Blood makes the best clickbait

Today was a mixed bag, as far as personal opportunities were concerned. On ONE hand, you gained the chance to maybe one day vacation in Cuba, thus despoiling another Caribbean beach with your spring breaks and your bottomless daquiris. On the OTHER hand, you'll no longer have the chance to see The Interview in theaters -- not an enormous cultural loss, but apparently a great hit to free speech. Where does that leave us? I don't know, honestly...

1. Who sends those awful V*agra emails? (Equally pressing: Who answers them?) I always assumed the "p*lls" advertised in sp*m were, you know, just a hoax/money-grab. But it turns out that there are actual p*lls! Mostly from India ... and full of contaminants. [Words in the preceding blurb have been bleeped to stop this from hitting your sp*m folders -- which should work? Maybe?]

2. What the book of the future will be. Amazon is on a mission to remake the book, a process that's involved lots of sitting around and spying on how people read -- among, needless to say, plenty of other things.

3. How Yelp became a platform for creativity. As far as literary sandboxes go, Yelp's a pretty odd choice. But that hasn't stopped users from leaving haikus, novellas and cartoon strips amidst the drier, more typical reviews.

Feeling over-ambitious with the lights, someone is. (The lights are synced to the Star Wars theme.)

Pocketable: Blood makes the best clickbait! and other morsels from the land of the new new media. (6089 words/24 minutes)

Postscripts: PostSecret in the age of Whisper. "Shitpics" in the era of digital fidelity. The problem with commenters & "good white people." (Apparently, not the same things.) Are you addicted to the Internet? Do we think this is how Serial is gonna end? Today, in thematic end-of-year things I think it's maybe worth your time to read: the year in garbage, the year on Digg, and the year on Twitter as a lady.

Until tomorrow,
@caitlindewey

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