Culture

I’ve mused before on the correct number of posters and influencers vs lurkers required on text-based social networks — but refrained from commentary on video. (I don’t watch much.) Anyway this survey data suggests my theory applies there too: most people don’t post. That means posters are weird outliers who should be studied in a lab.

There are rumors the Reddit IPO is happening soon. Some of the most active Redditors may get the opportunity to buy in at the IPO price. Is a new meme stock in the making? Maybe!

This TikTok video from Tawny Platis is making the rounds, and for very good reason! It seems she’s the robotic voice behind a few of the most infuriating automated voices in our lives — and despite her incredible range, companies apparently still ask for these specific tones. Don’t miss this video from her as well.

“Linkifying them is the logical next step,” CEO Jay Graber said while discussing the use of hashtags on the Twitter alternative platform on the Techmeme Ride Home Podcast,

The doodle is a combination dating app and high school chemistry lesson. Answer a few questions and find out what element you are, then swipe left and right to bond or deny other elements.

I love this trend? More pet videos online please.

The Scholarly Press Backlist Revival will put out-of-print academic monographs online for free under deals with publishers like MIT Press, hoping to fix a “black hole in the cultural and scholarly record.” If it works out, it seems like a great option for a swathe of copyrighted works that aren’t seen as profitable to sell — but shouldn’t be locked away because of it.

Dorothy Gambrell of Cat and Girl (IYKYK) has made a comic about being named as one of the artists used to train Midjourney. Gambrell refers to herself as “small-time” and her discussion of her ambitions may clarify why a lot of creators feel exploited by scraping.

I have often wondered why internet assistants invariably have female names. Anyway, here’s an easy solution to the problem from Ask A Manager:

China Miéville, the phenomenal novelist, took on a new writing partner, Keanu Reeves, for a novel called The Book of Elsewhere. I would be hype for this if it were Miéville alone — The City and the City is a personal favorite — so I’m curious to see what Reeves adds to the mix besides publicity and being very good-looking.

Online shopping hit a new peak over the 2023 holiday season — and now the returns are upon us. But as online shopping gets increasingly competitive, there are new struggles around return policies. That may be an area for increased competition:

Okay. So there’s something called a “Disney Day Drinkers Club” (more than 85,000 members!) and their mascot is a trash can called “Binny.” Disney has moved the trash can.

It’s one thing when it’s Spotify, Apple Music, or SoundCloud, but these recaps from Culver’s, Dunkin (it dropped the “Donuts” from its name in 2019), Chick-fil-A, and Shake Shack are taking the whole year-end recap trend a little too far. Especially when they’re personalized.

Among the movies featured: The Cassandra Cat (1962), a Czeckoslovak film about a cat who wears sunglasses and reveals human nature. This is a code red for cat people.

Can you guess which national parks these people are reviewing?

“Partnerships like this should complicate this story of inevitability for companies like OpenAI, the world-beating firm that, before it takes over the economy, and before it must be stopped from taking over the entire world, must first, for some reason, pay for a big subscription to Politico Pro.”

Ten years old, but new to me: a website that plays a tone every time a Wikipedia page is updated. It’s a soothing antidote to ... basically every other browser tab, at this point.