Far-out

A lot of you are reporters so you know this already, but you often end up sending lots of Facebook friend-requests during breaking news events and tragedies. As of this week, I have a lot of friends in Orlando. It's been chilling to watch their grief tick through my timeline as a series of Facebook posts.

If you haven't yet, you should check out these profiles of the victims that the Wall Street Journal did. And if you're not registered to vote in November, please consider it. That's all I'll say on these subjects -- onward to happier links! But man I just can't believe we've suffered another one of these shootings...

1. If the Internet is a factory farm, then Medium is its Whole Foods: an imperfect effort to fix the problem and profit from it, too. Ev Williams, Medium's founder, insists that he's an activist for the open Web. But if even our most "open" spaces sit on centralized, corporate servers ... isn't the concept pretty much dead?

2. For hundreds of millions of people, "the Internet" is WeChat. It's like Facebook, Paypal, Uber, Amazon and Tinder, all combined in a single app. In other words, WeChat is basically everything Ev Williams says he's fighting. But if you download WeChat, you might find that China's favorite social network is actually kinda exciting.

3. Do you guys remember Lonelygirl15? That was like, the original weird viral fiction, wayyy before 9M9H9E9 was a thing. It's been 10 years since the YouTube series first filmed, and its creators are reflecting on what they made. (Also, the odds that the mid-aught's best web series could become a for-real TV show one day.)

4. Has Tumblr, once beloved by teens everywhere, finally passed its peak? The company's dealing with serious internal drama, and just dropped off the list of top 100 apps last week. Most people seem to blame Yahoo, which bought the blogging platform in 2013. Personally I'm just worried where I'm gonna get my memes.

5. If you read ONE LAST THING about the Gawker/Thiel showdown, I'd probably make it this: It's a fascinating essay on how Thiel's vendetta fits into a larger Silicon Valley savior narrative.

>> You can download these links (and several others!) as a free ebook here.

but i wants it (link)

Postscripts: Phones > people. Video < text. Apple Woman > Apple Man, who's obnoxiously polished. Why comedians love Uber and how the first Snapchat film was made. The podcast so boring that its listeners literally cannot stay awake. Smash Mouth's Twitter is endearingly pathetic. Kanye West's video game is pretty far-out. Old people remain the best thing on the Internet, hands-down. "Phones lit up across time zones -- on nightstands, under pillows, in pockets." Maybe it's not a "right," but there is something kind in letting the Internet forget.

An analysis of Trump's Twitter followers and the history of this summer's so-called "sleeper meme." The challenge of getting computers to understand GIFs and emoji. How YouTube videos help sufferers cope with mental illness. How a single tweet could be worth more $$ than Twitter is. Six out of 10 people who share this link will -- sigh, *head-desk* -- never read it. Honest email signature quotes. The Colombian hit man turned YouTube czar. If I make a career change, I think it'll be to Internet star.

Until next week!
@caitlindewey

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