🕺Greg's Newsletter Has Disco Comments [No. 078]
Love, fear, heartbreak, and joy on YouTube (and Twitter).
There is no audio version of today’s email because it felt weird just, like, reading other peoples’ tweets. Text only. Also, if you like this newsletter, please share it with a friend and encourage them to sign-up—we’re trying to get to 1000 subscribers this year, and word-of-mouth is the most important way to get there.
me: internet articles based on embedded tweets are lazy
also me: EMBED THEM ALL
Today, I want to talk to you about tweets. The good kind. Specifically, tweets from my favorite Twitter account: @DiscoComments.
From @DiscoComments' profile bio: ♫ ♫ |̲̅̅●̲̅̅|̲̅̅=̲̅̅|̲̅̅●̲̅̅| ♫ ♫ User comments from Italo, Freestyle, Boogie, House + Eurobeat videos on YouTube. ♫ ♫ |̲̅̅●̲̅̅|̲̅̅=̲̅̅|̲̅̅●̲̅̅| ♫ ♫
Once or twice an hour, the account tweets out a random comment from a YouTube video for dance songs from the 70s and 80s (here's a quick primer on Italo, if you're curious). @DiscoComments is a steady stream, a delightful mix of nostalgia and emotion, occasional snobbishness and overall general YouTube comment weirdness and non-sequiturs.
Taken out of their original context, they act as a meta-text of a group of people with a very specific music fandom, who clearly cross generational and geographical boundaries. They have fears. Joys. Heartbreak. Love. The human condition and the human experience. Disco, baby.
Sometimes they're really far out, too.
Sometimes it's just so pure.
And sometimes the comments really fucking hit.
I spend a lot of time on Twitter, though I'm not a particularly voracious tweeter. Over time, I've followed various waves of people: journalists, techies, artists, politic-ers. Those first two groups have ensured that, over time, my feed is this weird combination of always-on news (which has had a pretty sad, depressing, negative vibe) and very-capitalist, "tech and money will save the world" bros. This is a very jarring dichotomy during a pandemic and while we address racial injustice.
I need to do a deep, deep cleanse of who I follow and be more intentional about that. And I need more @DiscoComments in my feed. So here are a few more Twitter accounts that are #good:
@Speedy_Flowers1: Meet Patrick "Speedy" Flowers, a made up athlete in EA's NCAA Football 14, created by some guy in his individual instance of the game, who created a Twitter account for his player. Earlier this year, Flowers was still a prospect (he was a 5* QB out of high school… in the game) and keeping fans updated on his virtual scholarship offers on the made-up Twitter account, which included one from Northern Illinois (in the game... again... Flowers isn't real). The actual IRL coach of NIU responded to Flowers on Twitter and felt the need to clarify that a scholarship in fact, was not sent to a player named Speedy Flowers. This was an extremely internet thing.
@CurlingZone: OK, this one isn't that weird. I remember following @CurlingZone ("the leading independent promoter of the sport of #curling") during the last Winter Olympics because curling is kind of hype. But, of course, interest in curling comes in four-year waves so I'm determined to break that cycle and become an ongoing curling fan (maybe actually become a curler?!) so I definitely will not be unfollowing @CurlingZone. Shoutout to those people.
@GoodSlides: screenshots of random slides found on SlideShare.net, with no context or links. Just the slides. It's an absolute delight.
@CSPANFive: "Daily automated summaries of C-SPAN videos" where it's basically long videos cut down to like 5 words that the person says over-and-over.
And that's it for today. I love you all.
Greg