Hi there, my name is Ryan Broderick and I write Garbage Day. It’s a Webby Award-winning newsletter about the internet and it comes out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Everyone loves to blame every bad thing that happens these days on the internet. And to be honest, most of it is true. But the web is still good and this newsletter is your regular reminder that, actually, being online is still pretty fun!
Garbage Day is for folks that remember growing up in the west wild of AIM and Kazaa and message boards and know that, even though it’s probably politically destabilized most of the planet, the internet can still good and fun.
So hit the sign up button and make your inbox a little less professional!
Trying to contact me?
You can tweet at me at @broderick (my DMs are open). You can also reply to Garbage Day. I try and go through reader emails twice a week. Also you can message me on Discord at garbage_ryan#5652.
Garbage Day around the web
Substack’s Nazi Problem Exposes a Business-Model Problem (Bloomberg)
Substack Is What Happens When Everything Becomes Social Media (The Atlantic)
Major tech blog quits Substack over Nazi content (The Washington Post)
Parenting expert Emily Oster leaves Substack. (The Verge)
A Holiday's Worth of Video Essays (Hyperallergic)
How Beauty Trends Met Their End (Allure)
TikTok replaces Facebook as political enemy No. 1 (The Week)
Yet Another 'Social Media Trend' That Only Went Viral Because Of The Media (Techdirt)
No, young people are not stanning Osama Bin Laden (Dazed)
Elon Musk, TikTok and the social media ownership problem (The Washington Post)
Here's How TikTokers Are Praising Osama bin Laden's Letter to America (The Messenger)
Is Bin Laden Really Going Viral With the Kids? (New York Magazine)
Is TikTok Really Boosting Pro-Palestinian Content? (Rolling Stone)
The GOP should consider that its opponents aren't simply brainwashed (The Washington Post)
Israel-Hamas War Shows How Broken Social Media Has Become (Bloomberg)
The truth about how the AI sausage is being made in Washington (Fortune)
Elon Musk’s X hits a tipping point, with widespread condemnation of misinformation about Hamas’ attack on Israel flooding the platform (Media Matters For America)
From me to your inbox: 33 of the best Substack newsletters (The Guardian)
Can the Harry Potter fandom carry on while ignoring J.K. Rowling? (Polygon)
Who Gets to Enter the Arena and Who Gets to Leave (Kottke)
How two pop culture Twitter accounts turned into the internet's wire service (Vox)
Twitter is dead, but what about me? (The Sydney Morning Herald)
Here are the right-wing figures who demanded Elon Musk reinstate a Twitter conspiracy theorist who posted child sexual abuse imagery (Media Matters For America)
What if the next big social media app is ... Nothing? (Irish Examiner)
Who is the TikTok creator making popcorn with her hair straightener? It’s all part of the TikTok LIVE community (Yahoo News)
Instagram Threads, Twitter Try to Overcome Shrinking Screen Time (Bloomberg)
Meta’s Threads Is More of the Same Social Networking (New Yorker)
What the crisis at CNN means (Semafor)
Ex-TikTok executive says Chinese government used app to locate, identify Hong Kong protesters (CBC)
ChatGPT plug-ins will transform how consumers interact with brands online (Insider Intelligence)
A Twitter bug is restoring deleted tweets and retweets — including my own (The Verge)
Bluesky is the latest Twitter wannabe. Can it avoid the Nazi problem? (San Francisco Chronicle)
What’s after the social media era in news? (The Verge)
The Latest Trend in Podcasts Is Making Women Look Dumb (VICE)
‘It seems like a lose-lose situation for creators’: Elon Musk’s latest Twitter verified policy leaves smaller creators with an impossible choice (The Daily Dot)
They’re ‘skeets’ now (The Verge)
At Twitter, Elon Musk Is Doing a Great Job of Disproving the Idea of Meritocracy (Jacobin)
Twitter appears to be going to war with Substack (Mashable)
As Podcasters Pivot to Video, Independents Don't Buy the Hype (Bloomberg)
Online Fakery and Digital Bank Runs Are a Scary Mix (The Washington Post)
An AI-generated puffy-coat pope fooled us all. How much does it matter? (The Washington Post)
The swagged-out pope is an AI fake — and an early glimpse of a new reality (The Verge)
Terrifying warning as photo of Pope wearing white puffer jacket fools the internet (LadBible)
How Avatar: The Way of Water can make $2 billion and still feel irrelevant (Vox)
The ‘Tumblrification’ of social media (The Daily Dot)
The Year That Was and Wasn't (The Morning News)
Inside the world of Andrew Tate and the alpha male movement (Metro UK)
2022 Was The Year Tech Did A 180 (BuzzFeed News)
Viral chatbot ChatGPT will be overhyped, then overlooked, and then, perhaps, essential (Business Insider)
The SEC Wants More Stock Auctions (Bloomberg)
The weird sorrow of losing Twitter (Vox)
Saluting in Solidarity (New York Times)
Brazilians joining Indian Twitter clone because it sounds like Portugese slang for a**hole (Indy100)
Tumblr Gets the Last Laugh (The Atlantic)
But where will we tweet? (Vox)
Musk has a decision to make on Section 230: Does he support it or not? (The Washington Post)
The Twitter deal is all downside risk for Elon Musk (The Verge)
How Elon Musk Could Actually Kill Twitter (The Atlantic)
Zuckerberg is all in on the metaverse whether you like it or not (The Verge)
Will Musk tank Twitter? Probably — but it might not matter (Toronto Star)
Elon Musk's plan to buy Twitter won't save it (Vox)
Facebook closes down service it hoped would compete with Substack (Washington Post)
TikTok Is the New King of Social Media. Now What? (New York Magazine)
The NyQuil 'Sleepy' Chicken Warning Shows How We Fall for Fake Food Stunts (Eater)
‘Gifs are cringe’: how Giphy’s multimillion-dollar business fell out of fashion (Guardian)
Tales from the Crypto | Part I: Ukraine's NFTs and the "Fyre Fest" of cryptocurrency (WBUR)
Prebunking is effective at fighting misinfo, study finds (Poynter)
What Is a 'Fake' Artist in 2022? (New York Times)
Understanding President Biden's ironic alter ego 'Dark Brandon' (The Week)
Tate, TikTok and toxic trends: ‘Alpha males’ are on the rise – but why aren’t we more worried? (Metro)
How capitalism killed the social media of abundance (Mashable)
'Stop trying to be TikTok': how video-centric Instagram sparked a revolt (Guardian)
Battle of the fast fashion giants: the fall of Missguided and the rise of Shein (Metro)
The shady history of anonymous Q&A apps (VICE)
How Elon Musk Became the Internet's New Main Character (Vanity Fair)
The Hype Machine That Turned Minions Into a $4B Juggernaut (WIRED)
How 'Minions' Became a Gen Z TikTok Storm (Washington Post)
Layer of bloodthirsty online aesthetics obscures how far-right forces fueled Highland Park terrorist (Daily Kos)
The ‘GentleMinions’ trend, explained (Polygon)
'Want to review this?': Twitter's niceness prompts do alter behaviour, study finds (Guardian)
Connecticut Is Paying Someone $150,000 to Search 4chan for Election Misinformation (VICE)
Terra, Web 3 and Acceptable Risk in Innovation (Coindesk)
It's still really easy to game Facebook's algorithm (Engadget)
Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and their $50 million defamation suit, explained (Vox)
If You Want to Leave Twitter Because of Elon Musk, These Are Your Options (VICE)
Morbius director on critics: "I have a lot of self hatred" (AV Club)
Will Smith's slap was nothing compared to the big bang of comment it spawned (Irish Examiner)
TikTok Has a Problem (The Atlantic)
Platforms Aren’t Prepared for Content Structural Dissonance (OneZero)
Not another Will Smith think piece (The Digital Fix)
The Complete Guide to Will Smith Slap Takes (New York Magazine)
Twitter’s obsession with promoting Spaces is burying users in spam (Input Mag)
Pringles’ Twitter Account Is Being Spammed With Bizarre Donkey Kong ‘Cock Blast’ Meme (The Mary Sue)
Russia’s diminishing information access (Columbia Journalism Review)
What’s In This Guy’s Soup (Gawker)
The Donkey Kong Cock Blast Pringles Meme, (Unfortunately) Explained (Kotaku)
Social media reveals and distorts the reality of war in Ukraine (Yahoo! News)
Ukraine, viral media, and the scale of war (Columbia Journalism Review)
Trumpism has arrived in Canada (National Observer)
Staying cool: For the TikTok generation, it requires relentless commitment (The Sydney Morning Herald)
Clickbait, conspiracy theories and hate speech: Facebook has become a hellscape – and there’s no way out (The Independent)
The ‘Freedom Convoy’ and the press (Columbia Journalism Review)
The Metaverse Garbage Dump: Does Facebook have a content problem? (CNBC)
Even the N-Word Won’t Get Spotify to De-Platform Joe Rogan (VICE)
Of platforms, publishers, and responsibility (Columbia Journalism Review)
Spotify tries to navigate the storm created by star Joe Rogan (Poynter)
In the Joe Rogan, Neil Young, and Spotify debacle, everyone sucks (TheNextWeb)
The information war over Ukraine (Columbia Journalism Review)
Couch Guy to West Elm Caleb: Inside the making of a TikTok villain (Washington Post)
West Elm Caleb Was an Algorithmic Trap (Jezebel)
“MEMES, Part 11: I've heard this before” (WBUR)
Budweiser’s NFT Drop Hints at a Web3 Future for Global Legacy Brands (VinePair)
TikTok’s ‘couch guy’ speaks out after online sleuths became obsessed with him (Indy100)
I’m the TikTok Couch Guy. Here’s What It Was Like Being Investigated on the Internet. (Slate)
Omicron Crypto Is a Bet on Attention (Bloomberg)
Facebook is enlisting TikTok personalities like Khaby Lame to promote its metaverse after Reels couldn’t create its own stars (Business Insider Australia)
Welcome To The Age Of Newstalgia (Refinery29 UK)
Ghostbusters: Afterlife Is a Reanimated Corpse (Vulture)
Modern-Day Sin-Eaters (Psychology Today)
TikTok’s Exploitation Of Gabby Petito Highlights Everything Wrong With True Crime Culture (Junkee)
Lil Nas X: Is the rapper the defining star of his generation? (BBC News)
How Long Will Twitter Cling to Its Dumbest Feature? (The Atlantic)
Discord: why Kanye West turned to chat app’s users for help (Guardian)
The Pandemic Has Been Very, Very Good for the Creator Economy (Bloomberg)
Bama Rush TikTok, explained and explained and explained (Vox)
What is the metaverse? (Quartz)
DashCon was a trainwreck because it was organized by a teenager (AV Club)
Pokémon no go? Players revolt as Niantic sends them back outside (Guardian)
My Internet: Ryan Broderick (Embedded)
23 Newsletter Writers on Their Favorite Newsletters (The Cut)
Why is "What Pretending To Be Crazy Looks Like" flooding YouTube recommendations? (AV Club)
This spiritual successor to StumbleUpon makes the internet fun again (Fast Company)
How Viral Recipes Shut Out BIPOC Food Creators (Food & Wine)
The Internet’s Shrek Obsession Will Live on Forever (The Ringer)
Teach Me How To Cheugy – Why Are We So Invested In Gen Z’s Opinion Of Us? (Grazia)
How 'Shrek' Achieved a Strange, Perverted Online Afterlife (Thrillist)
Video of woman serving ‘toilet ice-cream’ to guests has appalled the internet (indy100)
Woman Shares Bizarre 'Hack' To Make Ice Cream In The Toilet (LADBible)
Last day for Yahoo Answers users to post questions, comments (ABC News)
Inside The Year’s Most Unique Media Experiment—And A Mark Zuckerberg Guest Appearance (Forbes)
Why We’re Freaking Out About Substack (New York Times)
Clubhouse, Spotify, and the invention of talking (The Week)
You can spend thousands on ‘Thicc Pokémon’ NFTs (Polygon)
How easy it is to spread misinformation via an all-too-willing media (Silicon Republic)
Four digital tools that got me through the pandemic (Poynter)
Tucker Carlson keeps attacking a New York Times reporter after the paper calls his tactics ‘calculated and cruel’ (Washington Post)
The latest culture war is over the sexy 'Space Jam' rabbit Lola Bunny and her new toned-down design (Insider)
Conservatives Want You To Be Mad That Lola Bunny’s Not Hot Anymore (Slate)
Millennials are writing cringey Gen Z diss tracks on TikTok, and they're getting roasted (Business Insider)
The Balloon Guy Explains Himself (VICE)
Facebook Is Hated — and Rich (New York Times)
What is a Blockchain? Is It Hype? (New York Times)
Far-right extremists take over UK land sales Facebook page (The Guardian)
How pro-Trump extremists prepare for Biden's inauguration (Wired Italy)
Why do Millennials care so much about Gen Z recycling trends? (Dazed)
‘Bean Dad’ and the internet’s need for a Main Character (Mashable)
Twitch will change the face of PogChamp every 24 hours (The Verge)
Twitter’s ‘Bean Dad’ Has Inspired His Own Version Of The Bechdel Test, But For Bad Dads (Junkee)
Substack: five of the best from the niche newsletter platform (The Guardian)
The best newsletters you missed in 2020 (Wired Italy)
Trump's vote fraud claims go viral on social media despite curbs (The Guardian)
Etsy removes Proud Boy merchandise (The Verge)
A playbook for combating QAnon (New York Times)
The 80 Best Single-Operator Newsletters (InsideHook)
A Facebook group where people pretend to be ants has gone off the rails (AV Club)
Tumblr is obsessing over the events that link 50 Shades of Grey to 9/11 (AV Club)
