Can u not

The week between Christmas and New Year's is like the lame duck session of non-political life: Why even bother showing up this week, really, when you're taking off New Year's anyway? This was apparently the feeling at Twitter HQ last night, where engineers took a grievously long time to fix a bug that kicked many users off the network. I understand, Twitter engineers. I'm feeling like a certain overfed puppy today.

... But OKAY, okay, let's pull ourselves from the malaise and check out some links!

1. This muggle's plans for media will ~forever haunt~ your dreams. Emerson Spartz built MuggleNet -- still *the* website for Harry Potter fans -- when he was just a kid in middle school. Now 27, the Web entrepreneur has turned his attention to "changing the world" through cheesy, hyperbolic clickbait ... for better or worse.

2. This was the year of the anti-Facebook. From Ello to emotional contagion, the teen exodus to the tragic "year in review," 2014 has not been a kind year to Zuckerberg & company.

3. How the outrage machine overcame basic human decency. Forget what Slate told you: Internet outrage is no new thing. It's ability to ruin lives and careers, on the other hand, is a far more recent development.

♪ ♫ ♩ Everybody wants to be a cat. ♪ ♫ ♩

Postscripts: Human Googles. Dads with selfie sticks. What your dog does when you leave for the day. Where to go for bougie edibles and how your phone "reshapes" your brain. Today, in Internet patois: can u not, <3, brands saying bae. The dream of WALL-E is alive in China. WWJD: What would Jesus drink? These are the worst tweets of 2014. (Just kidding! They were all bad, I think.)

See you tomorrow!
@caitlindewey

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