We Love the Internet 2020/39: The Future of fandoms edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• 2020 Bundles
• Networks Are Prepping for the Craziest Fall Season in the History of Broadcast TV
• The hidden costs of streaming music
• Asobu: Putting Japan’s indies on the international map
• Quibi, the IPL, and the future of sports storytelling
• The Dodo: social is the ‘ultimate incubator’ for viral video to become TV shows
• This Deal Helped Turn Google Into an Ad Powerhouse. Is That a Problem?
• Instagram at 10: how sharing photos has entertained us, upset us – and changed our sense of self

Reference points:

• The future of fandoms
• 15 Awesome Examples of Social Media Marketing

Longer reads:

• Seeing Like an Algorithm
• Could They Be Any More Famous?
• The Future of Film Talk Is on Letterboxd
• Casey Newton on Leaving ‘The Verge’ for Substack and the Future of Tech Journalism

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• How reality TV shows cast the right people
• I created a video lens that uses hand gestures to show comic-book style messages
• Someone found a good clip of the watermelon incident from amazing race. It was funny then and is funny now
• I don’t know who needs to hear this, but here’s the Red Army Choir singing ‘Sex Bomb.’

Things to look at/read:

• Designed in Minecraft, built IRL
• One man’s trash
• Rohit Roy’s soft-drink addiction battle turns him into TikTok star
• The powerful decide
• The Wound of Multilingualism: On Surrendering the Languages of Home

Animal corner:

• I laughed until I had hiccups
• We don’t deserve birds
• An otter defending a random plastic box from being sprayed
• I swear my brother’s cat has a Northern Ireland accent. Aye.
• This is why you don’t go where bears live.
• Wait for it…
• kleine Ratte
• Hi bro,can you rap?

Tweets of the week:

• Gotta stop smoking weed thought that pipe was rafiki off lion king
• This vase has had enough of your nonsense.
• I’m never carpooling again
• How powerful was the laser?!
• i love us.
• Man was just tryna shit I’m CRYING
• It’s clear from the data coming in, that the United Kingdom is now facing a very serious, and potentially overwhelming, second wave of banana bread.
• Booker T got 24 hours to respond

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The Slow, Troubling Death of the Autopsy
• In Dark Times, I Sought Out the Turmoil of Caravaggio’s Paintings
• The next reconstruction

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We Love the Internet 2020/38: The Just so I’m being honest edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• TV’s Future Will Be More Animated
• Your Phone Wasn’t Built for the Apocalypse
• Scream If You Want to Go Faster!
• Lessons on victory from Mikel Arteta
• The iPad at 10

Longer reads:

• Buying myself back
• How Did MTV Become the ‘Ridiculousness’ Network?

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Super Mario Bros. 3 in 3 minutes – World Record Speedrun Explained
• ‘Finally nailed the bane speech…4 years too late’

Things to look at/read:

• Nazi Hippies: When the New Age and Far Right Overlap
• How Conspiracy Theories Are Shaping the 2020 Election—and Shaking the Foundation of American Democracy

Animal corner:

• Rate this from 1-10!
• Bad dog
• Kittens running
• I bet his name is Spot
• please look at this picture of my friend’s cat who had to get shaved for surgery

Tweets of the week:

• Just so I’m being honest.
• are they bowling TO EARN SOUP or are they bowling on BEHALF OF SOUP
• history book: “…Venice was ruled by the doge…”
• Pintman Paddy Losty X Donald Trump
• My friend just texted me a pic of her newborn. This is officially the greatest baby pic anyone has ever sent me.
• In lockdown. So sorry…
• I have watched this a dozen times and now I want to write a novel about a group of girls who practice witchcraft together as teens and then reconnect in later life and reform the coven to enact supernatural revenge on their shitty ex-husbands.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• More Than a Mustache: The Many Lives of Mario, Video Games’ Most Malleable Mascot
• The Oral History of ‘The Town’

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We Love the Internet 2020/37: The Nelson travels to Midnight City edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• How to Make It as a Paparazzo in a Pandemic? Focus on Influencers
• Media 2020: Rise of the Renaissance Creator
• Black storytellers are using horror to battle hate
• Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable
• Escape the echo chamber
• Why The Hollywood Reporter Is Changing Its TV Ratings Coverage
• Netflix’s Reed Hastings Conquered Hollywood With a PowerPoint Presentation

Reference points:

• How to ensure your video creative is driving performance
• Emma Willard’s Maps of Time
• Here are the greatest novels ever written about every sport.
• Optimal Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwiches

Longer reads:

• Has Rotten Tomatoes Ever Truly Mattered?
• My Instagram
• The Inside Story Of Robinhood’s Billionaire Founders, Option Kid Cowboys And The Wall Street Sharks That Feed On Them
• Tencent: The Ultimate Outsider
• Why People Can’t Stand Tech Journalists: An Interview With Casey Newton
• The Conscience of Silicon Valley

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Nelson Travels to Midnight City
• Léa Kyle performs an insane quick change act
• Peel, Pucker, Pinch, or Puncture? Coffee Lids, Explored
• The Collapse of Bon Appetit
• Spraying a Car in the WORLD’S BRIGHTEST Glow in the Dark Pigments

Things to look at/read:

• Toward a queer Disney canon
• New bus trip will take you from Delhi to London in 70 days
• The College Experience Myth Is Unrealistic, Puts Pressure on Students

Animal corner:

• Watch These Golden Retriever Puppies Be Transfixed By A Talking Stuffed Dragon Telling A Story
• for everyone who says “wouldn’t this be scary at night”… confirmed
• He’s doing yoga.
• Thinking about this cat that caught her man cheating
• Listening and following directions is important my mom says! I love bath time!
• she was falling asleep on jordan so i started filming her WHO KNEW she was gonna do the damn grinch smile then start gagging
• Haven’t seen my boy in about a week, you could say he was excited
• Who else thinks Zain nailed this challenge?

Tweets of the week:

• Ladies, we have a winner
• You know what’s been living in my head rent free all day? This cartoon
• WAP stands for:
• I refuse to believe this aubergine that arrived in my veg box was about to be thrown away; I would pay premium prices for this
• Julio Iglesias with Kentucky fried chicken, red wine, and tortilla de patatas in a private jet, c.1986
• Making a reservation at Olive Garden when the vaccine drops

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Loving the alien
• The inside story of the £8m heist from the Carnegie Library
• The tyranny of chairs: why we need better design
• A heist on time and a half: Inside the most corrupt police squad in the nation
• “I’m Going To Be Honest With You,” The Grandfather Told Police. “I Killed A Lot.”
• Click Here to Kill

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We Love the Internet 2020/36: The endless doomscroller edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Hollywood’s Diversity Push Has Left Out One Important Group
• What if Facebook Is the Real ‘Silent Majority’?
• TikTok users are obsessed with ‘Criminal Minds.’ They may change TV fandom forever
• How Facebook and Other Sites Manipulate Your Privacy Choices
• Why does Instagram Reels suck so bad?

Reference points:

• The endless doomscroller
• Watch Netflix Through a Filmmaker’s Lens
• On Twitter usernames with lots of numbers

Longer reads:

• This app could end Apple’s monopoly — and Steve Jobs would love it
• YouTubers Myka and James Stauffer shared every step of their parenting journey. Except the last.

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• How to make pasta spin endlessly
• This is the best thing I’ve ever seen Hahahaha

Things to look at/read:

• T.G.I.F: How Millennials Treated Time In The 90’s vs. Quarantine
• Why Men Are Turning to Cosmetic Procedures for a Competitive Edge in the Boardroom
• Inside Skateboarding’s New Counterculture
• The ‘Batman Effect’: How having an alter ego empowers you
• The man who has created 100+ pointless inventions
• From Avril Lavigne to Billie Eilish: a recent history of pop’s alt-girls

Animal corner:

• Removed my desk’s glass top; cat is thoroughly confused
• There’s Two Types Of Dogs In This World
• they are so MADDDD
• Me walking to the other bathroom because the one I was in didn’t have toilet paper
• Russell still the Boss!
• Don’t worry we went on a walkies after this video haha
• Today Kevin learned how to dock dive!
• This is how I look trying to learn the latest tiktok dance

Tweets of the week:

• was not expecting this from my chem professor but i’m also not complaining
• which one of u made robert paddington
• me: I’ve never really seen a tattoo I would want on me forev—
• Ah, a man of culture I see.
• Bit late to give advice.
• statistics 101
• why did this bottle of ranch just spit out the most perfect mike wazowski face
• Koeman trying to convince Leo Messi to stay at Barcelona..

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Thirty Going on 13: The Adult Actors Who Play Movie Teens, by the Numbers
• The summer without blockbusters
• Decolonising dermatology: why black and brown skin need better treatment
• The Good Son
• How China controlled the coronavirus
• How 3M Blew Its Reputation on the N95 Mask
• The 20 Best Bottle Episodes, Ranked
• The Most Tremendous Reelection Campaign in American History Ever

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We Love the Internet 2020/35: The Teen movie bracket edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The Death of Bon Appétit Is Proof Media Companies Have No Idea What Makes Videos Work
• The number one reason white men give for not getting involved with diversity and inclusion
• Instagram Reels’ biggest problem is replicating what TikTok does best
• How TLC Built Its 90 Day Fiancé Empire
• Microsoft Flight Simulator players are flying into Hurricane Laura

Reference points:

• The most important metric you’ve never heard of
• On all that fuckery

Longer reads:

• Covid Gag Rules at U.S. Companies Are Putting Everyone at Risk
• Sex, lies, and video games: Inside Roblox’s war on porn
• Pinduoduo and Vertically Integrated Social Commerce

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• The wisdom of memes
• Antiques Roadshow, Hexham 1991

Things to look at/read:

• We won’t remember much of what we did in the pandemic
• Gun Enthusiasts Celebrate Man Who Shot Himself in the Balls as Their King
• How Boomers Changed American Family Life (By Getting Divorced)

Animal corner:

• he’s so embarrassed
• cat
• This was in my drafts
• Dinky
• Got Treats!????
• Cat lover
• Okay this was funny
• Cat vs dog who’s winning?

Tweets of the week:

• What was once a funny meme is just now four moods leaving the house during covid.
• when the Zoom call ends and I am left with my thoughts
• An opinion thread on #London railway termini.
• https://twitter.com/HanaaTameez/status/1298256278876127234
• me: come over Malcolm Gladwell: I cant
• i frolicked for the first time ever today bruh. y’all ever frolic before???? why no one ever tell me about this
• Today in a Zoom class my professor casually mentioned her cat and one brave student spoke up:
• Poundland Jedward

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The Teen Movie Bracket
• The Plans Were Never Finalized: The Long-Awaited Return of Bright Eyes
• How to Learn Everything: The MasterClass Diaries
• The Top 50 Greatest Landfill Indie Songs of All Time
• The Endgame of the Olympics
• Built to last

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We Love the Internet 2020/34: The Sweatpants forever edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Google has outgrown its corporate culture
• Scientists rename human genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates
• App stores, trust and anti-trust
• Seven predictions for how Amazon will change the sporting world

Reference points:

• My favorite product management templates
• TikTok clone Instagram Reels is just one of the many times Facebook has copied its competitors
• PDF: Still Unfit for Human Consumption, 20 Years Later

Longer reads:

• TikTok and the Sorting Hat
• How social justice slideshows took over Instagram
• TikTok and the Evolution of Digital Blackface
• “Hannity has said to me more than once, ‘He’s Crazy’”

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• The Fast and the Furious (on a budget) Trailer
• 200 Watt car mounted laser!
• The Hackney Mole Man
• The smoothest guitar switch ever!
• How to make a blockbuster movie video
• Radio.garden

Things to look at/read:

• The embarrassing 1,000 year history of the male power ballad
• Twilight of the Imperial Chef
• The Airport of the Future Will Have No Check-In or Security Lines
• The ‘slam’ of your car door is fake
• Who Is Keanu Reeves, Really?

Animal corner:

• The Pit Bull Influencers Reclaiming the Dogs’ Image, One IG Post at a Time
• Otter Jumps Onto Boat Escaping Orca With Seconds To Spare
• egg thief!!!!!!!!!
• I CANT STOPLAUGHIINFGNGH
• Kung fu cat
• Most dramatic brain freeze EVER!
• Say hi to the melon pupper

Tweets of the week:

• I refuse to read the whole article. This headline is everything I need
• Been telling my daughter to take this mask off for over 3 hours she’s not listening .
• Many people have been using quarantine as a time to perfect their bread or coffee making skills, but I personally have taken this as an opportunity to make increasingly unsettling eggs
• America has a pandemic problem so I solved it by making a gun:
• The perfect image for 2020 doesn’t exi….
• I needed this tbh
• The Story of the Legendary Grilled Cheese.
• Dear @ManUtd, the home shirt is £64.95. Whilst I’m willing to pay the £64.95, I’d rather pay £30 up front, £10 when I’ve worn it 10 times, £10 when the team finish in the top 4 wearing it, £10 when Jadon Sancho scores a hat-trick wearing it and £4.95 if I win the Ballon d’Or.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Sweatpants forever
• In Conversation: Laurence Fishburne
• The Unraveling of America
• Pop Culture Failed to Imagine Kamala Harris
• Unwanted Truths: Inside Trump’s Battles With U.S. Intelligence Agencies
• Viral Video Seemed To Show BLM Storming A Church. The Real Story Is Much Darker.
• Simone Biles Would Like to Thank Herself
• The ride from hell

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We Love the Internet 2020/33: The UX of Lego interface panels edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Will a Comedy Ever Play at a Movie Theater Again?
• Puncturing the paradox: Group cohesion and the generation myth
• Number Fever: The Pepsi Contest That Became a Deadly Fiasco
• The Life Span of Streaming TV Series Is Shrinking
• Disney’s CEO Is Scrapping Once-Sacred Businesses

Reference points:

• The UX of LEGO interface panels
• Almost Everything I Looked Up in a Week

Longer reads:

• Who am I prepared to kill?
• A History of Violence: Why I Loved Cop Shows, and Why They Must Change
• “Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor”: The power and the peril of a catchphrase
• Why the First ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ Editing Team Resigned

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Radioooooo
• Popcorn Popping (100,000 Frames Per Second)
• Paris’s Fake Buildings (And The Story Behind Them)

Things to look at/read:

• Cup Noodle celebrates selling over 100 billion units with special ‘Japanese slang’ packaging
• The shopping addicts of quarantine
• This Man Decided To Send A Voice Note On LinkedIn And It’s The Funniest Message Ever
• Inside the hidden world of competitive lockpicking
• Hollywood Is Running Out of Villains

Animal corner:

• Please Enjoy This Video Of A Ferret Being Surprised By An Avalanche Of Balls Going Down The Stairs
• My uncle’s dog carries a 30-pound weight everywhere he goes
• absolutely outstanding work from Maru today
• I don’t normally post political tweets but this is very important
• I don’t know how to explain this but this cat represents the mood I’ve been in since March.
• he was a punk … she did ballet

Tweets of the week:

• just checking if you’re a crow
• man
• the current advice
• i love The Sopranos
• DJ khaled looking like he’s on the cover of the Grimsby telegraph becausr his son has spent 3 grand on farmville
• The bridge was built to last. Then the river changed course.
• Catfished again. This is bullshit.
• Such Great Heights remains a timeless classic

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Beyond Big Meat
• Immunology Is Where Intuition Goes to Die
• “We Just Brought the King of the Mountain of Sports Slurs to Its Knees”

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We Love the Internet 2020/32: The Google’s top search result edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• How Ben & Jerry’s Perfected the Delicate Recipe for Corporate Activism
• What Beyoncé’s ‘Black Is King’ Means for Disney Plus
• Why Gen Z Turned on Lin-Manuel Miranda
• Netflix’s ‘Most Popular’ List Is a Wasteland
• Facebook Employees Wonder What Would Happen If Trump Used Their Platform To Dispute Election Results

Longer reads:

• Google’s Top Search Result?
• Media 2020: Rise of the Renaissance Creator

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Four Years Playing the Electric Guitar – Month by Month Progress
• The Supercut: 94 movies/shows, 10 weeks and 130+ hours of editing
• Do Masks Work Or Not?? Proving Whether Masks Stop Covid-19 Transmission with Uncle Rob
• Inside The Hostess Factory
• World’s first Bulletproof Lamborghini
• How I Stole $2.8M as a Teenager
• YouTuber walks around Shibuya like it’s a video game.
• Drinking game zone

Things to look at/read:

• What’s Really Happening in the Background of Your Zoom Calls
• Americans tune in to ‘cancel culture’ — and don’t like what they see
• Is This the Saddest Pandemic Dining Experience in America?
• Hardcore pop fans are abusing critics – and putting acclaim before art
• We Quit Our Jobs to Build a Cabin—Everything Went Wrong

Animal corner:

• Owls are the cats of the sky.
• Girl returns home from college and her goldens are thrilled about it.
• “I’m afraid of escalators but when I’m with dad I’m not afraid of anything”
• I’m fascinated by the rules of this game
• Goooooooal
• This is what a sheepdog looks like if you shave just its head
• Dogs be like

Tweets of the week:

• that’s larry bird
• This is the best thing you’ll see all day.
• The film crew. This is amazing.
• Possibly one of the best swims of my career! (~open for debate~) What can you do without spilling a drop?!
• “Yeah, Nah” = Me, disagreeing “Nah, Yeah” = Me, agreeing
• toni colette is like if nicolas cage had full control of his powers
• Voting in a United States 2 party system
• The Year 2020 as told by Arrested Development

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air”
• The Remarkable Rise of Lil Baby
• Whose century?
• The Uncertain Future of Post-Pandemic Starbucks
• How To Pretend That You Are Smart
• How the Pandemic Defeated America
• The Panopticon Is Already Here

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We Love the Internet 2020/31: The Mischief managed edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• How to Report on Internet Culture and the Teens Who Rule It
• What comes after Zoom fatigue
• Is This Amazon Review Bullshit?
• It’s time we had an adult conversation about PornHub’s free pass in ad land
• The Data-Driven Tech Engine at the Heart of Hollywood’s Content Factories
• This Too Shall Pass: Unassailable Monopolies That Were, in Hindsight, Eminently Assailable

Reference points:

• 40 creative moments that changed culture
• Defining the ’90s Music Canon
• You May Not Know These 15 Songs. But You’ve Heard Them.
• The Hollywood Stars That Have Been Rejected The Most Times, Visualized
• Media changes from the perspective of a 16 year old

Longer reads:

• Mischief managed
• Nintendo, Disney, and Cultural Determinism
• The Media and the Virus

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• 12 Year Old Terrarium – Life Inside a closed jar, Over a decade in isolation
• I Accidentally Became A Meme: Success Kid
• Karens Gone Wild: COVID-19 Edition!
• Why You Couldn’t Afford To Fly Concorde
• Today I discovered Japanese skateboarder Isamu Yamamoto. Just when you think he’s done the video gets better and better.
• I’m crying…

Things to look at/read:

• The death of nostalgia
• The Whiners Who Earn $200,000 and Complain They’re Broke
• How Costco Convinces Brands to Cannibalize Themselves
• What it’s like to lose a loved one to QAnon
• The VICE Alternative Team of the Premier League Season 2019-2020

Animal corner:

• Woman Cooks Her Rats Miniature Versions Of Her Meals
• ants trying to steal my mail
• Sir, your tail
• The baby

Tweets of the week:

• I have no idea who to credit for this. But they deserve a Pulitzer.
• Glad to see Nicholas Cage is wearing his mask whilst shopping
• two garys, locked in an eternal struggle, pursuing each other across the globe forever.
• That moment of horror when Facebook crops your logo.
• the bread look like it hit Steve Austin with his car
• the good news is my custom facemask arrived, the bad news is that they printed my face 20% too large
• I didn’t know what I was looking at for awhile lmao
• Today will go down as the day I got drawn into an epic Twitter battle between a Microsoft employee and a “cheese” company

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• I Went to Disney World
• The Power of Black Lives Matter
• Why Britney Spears’s fans are convinced she’s being held captive
• The Conspiracy Theory About Wayfair Is Spreading Fast Among Lifestyle Influencers On Instagram
• Inside the World of Black Market Bourbon
• How Trump is helping tycoons exploit the pandemic
• The true story of the heartthrob prince of Qatar and his time at USC

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We Love the Internet 2020/29: The Covid risk chart edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• What Trump’s Twitter feed looks like
• How Substack has spawned a new class of newsletter entrepreneurs
• AOC’s brand was groundbreaking. Now it’s inspiring copycats around the world
• Watching Movies in ‘Fortnite’ Is More Fun Than a Theater

Reference points:

• Covid risk chart
• 50 ideas that changed my life
• Netflix Reveals 10 Most Popular Movies
• Pricing Freelance Projects
• Understanding the ten types of innovation
• Websites that spark joy

Longer reads:

• The TikTok War
• Amid the Black Lives Matter Movement, Hollywood Examines Its Own History of Racism
• What’s wrong with WhatsApp
• The ‘Fyre Festival of Pizza’ Wasn’t an Accused Scammer’s First Flop

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Television, the eye of tomorrow (1947)
• Rickroll your Zooms
• This dad made his son a conveyor belt sushi restaurant at home.

Things to look at/read:

• What I Learned at the Most Instagrammed Outdoor Places
• Brilliant Book Dedications
• The secret economics of a VIP party

Animal corner:

• How to make over 100 cows extremely happy very quickly
• Just another day relaxing in the pool

Tweets of the week:

• Oh, my god.
• Their faces look like a before and after pic of a cartoon character looking down the barrel of a just lit cannon.
• That is THE most sunburned human I have ever seen
• I couldn’t believe what I saw on Countdown today, it was just bang out of order.
• My son came and got me, saying there was a serious leak under the kitchen sink.
• If Jim Corr is so anti-vaxx why does he always look like he’s just had his BCG booster
• 1 like = 1 drawing of Jason Statham doing something
• 18-year-old me looking at the Reading ’11 line-up.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Our Ghost-Kitchen future
• Why Are Rich People So Mean?
• ‘We Are the World’: Inside Pop Music’s Most Famous All-Nighter
• An oral history of The Onion’s 9/11 issue
• “Ghislaine, Is That You?”: Inside Ghislaine Maxwell’s Life on the Lam
• Who died for your dinner?
• Hitchhiker, hero, celebrity, killer: The strange journey of the man called Kai
• A Teenager Didn’t Do Her Online Schoolwork. So a Judge Sent Her to Juvenile Detention.

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