**~!Emoji party!~**

Everyone's favorite anonymous app was in the news today, giving me the rare excuse to browse its horrors at some length. Behold, the scourge of the modern university ...

... and the FUTURE OF AMERICA, ty teens.

1. We know more about everything, except other people. Americans agree the Internet makes them better-informed, but all topics aren't equal. Our phones help us with news and pop culture; they help us keep up with our friends. But our neighbors? Weirdly, the Web has forgot them.

2. How Instagram captions became the new blogging. With its "uncomplicated design and tightly curated feed," the app just feels like a diary.

3. Will gladly cosign this well-deserved screed against the plague that is "fauxmoji." They're tiny, commercialized illustrations -- they are NOT true emoji.

bei bei's first steps <3 <3 (link)

Postscripts: **~!Emoji party!~**. Mental maps. Snail mail for email and music for cats. The Amazing Race: SOCIAL MEDIA EDITION. What Yelp can tell us about gentrification. Where's your Seamless really coming from? An argument for why adoption crowdfunding is dumb. Today, in takedowns of Internet things: dating-site algorithms don't really work and we're still really far from diverse emoji.

See ya tomorrow,
@caitlindewey

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