Greg's Newsletter Has Links [No. 053]
It's Friday, January 19. Holler.
Who’s ready for a good ol’ link dump? Been a minute since I share a stream of interesting/fun/cool shit, so let’s just get to work!
Twitterstorms seemed to have taken on new life in 2017. Brands! Controversy! Nazis! Actual, honest to god Nazis! If that means nothing to you and you’re unclear how Twitterstorms form, just read Buzfeed’s The 29 Stages Of A Twitterstorm in 2018. This is real life (though the piece is satire).
The Awl was a very awesome internet website that I started reading upon its inception in 2009 which, for me, happened because it seemed like a natural offshoot of a bunch of people I followed on Tumblr (back when I was deeeeeeeeeep into Tumblr). It was like a more intelligent, interesting Gawker (which still holds a place in my heart. Fuck Peter Thiel) but more tied to internet culture? And a lot of really smart writers contributed to the site over the years. Anyways, it just shut down and I agree with The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino that this is another sign of the ‘vanishing of freedom and fun from the internet.’ And this isn’t, like, a “the internet used to be sooooo much better” kind of thing. It’s just not that fun of a place anymore. RIP The Awl.
This was probably one of the first “viral videos” on the internet, circulating via email in 1997 (before we even had the terminology/concept of “viral content!”). Here’s Wired’s history of that video.
You wanna see the wildest cotton candy shit you’ve ever seen in your life? Yeah, you do.
This is kind of trippy: Romanian artist Andrew Lacatusu created some amazing, haunting images that depict the downfall of social media as post-apocalyptic buildings and signs. Think of a rusted, half-torn Marlboro billboard atop an abandoned west Texas gas station. Except it’s Facebook.
Anyways, that’s it for today. Be sure to subscribe to my running 2018 playlist, because it’s already fire.