Your childhood on acid

Everything old is new again. EVERYTHING, I tell you. As if the self-consciously ironic return of canning and corsets wasn't enough, we now have "it" girls flaunting flip phones as fashion accessories and hipsters tapping out their novels on souped-up typewriters. (It's like the technological equivalent of the Disney sequel. Can't you guys think of something new, already?!) Before you know it, we'll all be leaving Twitter for IRC or something. Actually...

1. The rise -- and fall! -- and rise!! -- of the beloved '90s chatroom. In ye olde days of Internet yonder, anonymous chatrooms were like the windows through which we could stare into the Internet's black, infinite pits. They were surprising. They were fascinating. They were occasionally gross. And now, against all likelihood, they're kind of in vogue again.

2. Inside the world of online "sweepers." Wow wow wow, and I thought extreme couponing was crazy. There is, apparently, an entire Internet subculture devoted to an even more time-consuming art: entering thousands upon thousands of sweepstakes, for fun and occasional profit.

3. If you read one more thing about Gamergate ... it might as well be Arthur Chu's (yes, that Arthur Chu's) surprisingly reflective meditation on growing up geek.

Wtf is wrong with this cat.

Postscripts: Roomba art. Glass closets. "Your childhood on acid." How computers are learning to see the world like we do and when Halloween was legitimately scary. The Internet is awesome. The Amazons were real. UberX is the new ISIS, Fox News is the new jihadist and America's the new Nazi Germany. (L-O-L hyperbole.) Today, in unlikely Instagram follows: a beekeeper and a Wiccan meth addict. (QUEEN.)

Until tomorrow!
@caitlindewey

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