Never News: Eye on the Prize
Welcome one, welcome all to Never News, the every-two-weekly newsletter that I, Producer Georgia, pen for you with great reverence and humility. No time to dilly dally, on to the news!
Some Internet aperitifs...
In schadenfreude news, a Facebook group for Cybertruck owners (lots to say here already) showcases how profoundly hated the vehicle truly is. Dating app enshittification continues on Grindr. Does Gen Z care about Twitter? Elsewhere, a recent study in The Verge shows that online, people want to go back to the basics. Also, it's Girl Scouts cookies season, so here's a list of trans scouts that you can buy cookies from directly - just be sure to note that you'd like your cookies shipped instead of delivered by hand.
And now, for the main courses...
THE CUT: does the "big reveal" cause more harm than good?
Attention is both a crucial and endless resource online — we know this. But in this piece in The Cut, writer Kathryn Jezer-Morton focuses in on what she calls "big reveal content," which can be anything from pregnancy reveals to gender reveals and the like. Often, she notes, this content is about family life, but the subject isn't what matters most. It's the spectacle. This piece flits from this more standard "big reveal" fare to our current political state of affairs in the U.S. and back to our screens, wondering about the emotional aftershocks of seeing (and even more troubling, creating) surprise after surprise.
SHOW NEWS: extended segments on Cameo and a new Slow Post!!
For the gorgeous, stunning, beautiful, and glamorous members, we have a veritable feast of content for you. First, we've got an extended cut of my conversation with David Mack on Cameo and the right wing politicians who rely on the service after being ousted from their jobs. Second, we've got another Slow Post, our members-only sleep aid podcast where an AI version of one of our voices leads you down a lazy river of Wikipedia articles toward dreamland.
VOX: Why everyone hates IG Reels
As someone who loudly declares my preference for TikTok as my ominous-feeling short form video platform of choice, I was very interested to read someone break down exactly why, by comparison, Instagram Reels feels so...uncool. For me, a lot of that comes from the problem that arises for Twitter users, who see screenshots of tweets shared on Instagram or in photo carousels on TikTok. I'll receive a Reel from a friend and think to myself, "I already saw this on TikTok last week." But this piece expands the conversation far beyond that, examining the way Instagram's views-focused algorithm overvalues certain kinds of videos over others, creating an environment that is full of, you guessed it, mostly garbage.
THE ATLANTIC: Long Live Reddit
In my long, meandering journey across social media platforms, Reddit has always eluded me as anything more than a source for sunscreen recommendations. But in this piece from The Atlantic, it's touted as, perhaps, the sole survivor in a platform-wide collapse, as folks on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are growing exhausted by a social media experience that feels toothless and altogether horrible. Writer Adrienne LaFrance hails Reddit as "simultaneously niche and expansive — like an infinite world's fair of subcultures." As my personal feed is continuously overrun with aesthetics devoid of any subculture to speak of, that sounds pretty solid to me.
That's all from me on this installment of Never News. As always keep it real, keep it snazzy, keep it cool. Ciao for now!