IT'S ALIVE!

Whenever I watch Law & Order SVU, I find myself asking the same question: What kind of deranged psychopath has this much ... imagination?! The plot lines are so dark, and the crimes so far-fetched, that you gotta wonder about these people. Then something like the Marina Joyce YouTube conspiracy comes up, and you realize that everyone's a little crazy/evil.

IT'S ALIVE!!! (link)

1. Could virtual reality make viewers care more about refugees? One of the most common claims re: VR is that it increases empathy. One start-up is filming in Lesbos, Greece, attempting to do just that. But the results so far aren't changing hearts/minds -- they're "touristic and abstract."

2. One in two teens are on this app, and you've probably never heard of it. Or if you have, it's safe to say, you're probably less than enthusiastic. Musical.ly's 90 million users post short clips of themselves lip-syncing hip-hop tracks. It's silly, it's pointless, it's very pre-teen -- and some kids have made bb careers from that.

3. Speaking of babies, why do apps market to us as if we were? Yelp uses cartoon hamsters throughout its mobile app; Seamless behaves like a "cool babysitter." One reason for all the enforced cuteness may be that it makes these companies seem deceptively nice and good. Which means you're more likely to give them data or use them to order food.

4. The casual cruelty of Uber passengers. They fart; they throw up; they ignore their drivers. It's always striking to me how people treat other people when they're assigned a hierarchy through an app. My fiance and I dog-sit through an Uber-like service, and I'm *ceaselessly amazed* by the way some people act.

5. How a computer saved a young girl from a cult. Shyama Rose learned to hack, and hacking showed her that she had to get out.

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Postscripts: Grindr killed gay nightlife. Instagram killed Vine. But we'll always have the iPod, a throwback to a better time. Speaking of: Remember when Yahoo was cool and adults lived in actual homes? When no one said "garbage" all the damn time? Or meditated through their smartphones? Don't feed the trolls, straight-up starve them: a mantra for the Twitter age. Every time someone references HRC's emails, I'm pointing them to this essay.

Meet the mom who moderates her daughter's Twitch chat and the YouTuber who got on Game of Thrones. AT LAST: We may have reached Peak Pokemon Go. The big business of celebrity pets and the political erotica of 2016. What photos of lynchings can teach us about modern police livestreams. 10 ways to survive the next three months on the web; 7 themed playlists Spotify should add. There's actually no collusion between T-Swift and Instagram. How Facebook conquered the birthday and how it knows your face. Last but not least: Why do we still use words like "rewind" and "mix tapes"?

Until next week!
@caitlindewey

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