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Read to the end for some great traditional Tibetan art
An Update On Zoomers Accidentally Recreating Rage Comics
While I’ve been following the evolution “doomer memes” as they become cringier and cringier (a rite of passage for every new generation of internet users) I started seeing a bunch of doomer comics about the video Super Monkey Ball and really couldn’t figure out why. I think I’ve traced it back to the source? But I’m not sure. Shoot me an email if I’m totally off-base.
And An Update On Our Ongoing National Feet Pics Discourse
For some reason, the first real Big Conversation of 2020 has been about feet pics. So it should come as no surprise that the foot stuff has somehow reached the 2020 Democratic Primary.
Earlier this week, Andrew Yang tweeted these pics of someone wearing Yang Gang shoes.
Which is fine and totally great and good for him. Honestly, they’re nice looking shoes. What happened next though was completely unnecessary. A few hours later, Yang decided to clarify that the feet in the pics were of his wife, Evelyn.
The Yang Gang has a lot of overlap with 4chan culture, so, of course, this did not go unnoticed. A sampling:
Anyways, it really does seem like something weird is happening around foot stuff at the moment. This also happened this week:
I hope this is the end of it. But I also doubt it.
A Really Interesting Discussion About Fandom
The nature of Tumblr has been changing a lot recently. People are talking to each other more, using it for general-purpose blogging and discussion. I can’t tell if that’s because it’s becoming smaller or if it’s finally growing again. Either way, I came across this MASSIVE and supremely interesting discussion about the history of FanFiction.net and AO3. It’s really long and even has citations at the bottom for further reading. Here’s a good passage:
Certain people are screaming that AO3 is bad because it’s not a “safe space.” The real problem they have, though, is that AO3 was created to be a safe space - for writers. And it does a pretty good job of that. It was designed to be a place where writers are safe from arbitrary content rule changes, random and unwarned deletions, and abuse-report abuse (which is common on ff.net). The Four Big Warnings + CNTW system is beautiful in its fairness and simplicity.
Antis can’t take control of it. And because control-freakdom is at the heart of their “movement,” this drives them into frenzies. Good. It motivated me to dig a little deeper into my pocket to donate on the last drive. For all the pleasure AO3 has given me over the years, that’s money well spent.
If you’re interested in how Anne Rice copyright takedowns, puritanical FanFiction.net users brigading LiveJournal users, and a near-unquenchable desire for smut created one of the core conflicts of modern fandom, I highly recommend it.
Here Are Two Good Tweets That Got Turned Into Even Better Songs
Another interesting trend right now are musical memes. My hunch is that TikTok’s popularity has made audio finally something people are willing to share. Here are two fantastic examples:
And then someone did a similar thing with this duck:
Fun fact: I learned about that duck from following the singer Hozier’s likes. In case you don’t know, Hozier has incredibly good taste in internet content. So definitely head over there and have a little look around. You won’t regret it!
This Is A Really Great Fugazi Cover
Special shoutout to them for opening it with a battlecry of “DON’T MESS WITH ME I HAVE THE POWER OF GOD AND ANIME ON MY SIDE!” You simply love to see it.
Check Out This Huge Fucking Bagel
Haha I love it. What an absolute monstrosity. God bless America and god bless New Jersey.
Here’s A Funny Reddit Thing
Found This Really Good GIF In Case You Ever Need It
Might be useful!
Anyone Wondering What’s Up With Encyclopedia Dramatica These Days?
OK, there’s a good chance that some Garbage Day readers aren’t familiar with Encyclopedia Dramatica — or, if they are, they might not understand why I, a fairly well-adjusted adult person, would ever visit it. Unfortunately, there’s a massive chunk of internet culture that was only ever documented on ED. Know Your Meme is obviously super helpful, but for some of the more obscure messageboard beefs of the early 00s, ED is more or less your only option. A surprising amount of current YouTubers got their start as incredibly toxic forum trolls. ED would be a great starting place for people trying to get a whole understanding of the current Chris Hansen/Onision stuff that recently came to head this month. As someone who has been writing about the internet for about a decade, one of the my last resorts in remembering some weird old petty internet beef is heading over to ED and translating it from the deranged and racist chan-speak that it was probably written in.
Unfortunately, I can’t link to any examples of this, however, because the site constantly going down. And appears it be down again right now. Here’s a thread about it from a current admin. Take this, of course, with a huge grain of salt, because it’s from an ED admin.
Lastly, A Lot Of You Want To See The My Furry/Antifa Powerpoint
Thank you all for emailing in asking to see my weird furry powerpoint. Because of the interest, I figured I’d just put it here in one place for everyone. Looking over it, I realized that the powerpoint doesn’t make a ton of sense on its own, so I included a 10-minute video of me presenting it.
I performed it a few weeks ago in New York at Mark Vigeant’s Internet Explorers event. My colleague Caroline is performing there tonight. If you’re in the area, you should go check it out! It’s a really fun time.
P.S. here’s some great traditional Tibetan art.
***All typos in this email are on purpose actually***
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