Meatspace is Lora and Sarah’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,
Summer is a time for reinvention. The US dept of energy rebranded fossil fuels as “molecules of freedom.” This start-up rebranded predatory payday lending as a fun Millennial app. This celebrity biohacker rebranded as an unlicensed doctor, and is suffering the legal consequences. Pokemon Go is rebranding as Pokemon Sleep.
What if we rebranded too! As hat people, or influencers. Or simply swapped airport arrival time brands (Lora: early, time to buy seltzer; Sarah: late, bc she, like the Free Solo guy, may not have an amygdala)?
It is fun to think of the possibilities.
Some possibilities are more dark, tho. Like imagine applying for the job of Tweeter-in-Chief at Twitter dot com! Job description includes OMG they changed the job listing to private, probably because it was too ridiculed. But we remember (and have the screenshots to prove) that one of the requirements was: “FUN!” The other big ones were: tweeting as @Twitter, and having your fingies on the pulse of The Great Online.
Amy Brown, who works on Tom Steyer’s impeachment campaign and is v good at Twitter, says a Twitter recruiter approached her recently and asked her to apply for what she suspects was the TIC job -- for half her current salary, and “exposure.” To this she said, not worth it!
The job reminded many people of the unpaid/underpaid media, social media, and otherwise internships offered “for exposure,” which (major key!) does not pay the rent. It also dovetailed with the revelation that MORE THAN HALF of Google’s workforce is made up of temporary workers, making $16-$125 an hour, without the lavish perks of other Google full-timers, nor paid vacation days.
For now, we are happy to stick to our current identities of Editresses-in-Beef.
THE GREAT ZUCCING
Speaking of self-promotion…! Have you seen a strange increase in volume of promoted tweets on your Twitter feeds? Shout out to perennial promo-tweeter Jon Legere as always (incidentally he’s going to get $37 million for T Mobile/Sprint merger, per this NYT piece on CEO salaries).
Craig Silverman has the inside story on the Twitter test that’s behind the ad blitz, and how sexist posts involving Slavic women and “malvertising” campaigns involving Drake and the Wknd got promoted alongside that Stouffer’s lasagna ad. (plz tell us you get this one too).
Twitter purged the accounts of some of the bad ad actors. But groups on Facebook are worried that though they are not bad, they will get purged, too!
That’s bc recently, trolls have been invading closed groups (like “Crossovers Nobody Asked For”) and posting things that violate FB’s terms of service, like porn, in an attempt to get the group closed down or suspended -- a tactic Motherboard describes as “zuccing.” (Like narcing, but Zuck-style.) To preempt these strikes, thousands of FB groups (like “Sounds Like an Elaborate Excuse to be a Furry But OK”) turned their settings to secret, making them unsearchable and invitation-only. They feel it is the only way to avoid…….. The Great Zuccing.
In the words of Merkava Jones, a moderator of the Furry meme group: "I pray every day for a mass exodus from this hellsite."
S-M-H
The Scripps National Spelling bee was this week. Congrats to the historic tie group of eight winners, especially 13 year old Sohum S, who is the cousin of loyal Meatspace reader Rohan N!!
ESPN generously tweeted this footage of contestants dabbing. Do not let their awesome dancing distract u from the revelation in WaPo that ~ half of the contestants PAID to be in the bee. Apparently the way u get to be in the bee is either u qualify (a la hard-working Akeelah) or u pay $1,500 to compete.
At least spelling is a way for these kids to get away from screens am i right! Gaming addiction is officially a diagnosable medical condition as of this week (as is burnout!)
Everyone was mad at the youths when this study came out saying that a third of teens check their phones in the night. But then everyone was like ohh wait word adults are extremely addicted, too.
The relationship between how adults (even/especially those who built careers online) use screens and how they try to police their children’s usage is increasingly tangled and riddled w/ hypocrisy. See: Travis Scott not wanting Stormi to grow up around screens, then facetiming w/ her in this Rolling Stone cover story (ty Lori H for spotting this!). How will Stormi watch her mom on KUWTK! And Silicon Valley founders are famously banning their kids from using the tech products they helped create.
As Nellie Bowles points out in the NYT, human contact is increasingly a luxury good! It used to be that only rich people could buy iphones. Now only rich people can afford to break free from the phones.
WIKI WHAT
We love Wikipedia. Where else could u go to learn the definition of Sohum’s winning word “pendeloque”?
Long the territory of knowledge lovers (and, unfort, rampant sexism) Wikipedia was also a battleground for #brands this week!
North Face edited Wikipedia pages to promote their products, then gloated about it. Wikipedia then roasted them to a literal crisp on Twitter.
The brand has since apologized.
The Trump brand has also caused Wikipedia drama, according to this Slate feature. Just like journalists, Wikipedia editors argue in real time over whether to use “racially charged” or “racist” or “nationalist” to describe his policies; whether to call lies “falsehoods” or “lies”; and how to keep personal politics from seeping into the encyclopedia entries they write.
On a lighter note:
Sounds Like an Elaborate Excuse to Be a Furry But Ok!
**EXTREME BORAT VOICE**
As our grandmothers always told us, another day another dollar; another week another wife. This week’s newsy wife fell off a cliff. We’ll let you do the digging there! (Hint: Her husband is a Youtube star; it was more of a hill)
In philanthropic wife news, Mackenzie Bezos says she will be giving away more than half her fortune, post-divorce! Read Louise Matsakis on the pitfalls of tech philanthropy, but also remember how much JBezos gave away of his fortune in 2017 (1/10 of one percent.) “Go get ’em MacKenzie,” the male Bezos said in a statement.
TASTY BITES
Sophie Haigney on tech infiltrating ur sushi! (Slate)
Uber is deactivating riders with low ratings (TechCrunch)
This company is creating a database of banned bar patrons (OneZero)
AirPods are bad for the environment pt 2. Recyclers won’t recycle them! (OneZero)
This NY school district is the first to take steps to roll out facial recognition in its public schools (Buzzfeed News)
Uber is adding gender neutral pronouns to its app, getting a headstart on corporate Pride-pandering! (TechCrunch)
Amazon is reportedly shopping for office space in manhattan even after the HQ2 deal fell apart smh (Slate)
….a rabid bat was hiding in this man’s ipad….. (ABC)
and finally: The NYT put the distracted boyfriend meme on the cover of the Business section this week.
This reminded us that we accidentally omitted George Civeris from last week’s list of interviewees of the year -- he is a comedian, Tow Center for Digital Journalism researcher, and the creator of one of the best Distracted Boyfriend Memes we’ve seen this academic year.
We are sorry, George, and appreciate you anew for your contribution to what continues to be the most pervasive meme of this generation!!
Signing off from the airports,
Lora and Sarah