Welcome to Garbage Weekend. It’s the internet garbage you know and love, but in a format that’s easier to read while you sit on a delayed New Jersey train waiting for a bull to get off the tracks.
PLATFORMS
Pornhub released their year in review report. You should absolutely take everything Pornhub releases publicly with a massive grain of salt because there is literally no company shadier than them. That said, their data is interesting. The average user is spending about 10 minutes on Pornhub a day, with traffic peaking on Mondays, usually at night, but it does seem like there are a good amount of remote workers who are, uh, taking a break in the afternoons, as well.
Threads launched in Europe. It does strike me as interesting that when Bluesky first launched, there were immediately a bunch of different cultural and subcultural clusters that popped up. Brazilian and Japanese Bluesky, furry Bluesky, leftist Bluesky, etc. But the closest thing Threads has to that are a bunch of industries using the new not-tags to silo themselves. I wonder if Threads expanding internationally will change that at all or if Threads will remain more LinkedIn than Twitter.
TikTok’s in-app purchases generated $10 billion this year. That is a lot of money! It’s also worth nothing here that TikTok coins are not dissimilar from what platforms like YouTube and Twitch offer. So the fact that TikTok is doing so well with those compared to its competitors, to me, says something important about TikTok’s ecosystem. It’s way more addicting than maybe we realize.
I hate the new Discord mobile app so much. That’s all I have to say. It sucks and I hate it.
WEB3 AND THE METAVERSE
Apple is betting on spatial video as the Vision Pro’s big hook. It’s a smart idea because, at least so far, no VR headset has figured out a way to really stand out. I also suspect that onboarding people to VR with something deeply personal like literally being able to walk around their own “memories” is much more effective than, say, playing Beat Saber or shopping for bull shit in a dead digital mall.
The band KISS is replacing themselves with digital avatars. They aren’t the first legacy band to do this, ABBA has a hologram show, as well. And, sure, why not. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. Though, I do find the entire idea of boomers rocking out to digital ghosts slightly unnerving.
OUR ROBOT OVERLORDS
The Humane AI pin guy seriously needs media training. Humane’s co-founder Imran Chaudhri went on CNBC and couldn’t answer a single question about how or why people would ever use an AI pin, which I think is very telling. Also, Humane’s co-founder Bethany Bongiorno wrote a bunch of nonsense about the pin on X yesterday, arguing that “contextual compute — where the world around you becomes your operating system — is the future.” Which means nothing. Also, we spent the last 25 years transforming the web from something that was largely full of text to something full of visuals. So an extremely expensive smart device that doesn’t let you see anything is, frankly, idiotic.
Axel Springer is licensing its news content to OpenAI. *Doctor Strange voice* We’re in the end game now.
Non-consensual sexual image AI generators are advertising on X now. I have to imagine that X isn’t even looking at who’s advertising on the platform anymore because they’re so desperate for business. Also, banning these services should be priority number one for any policymaker trying to get ahead of AI development.
Did Elon Musk steal the Grok name from Grimes? Seems like it! She even trademarked the name first.
FANDOMS
Hazbin Hotel is getting an Amazon show. I have done my best over the last few years to try and ignore Hazbin Hotel as much as humanly possible, largely because of the way the fandom behaves on Tumblr. So while it’s great that a show based on a Patreon-supported web series is getting a wide release, I also think it technically counts as a dangerous cognitohazard escaping its containment unit.
E3 shut down. I thought Gamesindustry.biz had the best piece on what that means. And Rock Paper Shotgun’s editor-in-chief, in an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, had the best take: “E3 had its problems, but at least the ESA didn't materialise as a single man who'd rather be talking to muppets and celebrities on stage than the games they're supposedly here to promote and celebrate.”
STREAMERS
Twitch allowed artistic nudity on the platform about 24 hours before realizing that was a very bad idea. This whole thing started with a new Twitch “meta,” or meta strategy, where women streamers would stream topless with the camera cropping out their nipples. A normal platform would find a way to de-incentivize this kind of content algorithmically. But, of course, Twitch is not a normal platform. So, instead, they decided to tie themselves up in a big pretzel and still end up with no clearer set of guidelines for adult content on the site.
Tucker Carlson is launching a streaming service. It’s going to cost $9 a month and, unfortunately, how it ends up doing will probably tell us something very important about the future of media in America.
Twenty percent of YouTube is gameplay videos. Which is honestly wild considering how much content is on YouTube. It also connects a bit to Twitch’s current woes. I had assumed that as gaming got more mainstream, Twitch would, as well. But I think over the last three years video games-related media has completely outgrown Twitch and expanded across the whole internet and I’m not sure Twitch can ever regain that lead.
MEMES AND TRENDS
McDonald’s advertised a new “cookies ‘n cream pie” on Facebook. You can imagine how that went for them.
Know Your Meme published their favorite memes of 2023. They also quoted me, which is nice. I’ve been thinking about this and I think my favorite meme of 2023 was “Baby Gronk Rizzed Up Livvy Dunne”. It is still funny every time I watch it or say it out loud. Livvy even hugged Baby Gronk.
DRAMA
Everyone’s mad at the Balloon Guy again. Here’s the funny thing about this. His whole deal is taking quotes he finds on the internet, stripping them of all context, and putting them on a giant wall in balloons. And he’s almost constantly having to apologize or give more context later for one of his stupid posts. It’s almost like optimizing your content for maximum engagement is a deeply unnatural way of communicating and you just shouldn’t do it.
Yes, the album cover for Kanye West’s new project with Ty Dolla Sign is absolutely a nazi thing. You can read more about that here.
The Goodreads review bombing drama is all wrapped up. Thankfully, for me, The Mary Sue has a great explainer. Basically, debut author Cait Corrain reviewbombed a bunch of other authors, got caught, wrote a length apology on X claiming she has having a mental health crisis, and was then dropped by her publisher. Obviously, Corrain is to blame here, but I do think the outsized importance of Goodreads for a certain sector of the publishing industry deserves some blame, as well.
AROUND THE WORLD
The EU is closing in on a big AI law. The Artificial Intelligence Act will create a legal framework for how AI tools are used and the data that goes in them and will also give users a way to opt in and out of AI systems. Great, let’s do that here, as well!
A game about being trapped in a never-ending Tokyo subway station is one of the biggest games on Steam right now. This is barely related to this at all, but when I was working in Tokyo I got desperately lost inside of Shinjuku Station more than a few times. Years later, I was playing the video game Persona 5, which opens with you trying to navigate Shinjuku Station and actually got too stressed out to keep playing the game. The trauma is still very real for me.
SOME FUN STUFF
P.S. here’s an extremely comfy rat.
***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually, but with more of a carefree weekend vibe***
Twitch is in such an awkward position.
I'm somewhat surprised that their lunch hasn't been entirely eaten by YouTube, Discord, or even OnlyFans yet.
The community is really what's keeping the service successful at this point. I think they've correctly identified that as the thing about their platform that's hardest to replicate. But what can they do with it? Not much. You don't really own a community and they're very easy to destroy. If that's the one thing keeping your platform relevant you really have to walk on eggshells.
Twitch reminds me of Tumblr, in many ways, but I think Amazon are more capable stewards than Yahoo! ever could've been.
Balloon man...up up and away!