KIDS these days, amirite?

What is reality these days, if not the thing with the most retweets? First everyone fell for that faux-Bundy account. Now we can't even trust our goddamn rat memes! Per this ~investigation~ by Gothamist, one or more viral rats of the past year were trained and filmed as performance art. I'm not entirely sure what's artistic about all this ... but those rats/their trainers must be pretty smart!

1. How the Internet's changing the way we read. There's been much ado about digital text and its impact on our brains. We're becoming a world of mindless skimmers, many critics claim. But the reality may be more complex: we're not dumber, just -- different! It turns out you can't blame evvvverything on the Internet.

2. Actually Facebook is still evil, thanks. Here's a disheartening and well-argued counterpoint to that big News Feed story from Slate: The algorithm might be human-driven, but those humans aren't programming it for your sake.

3. Life with a flip phone in 2016. (Don't tell anyone, but this is pretty much my lifelong dream.) No tweets! No pings! No buzzes! No notes, photos or maps! On second thought, maybe the smartphone is still where it's at.)

KIDS these days, amirite?

Postscripts: The three countries that won't get Netflix. The 28 best tweets. Thank me later, but giantess porn's a thing, apparently. How to declutter your digital life. Why Oculus Rift seems so real. Speaking of, Puppy Bowl in VR sounds both adorable and surreal. Things that suck: Drynuary, people ruining museums with their dumb selfies. Correction to every newsletter ever: "The Internet" can't actually [verb] anything.

See ya tomorrow!
@caitlindewey

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