We Love the Internet 2021/12: The How nothingness became everything we wanted edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Here’s why Substack’s scam worked so well
• The New York Times is so done with its 77,000-member Facebook cooking group. What happens now?
• Fortnite’s experimental story is an attempt to create ‘the entertainment experience of the future’
• Outgrowing software
• Justice League’s Snyder Cut saga reminds us which fans’ voices get heard
• Stars Now Understand That Their Destruction Is Our Entertainment
• The Preteen’s Guide to Getting Rich Off YouTube

Reference points:

• Decoding emojis and defining ‘support’: Facebook’s rules for content revealed

Longer reads:

• Inside the ‘Black Market’ Where Artists Can Pay for Millions of Streams
• The internet is splitting apart. The Internet Archive wants to save it all forever.
• Kevin Mayer talks about his disappointing departures at Disney and TikTok, and the long decline of pay TV

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• The World’s Deepest Canal
• Little Girls Flawlessly Ride Hoverboard in Circles Like Professionals Inside House
• hands down the best scene in television

Things to look at/read:

• There were 3,800 anti-Asian racist incidents, mostly against women, in past year
• The Invention of a New Pasta Shape

Animal corner:

• Sleeping German Shepherd wakes up after smell his favorite food
• Smart dog intentionally drops his toys in the pool so he can jump in and save them.
• Dog Howling at flute playing
• Oshie attempts to say mom using his voice, versus pressing the button!
• the crime the criminal

Tweets of the week:

• Well that’s me told
• gentrified is not the word
• Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.
• WHY THEY JUST DROP MY CAR BROOO
• This is awesome
• Got a new bumper sticker
• I literally feel like this chair
• Ant McPartlin enjoying a curry:

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The master thief
• How Nothingness Became Everything We Wanted
• OCD Is Not a Joke
• Lessons from a year of Covid

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We Love the Internet 2021/11: The American idle edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Is Apple TV+ for Real Yet?
• 11 Years of Untappd: How One App Gamified the Relentless Pursuit of Novelty

Reference points:

• Stanford researchers identify four causes for ‘Zoom fatigue’ and their simple fixes
• Frequency of letters in English words and where they occur in the word

Longer reads:

• American Idle
• What Really Happened at ‘Reply All’?
• Stream Warriors
• How Google’s grand plans to make its own games fell apart

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Automatic pool stick vs. strangers
• Draw an iceberg and see how it will float.
• Food Theory: Taco Bell Is Killing Amazon!

Things to look at/read:

• Eddie Izzard: ‘I’m just trying to create a space for myself’
• ‘I call it a mutual break-up’: When stars ‘disappear’ on their fandoms
• Middle-aged superheroes
• Why bands are disappearing: ‘Young people aren’t excited by them’

Animal corner:

• Sweet owl sneezes
• Excitable Greyhound Jumps For Joy When Owner Gets Dressed
• American Psycho with Cats
• A sloth playing with water..

Tweets of the week:

• The zagreb manager used his 1 phone call to say “lads, it’s Tottenham”
• unfortunately i must announce that it looks like all 2021 hipsters / indie / DIY young people dress like at least one member of the family from Matilda
• the set up vs. the shot
• Aerial view of Barcelona will never cease to amaze me.
• “I’m actually a plain clothes police officer here to protect you, haha yeah I guess I am one of the good guys”
• If the Catholic Church won’t marry same sex couples then explain this
• Fukuyama declaring the end of chairs. The man’s learned nothing.
• Ok fine, give the people what they want, bread and circuses, here you go happy Ides of March

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Teens on a Year That Changed Everything
• Tom Hanks, The NBA, And COVID’s Day Of Reckoning In The US: An Oral History
• The Fall of Armie Hammer: A Family Saga of Sex, Money, Drugs, and Betrayal
• Vanishing Act
• Trump Hotel Employees Reveal What It Was Really Like Catering to the Right Wing Elite

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We Love the Internet 2021/10: The This is how we lost control of our faces edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• This is how we lost control of our faces
• TikTok’s emo revival emerged from the creative chaos of quarantine
• Where the internet was delivered by a donkey
• Is This Beverly Hills Cop Playing Sublime’s ‘Santeria’ to Avoid Being Live-Streamed?
• How Grown-Up Tumblr Teens Are Bringing Early-‘10s Alternative Back to the Charts
• TikTok’s algorithms knew I was bi before I did. I’m not the only one.
• Tom Cruise deepfake creator says public shouldn’t be worried about ‘one-click fakes’
• Movie Equations: When everything is paramount

Reference points:

• The 10 most innovative social media companies of 2021

Longer reads:

• Adland is an island

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• All WandaVision’s Sitcom References (and Ending), Explained
• Movie Intro Medley (Acapella)
• 30 Minutes of Relaxing Visuals from Studio Ghibli
• Travel from Rotterdam to Amsterdam in 10 minutes by boat
• Debunking Can you make ICE in a microwave?
• Axe Build – shaped like a human Hand
• Guy Surfs on Top of Coolers
• The best cinematography I will ever do…

Things to look at/read:

• ‘I was worried Lindsay, Paris or Britney would die’: why the 00s were so toxic for women
• How a Shadow Army of Ghost Kitchens Took Over America’s Restaurants
• When the Dalai Lama dies, his reincarnation will be a religious crisis. Here’s what could happen
• Giant Attack On Titan Manga Weighs 30 Pounds And Costs $1,400

Animal corner:

• Open your mouth
• Watch til the end!
• Came from work and saw this?
• Goat vs cat
• Who’s watching?
• Singing Storky

Tweets of the week:

• Literally exactly how I imagine myself when I’m coaching an Italian team in Championship Manager
• Incredible drone footage, perfectly sequenced bowling alley, wait till end.
• It’s so f ucked up that plutonium just looks like this . It could be orange flavored and we would never know . it could be delicious
• making a tweet you think is funny vs it bombing
• ONCE AGAIN AMERICA WILL DEFEAT THE BRITISH MONARCHY BY SPILLING TEA
• Obsessed with how much of Roger Federer’s name is just er

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird Are Goals
• Carl Lentz and the Trouble at Hillsong
• How We’d Fix Two Decades of Grammy Atrocities
• How to have better arguments online
• Il Maestro
• The student and the algorithm: how the exam results fiasco threatened one pupil’s future

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We Love the Internet 2021/09: The UX on this small child is terrible edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Why Ted Lasso became the hit that put AppleTV+ on the map
• How the Pandemic Stalled Peak TV
• The Web’s Missing Interoperability
• The internet’s most beloved fanfiction site is undergoing a reckoning
• Mailchimp employees have complained about inequality for years – is anyone listening?
• “The Agents Certainly Did Not Like Being Called Crooks”: How Hollywood Writers Won a War

Longer reads:

• ‘Record companies have me on a dartboard’: the man making millions buying classic hits
• Everybody Hates Millennials: Gen Z and the TikTok Generation Wars

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Murder Show

Things to look at/read:

• The UX on this small child is terrible
• Waluigi Is Nintendo’s Cult Hero, but Will He Ever Be Something More?

Animal corner:

• Bird plucking fur from my dog for its nest
• Dog Doesn’t Let a Fight Break out Between 2 Cats

Tweets of the week:

• In the UK right now a train is delayed as a cat is sitting on the roof and refusing to come down.
• Trying to please all my social media platforms.
• Millennials need an emergency meeting. We’re not sending our best
• Imperial Stout                Pastry Stout
• Me retweeting myself
• forget STEM, now I’m all about STEAMED HAMS: science, technology, engineering, art, math, humanities, anthropology, music, and such
• Every single Wetherspoons at 10am on 21st June
• “Sic transit gloria” is Latin for “nice car, Gloria”

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• How Dolly Parton became a secular American saint
• What Happened to Jordan Peterson?

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