTRIDGE HAS BEEN ACHIEVED
• please never forget how good the clip of angelo badalamenti talking about coming up with laura palmers theme w/ Lynch for twin peaks is
• Public Enemy’s sign-language interpreter is AMAZING
• I’ve never seen a one sentence headline contradict itself
• My uncle went Magaluf for a stag weekend and everyone thought he was Morgan Freeman

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads

• Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder Isn’t Just For People
• How RuPaul’s Drag Race went from cult favorite to inspirational teenage dream
• The Scarface of Sex: The Millionaire Playboy Who Murdered His Way to the Top of Porn
• ‘Buried alive’: the old men stuck in Britain’s prisons
• How Nicholas Serota’s Tate changed Britain
• The Ken Doll Reboot: Beefy, Cornrowed, and Pan-Racial

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We Love the Internet 2017/25: The Muscle up edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Media Companies Are Getting Sick of Facebook
• A discussion about AI’s conflicts and challenges
• Circle Gets the Square
• Young Men Are Playing Video Games Instead of Getting Jobs. That’s OK. (For Now.)
• Netflix is turning into HBO

Reference points:

• YouTube DJ
• The Lyttle Lytton Contest winner
• UK election analysis
• What Ideas Are Trending Among Tech’s Biggest Influencers?
• The Ultimate Guide To Making Smart Decisions

Longer reads

• A Sociology of the Smartphone
• How The Guardian Lost America
• Susan Wojcicki has transformed YouTube – but she isn’t done yet
• The shelf life of John Mackey
• How the trendiest grilled cheese venue got burnt

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Muscle up
• 27 Styles of Rapping
• Rundfunk-Tanzorchester Ehrenfeld : Daft Punk – “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”
• Woodswimmer
• Weirdo college student supports homophobic preacher
• 35 unbelievable cooking hacks
• Victim uses machete to fight off armed home invaders
• Robot sumo

Things to look at/read:

• 50 States, 50 Beers We Love
• Here’s How 15 Hardcore Athletes Train During Ramadan
• The awkwardness of becoming a teen, laid bare
• When Your Child Is a Psychopath
• A Number of Reasons I’ve Been Depressed Lately
• City of Villains: Why I Don’t Trust Batman
• A nasty name for a nasty thing

Animal corner

• Elephant rescue
• I added some music to this

Tweets of the week:

• “Need to tell this woman she’s wrong and also let her know I’m very horny”
• Have I ever told you how glad I am that these pictures exist?
• Marilyn Manson seen here with his father, Marilyn Mandad.
• Brexit, the movie
• I can’t stop laughing at this
• A Tale of Two Push Alerts
• No caption necessary
• no actor will ever hate their own movie as passionately as robert pattinson hated twilight

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads

• Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer’: An Oral History
• The 50 Best Good Bad Movies
• 35 Years Of American Death
• The Long, Lonely Road of Chelsea Manning
• Pornhub Is the Kinsey Report of Our Time
• How the U.S. triggered a massacre in Mexico
• How Kim Kardashian Pushed The Boundaries Of Celebrity Pregnancy

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We Love the Internet 2017/24: The 101 canonical tweets edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Cable News Wars: Inside the Unprecedented Battle for Viewers in Trump Era
• The Internet Is Where We Share — and Steal — the Best Ideas
• Is social media on the table in 2020?
• The Bizarre Story Of What Happened After The Internet Decided This Picture Of A Horse Was Porn
• TV Is Moving Away From Finale Fever — Which Is Making for Better TV
• Brut Shares How They Went From 0 to 80 Million Monthly Video Views In Just Six Months
• The secret online world of British teens: how streaks, deep likes and ghosting define young lives
• TV’s Age of Entitlement: Why Episodes Are Now So Damn Long

Reference points:

• 101 canonical tweets
• Shipwreck diary of a content marketer
• The Best Stuff to Do On the Google Homepage That Isn’t Googling
• BuzzFeed’s Product Design Principles
• How engaging is your headline?
• TV is not dying – it’s lies, damn lies and bad media statistics
• Pathology of a Fake News Story
• The tech industry is dominated by 5 big companies — here’s how each makes its money

Longer reads

• The secret origin story of the iPhone
• Rise of the machines: who is the ‘internet of things’ good for?
• Comedy Actress Roundtable: Emmy Rossum, America Ferrera on Pay Standoffs and Casting by Bikini
• Mallory Ortberg’s Internet
• History by lawsuit: After Gawker’s demise, the “inventor of e-mail” targets Techdirt
• Twenty Years of ‘OZ’: The Show That Changed TV Forever
• If you care about cities, Apple’s new campus sucks

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• The Floppotron: Take On Me
• Sandwich Bag Fire Starter
• Title drop
• Extreme 99,000 RPM Fidget spinner Launcher Bazooka Thing
• 40 years of hip hop
• See First Video of Most Dangerous Rope-Free Climb Ever
• Undulatus Asperatus Sunset

Things to look at/read:

• This Bathing Suit Covered In Chest Hair Is Actually Genius
• The Internet Killed the Teen Sex Comedy
• The rise and fall of the hi-top sneaker
• How does Batman make all his money?
• Is this the NFL’s first female player?

Tweets of the week:

• Oh, it’s your first day on Twitter? Here, this is Twitter.
• Here’s a picture of the police escort that Trump got to go golfing (again) this weekend. Do you think they were trying to say something?
• Don’t talk shit online
• when you walk back into the sesh after throwing up
• A saga in four parts:
• This dog looks a bit like Sir Patrick Stewart. That is all.
• I knew he wasn’t dead
• This thread on fake Twitter followers is interesting and entertaining (I have certainly butted heads with the sort of salesmen described)

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads

• The Rise and Fall of Toronto’s Classiest Con Man
• The Inside Story of London’s Chemsex Scene
• America’s Hidden H.I.V. Epidemic
• How the Self-Esteem Craze Took Over America
• The horrors of getting hit by a pitch
• Who Will Win the Taylor Swift–Katy Perry Feud?
• A Definitive Ranking of Every Tom Cruise Movie
• The hold up

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