Meatspace is Sarah and Lora’s weekly digest of weird/wack/need-to-know tech news — and our warm takes on all of it.
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Dear friends,
In 2009, the internet was a simpler place. Newsfeeds were chronological. Our away messages were Fountains of Wayne lyrics. David went to the dentist. Kanye dunked on Taylor. Alt right and subtweet were first used in print. Instead of the 538 “backed by science” personality quiz that quantifies how much anxiety you have/whether you are as agreeable as Ned Flanders (Lora apparently….is), back in 2009 we just got tagged in those pics to find out which of the seven dwarves or Little Miss whatever our friends thought we were! Halcyon days.
When we first heard about the #PubertyChallenge -- an internet meme that encourages you to post one pic from 2009 and one from 2019, basically to show the world how skinny and/or good at wearing eyeliner you are now -- we were mainly like, no thank you! (The only good pic of Sarah taken in 2009 is hanging in her orthodontist’s office, where it will stay.) Not to mention that some of us, like Mariah, simply do not age.
Then we were like, maybe this is just a nefarious plot by Facebook to get millennials to start using a cursed website again.
And THEN an op-ed in Wired suggested that actually….. The challenge could be an even MORE nefarious plot to train its facial recognition data to sophisticatedly track the aging process using our very clearly delineated chronological photographic face data! But then we were reminded that the puberty challenge has (unfortunately) been a recurring feature of the internet age. Also, Facebook claimed to have nothing to do with the resurgence of Piknik’d selfies, and said that, besides reminding us of our “questionable fashion choices” of the 09s [ok shade] the challenge was simply harmless fun.
And, as Max Read reminds us, Facebook doesn’t need us to post old selfies for them to get vast troves of our most intimate personal data. We are already surveilled beyond our wildest dreams! Cheers!
Fyre fest
Hulu and Netflix, in that order, are attempting to break the internet/our spirits with competing Fyre Fest docs this week. Hulu dropped “Fyre Fraud” on Monday, a few days before Netflix was set to drop “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.” (Technically Pete and Ariana’s wedding was the greatest party that never happened but we digress.)
Netflix, predictably, was pissed that Fyre scooped them, claiming Hulu paid Billy McFarland $250k to be interviewed for said doc. (Which also featured Jia Tolentino!) Co-director Jenner Furst says “it was less than that.” Paying him to talk feels unethical, especially bc Billy’s in a lot of debt. But the interview was p damning. Everyone must do what they must.
One of the craziest things we learned from Fyre Fraud -- besides that a pig bit Victoria’s Secret Angel Chanel Iman in the butt during island scouting for Fyre Fest -- is that Billy Mcfarland’s first company (Magnises pronounced Magneeesis), a WeWork x Tinder-esque branded experience space, was created after he copied his debit card onto another piece of metal because he thought it looked cool. Ok.
Fyre Fest 2.0
In a case of perfect cosmic convergence, an Insta influencer event that is being hailed as the most Fyre fest-y thing since Fyre Fest also happened this week! Balm for our scam-thirsty world.
Basically, instagrammer Caroline Calloway, who holds the dubious distinction of perhaps being The First Influencer, announced a few weeks ago that she would be hosting “creativity workshops” in major US/international cities for her super-fans. $165 + fees would open the door to an afternoon of oat milk and learning how to be yourself! But then it devolved into chaos/everything went wrong/she cancelled and then un-cancelled it. Calloway insists that she was just rly disorganized/planned things badly. The web, including this viral thread, insist she was scamming her fans:
The most ambiguous moment of all: Calloway promised fans that she would tell them the secret to making flower crowns. And apparently she whispered to this participant that, “the secret to making flower crowns is there is no secret.”
Epic scam? Innocuous shitshow? You decide!
LOVING YOU WAS RED
Reading this Mel Magazine story about the Youtube-driven red pill radicalization of a guy named Craig made Sarah remark “how incredible that a magazine generated to sell a razor is actually so good.” To which Lora responded, “don’t they have a dicks vertical?” Two things can be true!
Another thing that is, upsettingly, true is that people are selling and buying blood on the internet. Specifically, young blood.
Enter: Ambrosia. Its founder Jesse Karmazin decided — without clinical evidence — that rich old people could benefit from injections of blood from 16-25 year olds. He’s allowed to open clinics without proving that it works because the FDA is like sure blood transfusions in general seem fine!
Lest we forget that blood represents more than tech bro youth, The New Yorker put out a great piece this week about blood as a cultural object throughout time and place. Highlights: Pliny the Elder wrote that menstruating women could ward off bees; Egyptian tomb paintings show leeches being used to bloodlet (as one might do today to drain swollen tissue after plastic surgery!); King Louis XI tried to ward off death from leprosy by drinking the blood of healthy children. Wow!!
We are pleased to share that we are not powered by the plasma of other youths, but by DUNKIN. And so is this house!
And, if you want to donate blood to people who in fact medically require blood transfusions, it’s a great thing to do! Here is a good way to do that.
HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR EGGS
ICYMI, this week a photo of an egg got the most likes of any Instagram post ever. Wired breaks it down.
Also, this is a story that had eggs as section breaks, and it was about gay penguins in Australia raising a child penguin together.
And, speaking of egg...on face (rough transition!): Among other offenses (!) this week, Michael Cohen has been roundly mocked for sponsoring a Twitter called WomenforCohen, on which “real women” called him a sex icon pitbull.
We like this Women for Nathan Fielder parody account better.
SLACK JAW
Slack’s logo got a redesign, which they say “is simpler.” It is not simpler. In fact, some people have described it as “moist,” or, more colorfully, some have likened it to, “a swastika made of dicks.” We do not endorse!
Ty to Ana C for pointing out that slackbot now looks different:
It’s like Clippy got trapped inside a Twister board.
To top it all off, Slack’s Chief Product Officer, April Underwood, left. To pursue women-led/women-focused VC #Angels full-time!
Also, months after a sort-of-mocked “slack walkout,” the Slate Union has been recognized. Slacktivism works! (Well, plus a lot of other bargaining).
TASTY BITES
This guy documented his entire year via spreadsheet, including things like “songs stuck in head” and “things people recommended to me so i can remember it when i run into them on the street.” It’s like bullet journaling, but anal. (Digg)
NYPD must release their data tracking of BLM protestors (NY Post)
A man with an unhinged past of faking internet content (including posing with a WAX FIGURE of Seth Rogen pretending he was hanging out with him) harassed a woman engineer by falsely claiming she was stalking him at a tech conference (ty Emily M for link!). (Mashable)
Airbnb refunded a guest who found multiple surveillance cameras in his rental apartment (Washington Post)
Mariah Carey is attempting to sue her alleged grifter former assistant (Vulture)
Whom knows where we will all be in 2029. We just hope that the Razr will make yet another appearance, as it now is in 2019 as $1500 folding smartphone Razr.
Txt us,
Lora and Sarah