#705: Internet byways and useful fictions

The Tiny Awards are back and I'm literally here for them

An ode to armadillos, a search engine for old books, an anonymous public voicemail box: These are among the deeply random birthday links I’ve sent to paid subscribers since the newsletter relaunched.

I *love* sending these birthday links. I love birthdays; I love tacky e-cards. But most of all, I love plucking weird, random sites from the internet’s byways and hoarding them in OneTab for special occasions.

This is also, incidentally, why I was so psyched when Matt and Kris asked me to help judge the Tiny Awards this year. More fodder for the birthday links! I thought. Also: More proof that the fun/strange/zany web of my fast-retreating childhood has not entirely and irrevocably disappeared!!!

The Tiny Awards celebrate independent, noncommercial, whimsical web projects; you can read more — and submit your site! — here. And rest assured that I’ll report back on the winning site later this year. :)

💌 Speaking of weird and whimsical: I’m collecting long-forgotten personal emails for a project to run later this summer. I’ve gotten lots of wonderful messages so far but am still taking submissions. Learn more about that project here and forward your emails to linksiwouldgchatyou@gmail.com OR submit it via this Google Form by June 30.

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If you read anything this weekend

“The Distortions of Joan Donovan,” by Stephanie M. Lee for The Chronicle of Education. Joan Donovan is perhaps the world’s best-known expert on misinformation. She is also, apparently and ironically, a skilled propagator of her own useful fictions. This dual profile/investigation — a provestigation, mayhaps? — manages to untangle the messy academic back-and-forth while *also* capturing something fragile and elusive and profoundly sad about the stories we tell ourselves.

“Dancing in the Name of the Lord,” by Gabrielle Bluestone for The Cut. I missed this bonkers, made-for-TV expose when it first published in 2022 … but since it has indeed become a docuseries, I feel licensed to belatedly share it with you. The story concerns 7M Films, a cult-like L.A. dance troupe that has rocketed its members to social media stardom … while allegedly extorting them out of their earnings and cutting them off from friends and relatives. Obviously, this sent me down a deep and well-choreographed rabbit hole from which I have not yet entirely emerged. The Netflix documentary is now going to the top of our to-watch queue (!).

Three reads on how AI is junkifying journalism. What’s the first word that comes to mind when you hear the phrase “AI and journalism”? I gave a talk at the Poynter Institute last week and kicked things off with that question. A plurality of people gave me “scary.” “Threat” and “anxiety” also came up. (“No one’s excited?” I asked, halfheartedly, as one obliging participant dropped “exciting” into the Slido.)

SCARY

I can’t really argue with this word cloud — the fear and anxiety are warranted. And not merely because the new titans of tech have plundered journalists’ work and starved their sites of traffic — increasingly, a predictable class of AI-enabled scammers are looking to cash in on automated content. In The New York Times last week, Kashmir Hill and Tiffany Hsu report on the “AI chop shop” that successfully fooled Google News and MSN. In Nieman Lab, Neel Dhanesha profiles the network of hyperlocal “news” sites that publish AI-generated aggregations by AI-generated journalists. And in Reuters, James Pearson finds that NewsBreak — the single most-downloaded news app in the U.S. — has invented stories whole cloth with artificial intelligence. Yeah yeah I get it … no one’s excited!!

“What Doge Taught Me About the Internet,” by Kyle Chayka for The New Yorker. A nice little recollection of Kabosu, a.k.a. Doge, which also doubles as a tidy distillation of the past decade in digital culture: “Doge projected a sense of hopeful naivete about the internet which has lately disappeared.” Indeed. (Also: Did you realize Doge was female?? Much sexism/surprise for me.)

“Normcore Was Always a Misunderstood Fantasy,” by

Delia Cai

for Ssense. If you want to understand the core-ification of life online (cottagecore, barbiecore, corecore, etc.) … you have to go back to the trend forecast that kicked off the movement.

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In case you missed it

The most-clicked link from last Saturday’s round-up was this Washington Post interactive on what AI thinks “beauty” looks like (young, white, poreless, thin).

#704: Corporate cringe and ex-texts

On Wednesday I interviewed Olivia Muenter, author of the thriller Such a Bad Influence. Links reader Em also pointed me to another recent novel in this vein: Onyi Nwabineli’s Allow Me to Introduce Myself.

In other news, a fascinating essay in Mother Jones this week considered the mainstreaming of QAnon. It echoed some themes we covered here in March re: the widespread, baseless panic about child traffickers.

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Postscripts

“Kafka is my boyfriend.” How MSCHF gets it done. Why conservatives are coming for Ms. Rachel and when internet came to the Amazon. How AI is improving weather forecasts. The AI forgers flooding Etsy with fake Morris prints. Personally I’d be skeptical of anyone selling “solutions” to loneliness.

Meet the teenager streaming three-fourths of his life and the internet’s foremost food critic. Why everyone uses QWERTY keyboards. How TikTok influences politics. Two artists claim credit for “eyes on Rafah.” Tens of thousands of artists are fleeing Instagram. Facebook’s big plan to win back ~the youth~ is basically marketplace and events. Deepfake laws account for only half of their victims. The world’s “most beautiful” AI are what you’d expect. Last but not least, getting worried that the backlash to girlbossing is … either catatonic or regressive.

Unlocked links and a subscriber poll are under the paywall. To everyone else: Until next week! Warmest virtual regards,

Caitlin