Welcome to Garbage Weekend. It’s the internet garbage you know and love, but in a format that’s easier to read while you read through 1,037 unread emails.
PLATFORMS
The Epstein doc drop turned X into a large-scale libel machine. It was also borderline impossible to follow what was actually in the docs. For instance, the Stephen Hawking chalkboard thing is not real. This is a somewhat decent explainer about why Hawking was mentioned at all. Though, that brings me to my other point here, which is that all the junk on X is both filling a vacuum left by clear, non-paywalled explanations of what was actually revealed and also egged on by numerous outlets teasing the release of the docs like it was an album drop. I’m not sure there was ever going to be a world where the release of something this salacious and politically charged was going to go smoothly, but coupled with an out of control X/Twitter and an essentially non-existent Google News made things much, much worse.
Chrome has disabled third-party cookies. Here’s a good thread on why that might be an issue, specifically for publishers. This will essentially be an extinction level event for a lot of outlets still coasting on programmatic advertising. Is it one that should happen? Yeah probably, but it won’t make the online news desert any easier to navigate, especially as we enter an election year here in the US.
Why is Threads suggesting a bunch of TERF posts? I have not opened Threads since December 24th, because it’s not a fun app and all of the content on it is as entertaining as the stuff you see on LinkedIn, so I missed the TERF invasion. Though, I will say, Threads is overwhelmingly neoliberal and if you put enough airport self-help book readers in one social network TERFs will show up because that crowd is pathologically obsessed with gender essentialism.
OUR ROBOT OVERLORDS
I am fairly confident that there is no AI involved with the “AI” Spongebob drill thing. The music isn’t AI generated, the video definitely isn’t — this is about as good as you can get AI video production right now — and I don’t the voices are either. Though, it’s possible with a bunch of effects. But the tell is that they’re rapping on time with almost no audio artifacts and coherent emphasis on specific words. But the fact so many people are willing to believe it’s AI is notable. And not in a good way.
Homer Simpson singing “Iris” by The Goo Goo Dolls is AI, however. It was created by an app called Voicify and the animation seems like stock 3D assets set in time to the beat. The account that posted it posts a bunch of AI covers, but this one is really, really good.
Midjourney is imploding. A database of artists its AI was trained on was leaked. You can see an archived version of the “proposed artist” list here. Do you hear that? It’s the sound of a thousand lawsuits being filed.
OpenAI will not let you make an Epstein GPT to ask questions to the Epstein docs. Aw rats, I thought maybe that would fix the infopocalypse.
FANDOMS
Tetris has finally been beaten — sorta. You “beat” the game by playing it up to level 155 or so, until it runs out of memory and literally crashes. It’s never happened before, but this week a 13-year-old became the first human to ever do it.
Is the Taylor Swift backlash finally coming? Probably time. Though, the pieces I’ve seen seem to be bending over backwards to argue that there’s some sort of sociopolitical reason needed when you can just say, “she’s everywhere, her fans are extremely aggressive, she’s a billionaire, and I’m sick of her now.” (I also think her lyrics are increasingly not great, but that’s a me thing.)
The CW Spider-Man thread was the best thing I saw over the break. It also inspired a DC version, which is pretty good too.
STREAMERS
If you know a British man with a well-organized shed, offer him your condolences. YouTuber Tom Scott is shutting down. Well, he’s shutting down his main channel, at least. The reason why is because he’s facing the same issue every creator faces, one I’m even beginning to understand: At a certain audience level you either have to franchise, become a manager for that franchise, and turn into content factory. Or you do what Scott is doing and chill out. You either die a burnout or live long enough to see yourself become MrBeast, I guess.
This Embedded piece on how streaming has turned back into cable is really good. And it’s true, but the comparison I’ve been using (in my head and in conversations with bored loved ones) is an all-inclusive resort. These platforms sprang up promising us everything for a small monthly fee and hoped they could lock us in before their money ran out and they had to start reducing services and charging more money. And it’s not just true for streaming, but pretty much all web 2.0 apps. The problem, especially with streaming, is that while you can’t easily pirate, say, a resort’s private and well-maintained beach, you can absolutely pirate a TV show or a movie.
MEMES AND TRENDS
I am going to write more about the Stanley Cup madness next week. Though, I think this was probably the wildest Stanley content I saw over the break. If you’re looking for a good answer as to why this is happening, I don’t think this totally explains it, but it’s a good place to start. And this is a good watch after you read that.
It’s probably time to talk about the “black and Chinese” thing. There’s a weirdo on X who is using AI on photos of mainly e-girls into to make them look black and Chinese. That’s basically it. Have a good weekend, everyone.
DRAMA
Gyspy Rose Blanchard is out of jail and on TikTok. I don’t have the time to summarize Blanchard’s whole story here and I figure if it’s something you care about, you already know it. I wish her the best and I hope the internet is somewhat kind to her. Also, this feels like maybe a good place to stuff a hot take I’ve been sitting on for a while that’s not entirely connected to Blanchard. I think social media should be allowed in prisons.
The Hard Times’ gaming vertical, Hard Drive, launched a Patreon. Not everyone is exactly thrilled about that. The Hard Times is the punk version of The Onion and in recent years they’ve experimented with more traditional online publishing. But unlike The Onion, The Hard Times has been pretty aggressively riding social traffic from the beginning. I think it’s a safe bet that this will not be the first online publisher to make this move this quarter.
The developers of the lame Steamboat Willy horror game deny being neo-Nazis. It’s up to you whether you care enough about this to believe them or not. But just think how much drama could have been avoided by not making a crappy video game to cash in on an expiring copyright.
AROUND THE WORLD
I don’t find the Paris New Years video all that grim tbh. Also, to be clear, I am only like 80% certain this video is real. I tried checking on Google News, but, you know… Anyways, yes, I get the impulse to look at this and say, “oh wow, we live in a nightmare from which we cannot wake,” etc. And I think the common comparison to photos and videos of people on their phones to photos and videos of people smoking a fifty years ago is apt. All that said, I do think you can look at a video like this and also see it as something somewhat beautiful. Thousands of people taking a video with the intention of, at least in theory, sharing it with someone else. It’s sort of sweet if you ask me. If it’s real, of course.
A Japanese real-time disaster tracker was rate-limited during the earthquake last week. I was a bit confused by this because the tracker is called NERV, which is the fictitious government organization from the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, but it’s a popular service even if it isn’t official. Unfortunately, there are still no other platforms with X’s scale that offer a replacement for real-time information.
SOME FUN STUFF
“Skibidi toilet knockoff merch has officially hit the Jersey Shore boardwalks.”
“My girlfriend’s family doesn’t know I’m playing 100 gecs at their Hanukkah party”
The only video we would ever need to show aliens what we’re all about here on Earth
P.S. here’s a good scarf.
***Any typos in this email are purpose actually, but with more of carefree weekend vibe***
I really thought the Stanley cup thing was going to be about hockey
my only thought I’ve been having about streamers lately is that The Long Tail theory in practice turned into Enshittification but I can’t quite coherently connect the dots