Look @ the ceiling!!
Gullible is written on there 😏
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,
What if we told you gullible was written on the ceiling. Ok you’re onto us!!! But what if we told you u had to repost this copypasta saying that Insta did not have ur permission to share ur photos or messages (with the word Instagram unsubtly pasted over the words Facebook, whence this hoax sprung).
Well, many distinguished Americans, from Scooter Braun to the literal guy who controls the nukes to a ton of other celebs (Julianne Moore! Judd Apatow! Wacka Flocka Flame!) did exactly that this week.
A major thing this tells us: people are rly concerned about the privacy of their social media accounts and online lives! What this also tells us is that ppl are just so so lost about how it all works. (Good time to reread Charlie Warzel’s rapidly-becoming-evergreen FaceApp Shows We Care About Privacy but Don’t Understand It.)
Yes, people (especially with big platforms) should be more discerning about what (mis)info they choose to repost. But who can blame these Insta users, especially boomers! They did not experience the formative ritual of getting those “forward this email to 15 ppl or a ghost will munch u up” AOL chain messages of the early aughts -- had they experienced this, they would realize it’s right out of the same playbook.
That’s the other crazy thing abt this hoax -- it’s like, not that original! Paris Martineau in Wired elucidates why ppl keep falling for viral hoaxes -- and how bad actors on the web prey on common vulnerabilities.
Honestly tho hoaxes of varying degrees of wackness abound on IG: see the influencer who professionally shot and edited her motorcycle crash….featuring smartwater (™)
Where is our invite:
EPOCH WIN
Another viral hoax peddler tbh that’s obsessed with Donald Trump is the Epoch Times. The non-profit media organization -- which runs a website, free print newspaper, and a YouTube channel, -- spent $1.5 million on pro-trump ads in the past six months! It also uses its platform to push the anti-vax agenda, float theories about the end of the world, and promote QAnon. Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny wrote a huge exposé on the media empire’s connection to the shady spiritual community Falun Gong, whose “stated goal [is] taking down China’s government,” and which believes judgement day is coming soon!!! Falun Gong also has ties to Shen Yun, the dance troupe with absolutely massive social media clout that was the subject of Jia Tolentino’s March deep dive. It, too, has taken a recent foray into conservative propaganda YouTube vids. Sensing some patterns!
If u live in DC, you may have noticed the Epoch Times’ yellow newspaper boxes scattered around town. But they stopped free distribution on August 15, according to a note affixed to the side of one!!
And as of this week, Facebook has banned the org from taking out ads (tho Collins + Zadrozny also report that it hides some of its Facebook ad buys under other fronts like “Honest Media” and “Best News.”) Their impact! Judgement day came.
Good thing new news companies and aggregators are cropping up to take its place! -- sorry, we mean “knewz.”
UNDER THE MICRO-INFLUENCE
Some ppl with a platform? Repost hoaxes. Others with a platform? Charge $7-2500 for a personalized minute-long video of them wishing ur friend a happy bday. Cameo dot com is a platform for the latter types, such as nikki blonsky from the movie Hairspray and Corey from Corey in the House, to vend their video services. (curious to what extent this venn diagram is a circle!)
Product Hunt calls Cameo “The Rocketship Making Influencers Money.” It started, as any good startup does, at the founder’s grandmother’s funeral….
Tomi Lahren, it turns out, is also on Cameo (going rate: $60), and someone paid her to make a 13 second vid where she was telling someone named [Steven] to debate someone named [Sam]...which made it sound like she was telling Steven Crowder to debate Sam Seder. Apparently this is the risk of making videos for strangers with zero context! Who needs deepfakes when u can just get ur political rivals to say whatever. (ty Paul S for the tip)
Honestly we would pay p good money to get one of these vids from any of the aforementioned copypasta posters. Redemption??
One influencer who took things to the Meatspace apparently is @Jack, in 2012. Loyal reader Andrew H got a signed early Square device when Jack Dorsey visited his New Jersey high school lmao. (Andrew promises he didn’t just scrawl this himself with a ballpoint pen!!) Excerpts of the Q & A from the event, which ran in the WSJ, reveal that Dorsey loves maps, and that his father “loves meat of all kinds.” Can’t make this up.
Speaking of Jack, read this CityLab op-ed about the Twitter founder/CEO’s revitalization efforts in his hometown of St. Louis. He’s pouring a ton of money into demolishing vacant homes in one part of the city (the lower-income part!) and incentivizing business in the other (already-prosperous!) part.
REPLY GUYS
Okay a viral twitter post about sour altoids reminded Sarah of this Altoids RPG game from the early aughts where you “play the part of a zitty, sweaty shut-in who meets a girl on instant messaging and convinces her to go on a date. He has to make it to the club, cadge his way in, and impress her.” Goals!
We are wondering if you remember any games like this that objectively shouldn’t have been games? Email or tweet at us! We wanna remember, too.
In other online engagement activations, VCs far and wide have been sharing contextless lists of things they’re interested in....
Frankly we prefer contextless tweets about how NYT has at last published our favourite phrase:
And thank you Brian M who suggested we interview the group of millennials in this Bloomberg story whose names were linked to the largest exchange-traded fund (called SPY!!!) at birth and whose lifespans said fund depends on. If you happen to be one of them, or know one of them.... Please contact us.
TASTY BITES
Bernie wants to crack down on facial recognition (Vox)
San Francisco’s FogCam is shutting down :( (NYTimes)
Yeah okay Moviepass linked a ton of ppl’s credit card info (TechCrunch)
Fake orwell books are being sold on amazon, v for lack of a better word orwellian! (NYTimes)
FB agreed to be audited to see if they have, among other things, anti-conservative bias sigh (Axios)
There is an underground market where people gamble to win rare meat like octopuses on Facebook (Mel Magazine)
Relatedly, ppl are finding ways against FB bans on selling guns by selling “gun cases” (WSJ)
U can shop on tiktok now and kroger was the first to use it lol (TechCrunch)
Venezualan workers are training AI for self-driving car companies (ty Ben M) (MIT Tech Review)
Uber drivers are trying to take back all the data Uber has on them! (CityLab)
We regret to inform u that Lil Nas X gave Jeff Bezos a makeover…..no words beside ty Aly F for this disturbing link (Buzzfeed)
Warm wishes,
Sarah and Lora