We Love the Internet 2023/21: The Brief history of the concept album edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• How Mark Zuckerberg Led the Tech Industry Into a Metaverse Wasteland
• Andreessen Horowitz saw the future — but did the future leave it behind?
• TikTok’s viral movie clips are changing how I watch films
• It’s Time to Embrace the Era of Mid Entertainment

Reference points:

• Who Got Most Spectacularly Canceled Online?
• The 40 Best TV Finales of the 21st Century, Ranked

Longer reads:

• Can we still handle the truth? Journalism, ‘alternative facts’ and the rise of AI
• On the trail of the Dark Avenger: the most dangerous virus writer in the world
• Will A.I become the new McKinsey?
• The fall of Vice: private equity’s ill-fated bet on media’s future

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• A Brief History of the Concept Album
• So, I’ve got cancer
• GenZSpan

Things to look at/read:

• Generation Connie
• The Cat Who Could Kill Horses
• Bad Manors

Animal corner:

• art
• He’s a duck of many talents
• Iconic

Tweets of the week:

• SUCCESSION art department, I want you to know that I 100% paused and enjoyed the hard work you put in that appeared onscreen for like two seconds
• Rafa Benitez accidentally tweeting then deleting “Howdy the lads!” is sending me west.
• This recipe is a bit aggressive.
• Saruman about 90 minutes into The Two Towers:
• its crazy how you don’t even gotta speak german to understand what he said in this tweet
• How is this image not AI generated

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Russia Has a Vodka Addiction. So Does Vladimir Putin – But Not the Same Way.

sk

Advertisement

We Love the Internet 2023/20: The Digital media carnage edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Digital media carnage
• The Internet Isn’t Meant To Be So Small
• The IP Era’s Venture Capital Philosophy Has Poisoned Movies
• How to Discover The Real Insights That Increase Sales

Reference points:

• The 100 greatest video games of all time, ranked by experts
• 23 Pandemic Decisions That Actually Went Right
• Eye candy

Longer reads:

• My Descent Into TikTok News Hell

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Drunk Mel Gibson Arrest Diorama
• Pizza in Its Purest Form: The Story of Lucali

Things to look at/read:

• This L.A. Woman’s Gifting Suite Makes or Breaks Viral Instagram Products
• Why Is Everything So Ugly?
• The remarkable story of 1983’s Battle of the Bonds
• 50 years after release, Disney’s Robin Hood is still a life-changing furry phenomenon

Animal corner:

• Cutest tiny friend ship
• My tongue goes pitta patta for treats
• Issa wut?
• Guys I found the BEST STICK EVER on my morning walk

Tweets of the week:

• there are five pubs called ‘coach & horses’ in and around soho and only two of them are good.
• tfw you were so ugly as a teen that reporters want to talk to you
• These two street signs face each other, about 5 metres apart, and are in scholarly dispute about apostrophe placement

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• A Century of the New York ‘It’ Girl
• Taco Bell’s innovation kitchen, the front line in the stunt-food wars
• The last gamble of Tokyo Joe
• The war on Japanese knotweed
• Pour One Out   

sk

We Love the Internet 2023/19: The Is there life after influencing edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Is There Life After Influencing?
• People Are Grinding Netflix Shows To Prevent Them From Getting Canceled
• RIP Metaverse

Reference points:

• How companies make it difficult to unsubscribe

Longer reads:

• The Ultimate Oral History Of BuzzFeed News
• CEO Andy Jassy’s 2022 Letter to Shareholders
• To Monopolise Our Ears

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Lion City Rising. Watch Singapore Grow. 8 years in 5 minutes – A Singapore Timelapse
• 3 Olympian Fencing Masters vs 50 Opponents
• I’m Usually Pretty Good At Naming Things

Things to look at/read:

• How Lawyers Became Celebrities on The Rap Internet
• Inside the Delirious Rise of ‘Superfake’ Handbags
• Car thefts are rising. Is a TikTok challenge to blame?

Animal corner:

• Who needs humans?

Tweets of the week:

• no one: roman roy:
• So nice to see Libertines fans and My Chemical Romance fans coming together like this
• I refuse to believe that this isn’t one of the Beastie Boys.
• Damn they done gentrified hotdogs

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Crooks’ mistaken bet on encrypted phones
• Yes, Nick Cannon has 11 kids with six women. He also makes $100 million a year
• Inside Superiority Burger: The Buzziest Restaurant in America

sk

We Love the Internet 2023/18: The Social media is doomed to die edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Social media is doomed to die
• Drake’s AI clone is here — and Drake might not be able to stop him
• Chasing rainbows
• Why are TV writers so miserable?

Reference points:

• A Very Gentle Introduction to Large Language Models without the Hype
• A Map of Places in the US with the Same Name
• AI art freaks me out. So I tried to make some.
• Another post on posters

Longer reads:

• The News Went Viral
• Is Substack Notes a ‘Twitter clone’? We asked CEO Chris Best
• Honey, I sold the kids
• Unraveling the Greatest Writers’ Room Story Ever

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Five graphs that changed the world
• Why Music Festivals Sound Better Than Ever
• The fall of shortform content..

Things to look at/read:

• In Search Of Wikipedia’s Shrug Guy
• The High-Tech Hollywood Smile: How 3D Scanners and Artificial Intelligence Are Perfecting Teeth

Animal corner:

• Really had no idea
• Don’t worry he went to the vets and hes fine
• All frenchies are the same
• Always has to ask permission

Tweets of the week:

• Today is the tenth anniversary of me opening up Football Manager 2013 and starting a new game with Dynamo Dresden.
• Frank Lampard’s record looks like a seating plan on Trainline
• This is the greatest mathematician story ever told
• and i often think about how lindsay lohan served so much in a paparazzi picture they used that pic for the movie poster of Just My Luck
• a train journey with each parent, a week apart. very different experiences and energies.
• HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The King in the Endgame
• I Really Didn’t Want to Go
• “Opportunity Is Always Out There” With Simon Mann

sk

We Love the Internet 2023/17: The Case of the fake Sherlock edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The Internet of the 2010s Ended Today
• A Grand Unified Theory of Why Elon Musk Is So Unfunny
• The Influencer Industry Is Having an Existential Crisis
• The case for banning children from social media
• How Elon Musk Turned the Blue Check Mark Into a Scarlet Letter

Reference points:

• Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 50 Best Films of the 21st Century (So Far)
• These Are The Most Popular TV Shows on the Internet
• Companies That Get ‘Woke’ Aren’t Going Broke — They’re More Profitable Than Ever

Longer reads:

• The campaign to save TikTok has been years in the making
• “Blurred Lines,” Harbinger of Doom
• What does it mean to be a boy online in 2023?
• Dril Is Everyone. More Specifically, He’s a Guy Named Paul.
• “F–k Him, He Loses”: The Inside Story of How Disney’s Attempt to Buy BuzzFeed Fell Apart
• Tim Cook on Shaping the Future of Apple

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Whichipedia
• How Noiseless Props Are Made For Movies And TV Shows

Things to look at/read:

• Welcome to the Era of the Fake Six-Pack
• The Ecstatic Joy of Queer Friendship
• Parents are sacrificing retirement savings to set their Gen Z and millennial kids up for success, and it’s creating a ‘vicious cycle’
• Sign from above
• Behind the Scenes of Barack Obama’s Reading Lists

Animal corner:

• Cat challenge
• Happiness is holding hands with the otters at the Dubai Aquarium
• Chase the Staffordshire Bull Terrier
• …when you ask the kids to baby sit the dog!

Tweets of the week:

• You’d be correct in thinking I’d misread this and thought the most mental thing to ever happen had happened.
• This is the most “Score! Hero” goal in the history of football. It’ll cost you about 50 quid to complete it.
• He musta thought he was in a movie lol
• The new 8 p.m. host on Fox.
• watching this is like a visual stress ball
• Absolutely astonishing view from the rear window of Napoli team bus at 3am when they landed back in Naples after beating Juventus at Turin.
• me, 31, chatting to my colleagues in their 20s
• Ha! My brilliant, supportive Mum just texted me this

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The Case of the Fake Sherlock
• How Deborah Levy can change your life
• The Class Politics of Instagram Face
• Salt Bae’s former employees describe tip theft, discrimination, and polyester uniforms within the memeable meat empire

sk

We Love the Internet 2023/16: The Everything is Clapham now edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Is TikTok Actually Creating More One-Hit Wonders?
• … And You’re Watching the Disney Channel
• With ‘Love is Blind’ misstep, Netflix inadvertently makes a case for old-fashioned TV

Reference points:

• Do Hollywood Flops Kill Movie Careers? A Statistical Analysis.
• What films should we teach? A conversation about the canon
• How the Rupert Murdoch Family Drama Inspired Succession
• ‘Eighty-nine perfect minutes’: 30 of the best short films and novels
• What is ignored by the media — but will be studied by historians?
• Research Proves Your Brain Needs Breaks

Longer reads:

• The disgusting food of TikTok: is it designed to eat, provoke – or arouse?
• A Scammer Who Tricks Instagram Into Banning Influencers Has Never Been Identified. We May Have Found Him.

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Journey planner challenge
• AI and Image Generation
• A History Of The World According To Getty Images

Things to look at/read:

• Everything is Clapham now
• How a TikToker Brought Hundreds of Transplants to a Midwestern City
• The Rise of Gender-Neutral Names Isn’t What It Seems
• We’re In The Age Of The Intimacy Trap

Animal corner:

• Nobody is safe
• Certified brush boi
• Bean chooses violence every day
• A coquettish cat
• Unstoppable Chawie

Tweets of the week:

• I’ve had. Enough.
• sorry. I know I overuse it
• Too stunned to speak
• “say goodnight to ya nan, she’s off to bed”

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Waiting for Brando
• Will the Ozempic era change how we think about being fat and thin
• In Search of Lost Time
• The Dream of the Nineties Is Alive at 90s Con
• The New Light Is Bad

sk

We Love the Internet 2023/15: The Inside Rupert Murdoch’s Succession drama edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Why the Floppy Disk Just Won’t Die
• Big Tech’s big downgrade
• At PayPal, I once wasted $1M on a marketing segmentation to build personas
• What TikTok’s confessional GRWM videos say about our culture of oversharing
• Influencer Parents and The Kids Who Had Their Childhood Made Into Content
• Why Every App Now Feels Like TikTok, But Worse

Reference points:

• Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls. Here’s the Evidence.
• How 16 Companies are Dominating the World’s Google Search Results
• Why Are All Action Heroes Named Jack, James, or John?

Longer reads:

• Inside Rupert Murdoch’s Succession Drama
• You are not a parrot
• Interview: Kevin Kelly, editor, author, and futurist
• Welcome to the Kings League, Gerard Piqué’s New Soccer ‘Circus’ Going Viral on Twitch
• Tim Cook on Shaping the Future of Apple
• Protect Elders! Ban Television!!

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• A.I. Tom Brady Standup Comedy
• HIDARI (Pilot Film) – The Stop-Motion Samurai Film

Things to look at/read:

• Millennials are hitting middle age — and it doesn’t look like what we were promised.
• Organised fun: who’s it all for?

Animal corner:

• Why are they snitching
• guess she didnt like that pint
• Play time with baby brother
• Cant turn my back for 5 seconds!!!
• Sorry go to go
• Mama said im a weirdo but i just really like this chew toy

Tweets of the week:

• Every Bro who paid $20 for GPT-4:
• It’s going to be really awkward when it comes to The Super Mario Bros Movie 2 and Japan gets a totally new movie, whereas the west just gets Despicable Me 2 with the characters replaced

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Public Scrutiny Destroyed Jennifer Lawrence. Now She Wants To Win Us Back.
• The Haunted Life of Lisa Marie Presley
• The Untold Story of Elliott Smith’s Teenage Band
• On the Trail of the Fentanyl King
• Bleeding Green and Yellow: On Football in Brazil
• The case the internet got wrong
• Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Last Act

sk

We Love the Internet 2023/14: The Social network taxonomy edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Netflix’s Approach Shifts, Pushing Content That Can ‘Pop’
• Beyond ‘Wednesday’ and ‘Outer Banks’: How Netflix is looking to be the new CW for Gen Z
• BuzzFeed Is Quietly Publishing Whole AI-Generated Articles, Not Just Quizzes
• All mixed up
• ‘Hot Ones’ Was a Slow Burn All Along

Reference points:

• A social network taxonomy.

Longer reads:

• Inside Amazon Studios: Big Swings Hampered by Confusion and Frustration
• AI and the American Smile
• How Fox Chased Its Audience Down the Rabbit Hole
• The reaction economy

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Iconic movie trailers, explained by a trailer editor
• I tried using AI. It scared me.

Things to look at/read:

• Inside the Secret Shady World of Corporate Concerts
• Remembering When Cocktails Were Just Soup

Animal corner:

• Any other mud monsters out there?
• POV: Your dog cheats on you, everytime when you are on the Subway
• Summer routine with my two-toothed dog
• They always know what that sound means and line up
• The “I don’t want another dog” kinda dad
• Dog sitting and didn’t know her release word to eat

Tweets of the week:

• You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain
• The Slalom Witch Trials

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The end of love
• Bad tape

sk

We Love the Internet 2023/13: The girl internet and the boy internet edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The Girl Internet and the Boy Internet
• Big Tech’s big downgrade
• Inside the NBA’s Great Generation War
• ChatGPT is a blurry JPEG of the web
• The universal remote is streaming’s most tragic casualty
• The TikTok ban is a betrayal of the open internet
• We Spoke To The Guy Who Created The Viral AI Image Of The Pope That Fooled The World

Reference points:

• 40 Mind-Expanding Concepts
• The Most Difficult TV Shows to Understand
• A Ranking of the Best F-words in ‘Succession’ History

Longer reads:

• Keanu Reeves, explained
• Get Me Risa Heller!
• The battle for the soul of Buy Nothing

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• “Amelie: the real story”
• The Future is a Dead Mall
• Why Soda Cans are Shaped Differently in Hawaii
• Sir Roger Deakins Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films
• AI and Image Generation
• Why is everything getting so expensive?
• How South Koreans got so much taller

Things to look at/read:

• She Didn’t Like Her Nose. So She Went To Turkey For An Ethnic Rhinoplasty.
• Boomer Dads Are Driving Real-Estate Agents Nuts
• Guinness World Records Is Giving The Shaft To The World’s Biggest Dick Pic
• She Built a Following as Taylor Swift’s Doppelgänger. Then the Swifties Came After Her

Animal corner:

• Convinced goldendoodles are humans in costume
• Tik tok said the cat
• Unsatisfying crunch
• I swear she’s the most sensitive and emotional dog
• I found an ad for this kitten on craigslist and he’s something else
• Might have let him drink a little too much

Tweets of the week:

• Big brain business name
• Lou Bega writing Mambo No. 5
• I didn’t know that Taylor swift was Canadian
• Why I loved Paul O’Grady and why I loved Lily Savage.
• The computers are learning.
• I think I’ll stand

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Saving a life
• Creatures That Don’t Conform
• Why everyone feels like they’re faking it
• ‘Landlords Are a Scum Class’: Everything I’ve Learnt About London Renting
• Three abandoned children, two missing parents and a 40-year mystery
• No coach, no agent, no ego: the incredible story of the ‘Lionel Messi of cliff diving’

sk

We Love the Internet 2023/12: The age of average edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• What the NBA Can Learn From Formula 1
• How the Great Recession paved the way for influencers to inherit the earth
• Microsoft just laid off one of its responsible AI teams
• A 24/7 Twitch Stream of AI-Generated Celebrities Is Even Weirder Than It Seems

Reference points:

• The hundred best lists of all time

Longer reads:

• The age of average
• The Contagious Radar report 2023

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Weezer’s Blue Album but it’s me and my friend trying to sing everything from memory
• how i found the ‘so no head’ vine road in 15 minutes
• The Assassin’s Teapot Is Weird
• Banknote Reconstructed
• Kitbull

Things to look at/read:

• Euthanasia Coaster
• The Case For Shunning
• The puzzling gap between how old you are and how old you think you are

Animal corner:

• Have you ever seen a dog enjoy the hot tub this much?
• Please don’t play with me rn
• Nala loves her KFC
• My derpy dog

Tweets of the week:

• you could fit ten, fifteen henchmen in this bad boy. easy
• First two international goals. Remember the name.
• DO NOT DRINK THE TUDOR MILK I REPEAT DO NOT DRINK THE TUDOR MILK
• This is officially the whitest trial of all time
• “Your Honor, my client’s just a normal man. He-he’s just an innocent man!”
• I found these AI generated “women laughing with salad” posted on FB and they are clearly the pinnacle of the genre (1/2)
• the average french workday this week

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• ‘The stuff was illegally dug up’: New York’s Met Museum sees reputation erode over collection practices
• The impossible job: inside the world of Premier League referees

sk