Apocalypse Now?
How a podcast about a meme from 2018 may have predicted the end of the world
Starting it off with something wholesome: TEETH
Earlier this week I was talking to Trevor about how much I love White Rice’s bottom teeth. They’re so small! They look less like teeth and more like pale, jagged gums. (I understand that sounds repulsive, but what can I say, I’m a mother!) Not 5 hours later he sent me a link to a subreddit called Teefies. Note! This subreddit is strictly cats-only. According to the mods, any dog teeth can be posted in r/toofers.
Also - SQUASH. What a perfect cat name.
Unfortunately I will now talk about fashion
Well, less fashion and more fashion photos. Specifically, these two portraits of Kamala Harris taken by Tyler Mitchell for Vogue:
See how one looks way better than the other? Basically the tea is that Kamala’s team approved the photo on the left for print. But since no one tells Anna Wintour what to do, the cover she went with is the one on the right, and people online are in an uproar because, well, it’s clearly worse. Some are taking this as an unfortunate continuation of Vogue’s habit of portraying women of color in a less-than-flattering light - I’m looking at you Annie Leibovitz.
Also, someone at Vogue decided to let Harris style herself. I think her team was likely trying to avoid the backlash AOC got for wearing nice clothes on the cover of Vanity Fair? It was clearly a mistake.
Here’s an article from the NYTimes about the controversy.
Parler got hacked and it’s so funny
Months ago when Alex Jones started bitching about being demonetized for saying terrible things about vulnerable groups of people, I was vaguely aware of a number of alt-right friendly sites popping up. Parler was one of them. If you’ve never heard of it, basically it is an alternative Twitter platform for people who find Twitter’s user policies to be too restrictive on their right to be racist online. Also its funded by Republican dark money.
Anyways, because it was built super fast by a bunch of conservative dorks, it wasn’t as advanced as Twitter in terms of protecting user privacy. I mean, everything you uploaded to Parler, like say videos of you breaking into the capital, was geo-tagged with your coordinates, and saved permanently on a server weather you deleted it or not. So basically, when Parler got hacked 7TB of everything ever uploaded to the site was available with location information on exactly what cabin in the woods it was uploaded from. Details about the hack here.
Basically the impetus behind this newsletter
Apocalypse Soon
I was driving up to start a new job in Wilmington on Monday, and I was re-listening to one of my favorite episodes of my favorite podcast: Reply All. The episode is called “Apocalypse Soon,” it’s from 2018, and all it is, is a breakdown of what this meme means:
The podcast explores each panel and goes down the internet K-hole needed to understand it. The hosts posit that the OP meant that the arrival of these memes signifies the end of the world.
I’ve listened to this episode 5 or so times, because it really is that funny, but this week driving in the rural south amidst a coup incited by the sitting president, a terrifying and deadly pandemic, and my dangerously low bank account balance, I was hit with an upsetting thought: maybe the OP was right.
You’re welcome for this one:
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Thanks for reading, I hope this made you laugh. In some personal news: I’m currently in Wilmington, NC buying for the Set Dec department on a FOX show called “This Country.” It’s super fun but I miss my boyfriend and my cat!