God bless the olds!
Once upon a time, in a land not-far away, cellphones were tethered to walls like kids to leashes. Voicemails arrived via "answering machines" that people actually ... answered. (Weird!) And no one knew the singular joy of placing a call from the bathroom or bus stop, because such calls could simply ~not exist~. Such was the tyranny of landlines, an obsolete technology I thought everyone but my immediate family members had abandoned. Not so! Per a new study by the CDC, six in 10 U.S. homes still use the damn things. God bless the olds! Onward:
1. "The nose is associated with conventionality," and other lessons from an emoji academic. Olds use :-). Youngs use :). In fact, emoticon-use varies by geography, age, gender, and social class -- just like dialect.
2. Explaining the evolution of hate-speech on Reddit. Gay slurs are way down since 2012 -- but nobody knows for sure why. Is it because the "meme" got old? Is it because users started policing themselves? In either case, it could potentially be a model for others to cut abuse on their platforms.
3. Once he was prom king; now he's just some dude on Instagram. "After a decade of relative silence ... Instagram was a communal rebirth. All of us together again, grown up and uncool, struggling with hashtags and filters and attempts to capture the glory of our sunsets in a single digital frame."
Goats are the new cats (and pigs), you guys.
Postscripts: Selfies Anonymous. Ke$ha's kat kult. Wines of Westeros and cupcakery crumbles. How to be a pro triangle player in 17 easy steps and how to get paid to watch Netflix in ... one. Four useless apps and 12 dumb Kickstarters. Can you tell the difference between T.S. Eliot and rap? Is Paramore really the band that Twitter needs? Today, in dubious vending innovations: robotic roti, self-serve beer, calorie-counting microwaves. (Who asked for these things? Honestly.)
Until tomorrow!@caitlindewey
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