#717: 'Garlicky' recipes and 9/11 memes

Plus two unintended beneficiaries of the search for a more human internet

Hi, hello!, and happy weekend. You’re reading the Saturday edition of Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends: a lovingly curated collection of brand-new writing on internet culture and technology, culled from the hundreds of RSS feeds I read each week for this ~express~ purpose.

A reminder: I’m able to write this newsletter twice a week thanks to my generous (and *beloved*) paid subscribers. Your support gives me the financial — but also, emotional? spiritual??? — security to keep reading and writing deeply about life online. I’m not exactly getting rich off Substack, but this newsletter is a big part of how I pay my bills. So if a full month of Links gives you as much joy as ≈1.4 items from the Target “dollar” section (truly, inflation has hit those knickknacks hard) … please consider upgrading your subscription. And thanks!

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If you read anything this weekend

“9/11 Used to Be Off Limits. Now Gen Z Has Turned It Into a Meme,” by David Mack for Rolling Stone. I am definitely old enough to take offense at the *astounding* proliferation of 9/11 memes, but this smart feature was pretty illuminating for me. It was my introduction to the “benign violation theory” — an academic framework that suggests the best jokes violate social norms while staying more-or-less harmless. It also explains the social values embedded in 9/11 memes (irony, cynicism, a certain undifferentiated dark humor) in terms that even Olds can perhaps understand … even if we’re not exactly lolling along with these shitposting hooligans.

“When Did All the Recipes Get ‘Garlicky’?” by Jaya Saxena for Eater. Ignore the fact that this headline can arguably be answered in two words. (Alison Roman surely did more for made-up adjectives than any writer since Dr. Seuss.) Saxena is really interested in a larger shift in recipe names, from the formal, restaurant-inflected titles of the early 2010s to the casual, folksy, garlicky names that now dominate food blogs and magazine pages. Much of that change relates to the mainstreaming of food and cooking culture, which started with the Food Network in the 1990s. But it also has a lot to do with the demands and limitations of online media, where personality often trumps authority and clickiness is always key.

“How ‘Am I the Asshole?’ Ate the Internet,” by Aja Romano for Vox. Reddit’s AITA — a forum where users trade anonymous (and largely made-up?) stories of interpersonal woe — has ballooned to more than 20 million users in the past year and spawned dozens of spin-offs, podcasts, media franchises and YouTube channels. The appeal of AITA is self-evident, I think: There are few social behaviors more hardwired than trading, and judging, other people’s stories. But maybe that behavior is especially timely now, in an era when even Google’s search algorithms are primed to seek out more human content.

“The Desperation of the Instagram Photo Dump,” by Kyle Chayka for The New Yorker. I tend to agree with

Kyle Chayka

’s analysis on almost everything, but this piece is the odd (intriguing??) exception. He argues that 10- or 20-photo carousels are essentially an Instagram engagement hack, and that people post them because they’re “desperate” for algorithmic attention. This may be true for some users, but I suspect that many of the people posting month-end photo dumps — especially people in their 30s and 40s — actually feel desperate to opt out of the pressure to post more frequently. *I* like monthly photo dumps not because I crave engagement, but because I’m seeking to engage with IG less. (Would be curious what the other photo-dumpers in the audience make of this!)

“The Most Sought-After Travel Guide Is a Google Doc,” by Kate Lindsay for Thrillist. As a long-time creator and consumer of travel Google Docs — my first effort dates to 2013 (!) — I was glad to see them get their due here, from Embedded’s Kate Lindsay. To me, the popularity of these guides says a lot about the state of both travel media and maybe the entirety of the mainstream web (crowded, over-commoditized, influenced and affiliate-linked to the point of uselessness) and the ingenuity people employ to get around all that. For more on this general theme, check out

Elan Ullendorff

’s excellent “The Doc Web.”

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In case you missed it

The most-clicked link from last Saturday’s edition was this essay on the absurdity of corporate work — specifically in the context of Y2K preparedness, but also arguably in general! As an aside, I bet Jason that the most-clicked link would be the one to the photos of Pavel Durov’s washboard abs. Y’all are more discerning than I thought. I badly lost that bet.

#716: Fake computer jobs and ripped CEOs

On Wednesday, I wrote about the conclusion of Celebrity Number Six, a delightful and low-stakes internet mystery that nonetheless tells us quite a lot about the power of crowdsourced investigating. FYI, the version that hit your inboxes unfortunately and embarassingly misstated Kurt Luther’s name. Thank you to all the Gen X men who emailed me about the ‘80s MTV VJ. 😅

Celebrity Number Six and the unreal power of crowdsourced investigations

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Postscripts

Britcore. Rage bait. Temu buyer beware. TikTok’s psychopaths and dating diarists. Do you see the same blue as everyone else? On the “obsessive, even addictive” attraction of streaks. These are indeed the very worst cat memes I have ever seen.

Analog tech as “power move.” Against beauty TikTok’s “morning shed.” 10 writers contemplate the group chat. Can Wikipedia stay neutral in this election? Performative hydration is still out of control. “Feral 25-year-olds” run Kamala’s social team. Gen Z doesn’t “Google” stuff anymore. A new development in grief tech replicates handwriting. Are emoji getting too specific? Are podcasts getting too lengthy? Last, but not at all least: “When ‘everything is at our fingertips’ … I think that we’re left feeling incomplete.”

BELOW the paywall you’ll also find:

• Unlocked links from the The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic

• A low-stakes competition show, the best brand of tinned fish and other reading recommendations

That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards,

Caitlin