Weekend Links: Culture wars all the way down or algorithms all the way down?
Maybe both? Context Collapse #122
This issue: Changes at Steak-umm’s media literacy Twitter, Jeff Zucker backstory, making sense of NFTs and more.
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It’s been a long week. Your humble editor is tired, cranky and really needs some breakfast right now. And, honestly, he can’t cope with the inspirational internet of “you are magical,” “you are special,” and “bring light into your life.”
So instead, here are my sincere wishes that your coffee is strong and your doomscrolling is minimal. Now onto the links.
New Futures:
OFF-RAMP FOR MASKING IN SCHOOLS?: With the 2022-23 school year starting in just six months(!) and a new disease environment post-Omicron, more school districts are planning for transitions away from mandatory masking.
SAYING THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD ABOUT CHICAGO’S ECONOMY: Crain’s Chicago Business’ John Pletz looks at how violent crime is keeping out-of-town companies away from Chicago.
Advertising/Marketing/PR:
STEAK-UMM BLESS! PROCESSED MEAT TWITTER CHANGES AGENCIES: Meat brand Steak-umm’s Twitter, which regularly discussed very non-processed meat snack topics like media literacy and semiotics is switching agencies. Tombras is Steak-umm’s new agency of record and is taking over from Allebach Communications, who has run the Twitter feed for more than five years. (And for backstory on how Allebach pivoted to disinformation and media optics Steak-umm, the Washington Post’s Travis M. Andrews has the details.)
WHEN YOU SELL YOUR CONTENT SITE AND BUY IT BACK: Another meaty story (sorry, had to, please send your complaints to management) from Crain’s H. Lee Murphy on what happened when barbecue personality Meathead Goldwyn bought his barbecue site back from the company he sold it to. It’s a very Chicago story—hospitality industry lifer makes popular barbecue tips site, sells to food wholesaler who wants to build a supermarket brand around the site, food wholesaler then encounters challenges running an internet brand—but the trajectory? So damned familiar.
STREAMING VIDEO’S CHURN PROBLEM: Smart WSJ article from Benjamin Mullin and David Marcelis about why people subscribe to Disney+ and HBO Max only to cancel their subscriptions when their favorite show ends and then restart when there’s another show to watch. (I mean, we know why! People watch their money and oftentimes only want a streaming service for one or two shows! But streaming services want you to subscribe for a long time so that doesn’t work too well for them!)
BURGER KING, DOMINO’S CUTTING VALUE MENUS: As inflation and the supply chain crunch continue being a thing, fast food chains are cutting back on value menus. Money quote from Heather Haddon at the WSJ:
“I want the $9 omelet. I want the gourmet pancakes. I want a second round of coffee. I’m not here for a deal,” Denny’s Chief Executive John Miller told investors last month. The chain still has a pancake meal deal starting at $4, but no longer advertises a whole value menu of items between $2 and $8, Mr. Miller said at an industry conference.
HOW LINKTREE CONQUERED THE WEB: Michael Waters over at the Atlantic on what he calls the link-in-bio economy. Lots of details on how companies like Linktree created a specific product—landing pages for individuals or companies that look better on phones than laptops—that perfectly fit the contempoary TikTok/Instagram social media world.
Media:
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT JEFF ZUCKER RESIGNING: CNN head Jeff Zucker resigned earlier this week, which you probably heard about. I’m gonna raise absolutely zero eyebrows when I mention that there’s most likely much more to this story than we’ve heard. Anyway, the Times’ Michael M. Grynbaum and John Koblin have the on-the-record story, and Shawn McCreesh over at Intelligencer discusses the context and rumors around the resignation. TV News kremlinology gonna TV News kremlinology…
NYT CROSSWORD PUZZLE WARS: Hallie Lieberman at Kotaku writes about culture wars and the New York Times crossword:
Recently the panel flagged “pig,” because its clue was “gluttonous.” “One of the people…objected to that …because in their mind, it suggested fat shaming,” he said. “And I went to the dictionary…gluttonous is basically one who overeats. It’s not a matter of fat shaming,” he claimed.” It’s just what the word means.” But he took the word out so as not to offend readers.
NYT BUYS WORDLE: Not forgetting that the Times has made metric tons of money off of crossword puzzles (Seriously! It’s a huge revenue generator!), the New York Times company is purchasing Wordle. Congrats to Josh Wardle on a huge payday.
TIKTOK SHADOWBANS AND CHINESE GOVERNMENT CRITICISM: The Los Angeles Times’ Nate Jackson has a very interesting story on whether comedian Jiaoying Summers’ joke about her childhood and China’s one-child policy led to a TikTok shadowban.
VICE MEDIA SECRETLY ORGANIZED $20M SAUDI GOVERNMENT FESTIVAL: Smart reporting from the Guardian’s Jim Waterson on how Vice Media allegedly secretly organized the Azimuth musical festival for Saudi Arabia in 2020, despite publicly announcing they were pausing all Saudi work following Jamal Khashoggi’s death.
THE HISTORY OF MISLEADING PRODUCT PACKAGING: Loving Ernie Smith’s latest Tedium on the history of misleading packaging:
Let me give you a fairly recent example. Last year, a woman filed a lawsuit, seeking class action status, over branding on a common product that had been sold for decades that she felt was inaccurate? The product? Morningstar Farms veggie burgers. What was her problem? Simply put, she felt that the term “veggie” implied more vegetables than the burgers actually contained. The patties were largely made of wheat and corn syrup.
WHERE HAVE ALL THE MUSIC MAGAZINES GONE?: Aaron Gilbreath on what’s happened since music journalism’s post-2008 recession.
PINTEREST EXPANDING AR: Pinterest is adding augmented reality capabilities so you can see what furniture would look like in your room. Smart idea; they already have similar beauty capabilities.
JOE ROGAN HAS BETTER CARDS THAN SPOTIFY: Joe Pompeo over at Vanity Fair with an important piece of the discussion over whether Spotify should keep Joe Rogan or not: Spotify needs Rogan more than Rogan needs Spotify. (And, seperately, the piece has good gossip on rumored tensions between the Obamas and Spotify on their separate podcast deal.)
Tech:
ALGORITHMS ALL THE WAY DOWN: Ryan Broderick has a great piece called Facebook Made Its Own World And Now Its Stuck In It, which touches on Meta, the metaverse and lots of other things. A sample:
TL;DR is that Facebook’s video section is essentially run by a network of magicians and Vegas stage performers who hack the platform’s algorithm with surreal low-value content designed to distract users long enough to trigger an in-video advertisement and anger them enough to leave a comment.
CRISIS TEXT LINE SHARING DATA WITH FOR-PROFIT SPINOFF: Massive investigation from Alexandra S. Levine at Politico on the Crisis Text Line selling aggregated anonymized conversation data to a for-profit company that makes customer service software which the Crisis Text Line has an ownership stake in. Hmm.
GOVERNMENT AND DIGITAL IDENTITY PROBLEMS: Great piece by Amy Webb at Future Today Institute on the federal and many state governments using ID.me to verify peoples’ identities. (Disclosure: I interviewed ID.me CEO Blake Hall during my time at Fast Company.) Webb’s analysis is smart and focuses on the puzzle of what happens when something goes wrong with the government outsourcing aspects of citizen interaction (in this case, verifying that a person says they are who they say they are) and the main route of recourse goes through the private company rather than a government agency. You know… structural stuff. Anyway, good questions here.
THE NFT BIBLE: Devin Finzer at OpenSea wrote The Non-Fungible Token Bible: Everything you need to know about NFTs. This has been out for a while but I’ve had a bunch of smart people asking me about NFTs and this is the best intro I’ve seen published so far.
Misc.:
UNDERSTANDING UKRAINE: Melanie Podolyak with “Answering some of the ridiculous takes about Ukraine made by some poorly educated people: a megathread.”
WHY THE HATE ON POPULAR HISTORIANS: Chris Arnade starts a conversation on the awesomness of Barbara Tuchman. (And if you haven’t read A Distant Mirror, read it! Medieval Europe was both completely different from how you probably imagined it and very, very, very weird.)
RELIGION IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC: Really interesting Tyler Cowen blog post from a reader about religion in the south Pacific and how missionaries work on the ground.
NEW POLY STYRENE DOC!: New documentary on the late X-Ray Spex singer by Styrene’s daughter, Celeste Bell, “Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliche.” Excited to see this.
NEW JON RONSON PODCAST: Author Jon Ronson’s newest podcast, Things Fell Apart, is now live and focuses on the origins of the 2020’s culture wars.
GRANT MORRISON SUBSTACK!: And last but not least, comic book legend Grant Morrison is now publishing on Substack.