#706: Spreadsheets, sigma males and soft-edged juggernauts
I am deeply worried about Peloton
Longtime Links readers know I'm low-key obsessed with Peloton, which has become — through some combination of habit, lifestyle and climate — the only way I move my body most months. We’ve owned our Peloton bike since 2020, like absolutely everyone else, though even before the pandemic I'd given up on in-person spin classes. They were expensive and humid and inconveniently timed and not infrequently absurd. (I REFUSE to race other women to the locker room showers like a Hunger Games contestant fleeing the goddamn cornucopia.)
But it would appear that most people don’t share my lingering antipathy for in-person fitness. Peloton is tanking — has been for years — and no one in a long chain of successors seems able to right it. The latest sign of this corporate spin-out (heh) was last week's departure of instructor Kendall Toole, whom Peloton plucked from in-person-gym obscurity five years ago.
Like many of her peers, Toole has dabbled more and more obviously in non-Peloton side hustles in recent months: You can shop her outfits on LTK; you can find her in (incongruous?) advertisements for cybersecurity firms. Eight instructors have published books in the past year or so. The side hustles, even more than the executive shuffling or the free-falling stock price, feel like a terrible omen to me: a sign that even Peloton’s instructors are actively looking for their Plan B.
But there’s no Plan B where I’m concerned. Peloton absolutely ruined me for gyms. Also, it took months to pay off this stupid bike … and I’ll be damned if I walk away from THAT investment.
💌 Reminder!!: 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 them via Google Form by June 30.
If you read anything this weekend
“How CoComelon Captures Our Children’s Attention,” by Jia Tolentino for The New Yorker. Even for the childless, there’s something intriguing — and perhaps slightly pernicious — about the current wave of little kids’ entertainment. Unlike the wholesome PBS shows of yore, child YouTubers sink or swim based on how prolongedly they can capture a toddlers’ full and undivided attention. At CoComelon, the industry’s soft-edged juggernaught, that means deploying the types of attention hacks on kids that MrBeast first perfected on adults. Is that … bad? Or is that the world/attention economy we all swim in now?
“Silicon Valley’s Fanciest Stolen Bikes Are Getting Trafficked by One Mastermind in Jalisco, Mexico,” by Christopher Solomon for Wired. Now THIS is a genre of online vigilantism I can back: Bryan Hance, the creator of the nonprofit online registry Bike Index, uncovered a gigantic international bike theft network using Facebook, Instagram and Google Maps. I had absolutely no idea bike thieves had gotten so sophisticated — in one example, they cut a hole in the wall of a bike store warehouse; in another, they took an entire bike rack and everything on it from a high-end apartment’s storage room — though I could’ve guessed that U.S. law enforcement would be pretty underwhelming on the follow-through. Incidentally, my beloved bike cost … $300? And I will never upgrade to anything that might further tempt these mastermind poachers.
“Spreadsheet Superstars,” by David Pierce for The Verge. I’ve been curious about competitive Excel for a while, and was waiting for someone to write the big longform take-out on the in-person championships. Alas, it turns out that cultural niches populated entirely by actuaries and accountants are actually, maybe predictably … kind of tedious!
“I Know What the Apple Vision Pro Is For,” by Andrew Leland for New York. Welp, I’ve been successfully and thoroughly shamed for my feelings of derision toward the Apple Vision Pro: the “what” referenced so tantalizingly in this headline refers to the headset’s accessibility features. This feels like one area — the only area? — where consumer technology is actually living up to its promise of improving users’ daily experiences. Lots of thought-provoking anecdotes and examples in this.
“The Sad, Stupid Rise of the Sigma Male,” by Steve Rose for The Guardian. I am literally speechless after watching the year-old DeSantis ad referenced in this story; had I not clicked from a news site, I wouldn’t believe it was real. Luckily for us all, the apparent mainstreaming of the “sigma male” is true in meme only: this manosphere fantasy of the successful, woman-hating, lone-wolf type is more a joke than a sincere identity.
In case you missed it
The most-clicked link from last Saturday’s edition was this masterful and surprising investigation of the misinformation researcher Joan Donovan.
On Wednesday, after many hours of reading and fierce internal debate, I picked out the 13 articles from the past 20 years that best explain how online dating has changed. Alas, I only just saw the news that the city of Tokyo is launching a government-run dating app. Feel like that might’ve merited inclusion.
Postscripts
This week, in novel uses for the English language: slop, bot, bullshit and brainrot. Go ahead and doomscroll before bed. “TikTok for Biden” is now, er … not. The murder-suicide that rocked astrology Twitter. The complicated legacy of real-time crime accounts. I truly can’t believe that ANYONE thinks anonymous teens apps are a good idea now.
The death of the dining room and content moderation. The puzzling return of the travel agent. I would absolutely love to join a dinner party club; Gen Z’s right about this. Why political insiders still adore X, which by all accounts just keeps getting worse. “Culture war stuff” still plays pretty well for Facebook’s fake news entrepreneurs. TikTok’s latest virality hacks. Wikipedia for Gen Z. Please, for the sake of these poor overworked people, stop filming Chipotle employees. The 28-year-old influencer pushing France to the right. Onion spinoff Clickhole just turned 10. Last but not least, per computer modeling: the single best way to cut an onion.
Below the paywall you’ll also find:
Unlocked links from the New York Times, Washington Post and Atlantic
An Instagram Reel that made me laugh so hard my mascara ran
A preview of a future (Peloton-themed!) edition
My latest voyeuristic subreddit obsession
Until next week! Warmest virtual regards,
Caitlin
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