Category: Social Media

Sunday Morning Reading

Back home after a two-week road trip supporting my wife teaching her summer acting camp. Needless to say we’re pooped. The kids were amazing. Regardless, here’s some Sunday Morning Reading to share.


Movies are big news this summer because of a couple of big original ones (Barbie and Oppenheimer), but also because the unions for writers and actors are on strike. James Surowiecki in The Atlantic lands a take on the strike and says Netflix opened the door for this upheaval in A Strike Scripted by Netflix. 

One of my favorite writers I’ve recentlly discovered, Natasha MH, pens an incredible review of Barbie entitled The One About Barbie. 

And while I’m raving about Natasha MH, take a look at this incredible piece of hers, The Need to Write and The Will to Heal From Our Traumatic Experiences. Excellent.

And since it’s Sunday, I think this piece by Jake Meador called The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church is a worthy read. I’m not so sure it’s so misunderstood. 

George Dillard in Rome Magazine tackles the orange guy racking up indictments like bowling pins in Trump’s Defense: I’m a Stupid Liar. 

I rarely link to pieces I find ridiculous in Sunday Morning Reading. But this one is rarely ridiculous in how the logic turns in on itself and defeats the entire point. David Brooks takes on the what’s happening in American politics and wonders What If We’re The Bad Guys Here?  Think of it as comedy.

And to close out this week, here’s an excellent piece by Elizabeth Lopatto in The Verge, What Would The Internet Of People Look Like Now? Hits to how we got to where we are today in this crazy thing called “online.”

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.

Sunday Morning Reading

A few loose threads in this edition of Sunday Morning Reading. Yes, that’s a bad attempt at headlining what’s going on in the social media universe after the release of Threads by Meta. But hey, if you’re interested there’s also pieces on our inevitable extinction driven by our pursuits of pleasure along with a piece of how we can possibly slow down aging.

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We seem to want everything to replace everything else when something new happens. Watts Martin takes on Threads vs Mastodon in You’re So Vain, You Probably Think This App Is About You: On Meta and Mastodon. 

Scott Galloway also takes on the Threads thing in Threadzilla. Good read for context and what’s going on in the moment.

And while not exactly Threads related but certainly Threads adjacent, David French has an excellent piece about how Twitter Shows, Again, the Failure of the New Right’s Theory of Power.

And to move away from Threads, did you know The Pursuit of Pleasure Could Doom All Intelligent Life To A Bllissful Extinction?

But not to worry about extinction. Go ahead and pursue pleasure. Madeline Fitzgerald tells us that Harvard Researchers Claim They’ve Found the Chemical Cocktail That Reverses Aging.

And back on the Artificial Intelligence beat, here’s a bit from Benji Edwards on Why AI Detectors Think The US Constitution Was Written By AI.

If you’re interseted in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.

Sunday Morning Reading

On Lake Time this weekend so a smaller edition of Sunday Morning Reading to share. 

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First up are two articles about the recent launch of Threads and the continued demise of Twitter. It’s all a bit nuts in the social media-verse. But to be honest, it’s also all a bit fun. Too early to tell how this shakes out. 

First up Taylor Lorenz talks about How Twitter Lost It’s Place As The Global Town Square. Good piece. I’m not a fan of the “global town square” analogy. It’s a clever bit of spin. Nothing more.

Eugene Wei offers a terrffic long read on this whole thing entitled How to Blow Up a Timeline.Highly recommended reading.

And a depressing piece if you’re of the theatre or enjoy the theatre, but it is where we are. Peter Marks takes on the challenging moment many theatres find themselves in currently in Theater Is In Freefall, And The Pandemic Isn’t The Only Thing to Blame.

If you’re interseted in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.

And if you’re interested you can find me on Threads here.

Meta Meets the Moment with Threads. (For the Moment)

You gotta hand it to that huckster Zuckerberg. He and his Meta team have certainly met the moment with the release of his Twitter killer, Threads. It’s not that the app is all that great in this version 1. (More on that later.) But Zuck pushed this thing out with such gusto and killer timing that he was able to eaisly take advantage of Elon Musk’s baffling and ballooning buffoonery. When billionaires go for each other’s throats apparently they use guillotines.

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Sure, these social media wars aren’t over yet. Far from it. But these wounds are deep. The number of signups on Threads keeps rising so fast I won’t even hazard a guess at how many millions there have been for fear of the number being old news before I finish writing this. And on it goes.

And on it will go. I don’t think we’ve ever seen such an underpantsing as Zuck put on Musk. He’s taking advantage of someone who has made himself such a detestable target, that Zuckerberg, not all that well liked himself, is momentarily being thought of as the conqueror Elon and his detestables dreamed of being. It’s deliciously funny. But it is also frightening when you take a moment and think about it.

Again, there’s no guarantee Threads will carry this moment’s momentum into something resembling what Twitter was before Musk took MAGA torches to it. And while in this really crazy, and what seems historic, rush there seems to be an appetite for this kind of “everybody into the pool” replacement. That’s guaranteed to fade once ads, bots, spammers, etc… inevitably get their chance to piss in the pool. That’s gonna happen.

The Threads team also needs to move quickly to address some serious missing pieces for a social media app in this day and age. There’s nothing that speaks to accessibility in the app yet. There’s no web access from a browser forcing everyone to use it on their phones. Hashtags aren’t there yet. Forget searching. Or sending direct messages. These are table stakes in the social media game. Lots of iPad users are complaining that there isn’t an iPad app. Don’t hold your breath on that one. This thing is connected to your social network via Instagram and there’s still no appetite for an iPad app from Instagram yet in what seems like another front in the Billionaires Battles, this one between Meta and Apple.

Just about everyone is screaming to only have their feed show only folks they are following. Same here. But, folks, let’s get real. These companies need to push all sorts of stuff into your eyeballs in order to make bigger bank. We lived through this with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the rest. We will probably see some soft of attempt at appeasement here, but it’s not going to last. Don’t kid yourself.

There’s also talk of Meta doing the federated thing with Threads. That’s got pros and cons and lots of consternation stirred up among those who see the beneift of protocols like Activity Pub in the Fediverse. (If you have no idea what that means, don’t worry. Most don’t.) I have my doubts things will go this way. But if it does, there’s going to all sorts of noise made on places like Mastodon and beyond.

So this story has offered a slam bang opening number and for a variety of reasons appears to be sucking many in to see what’s next while it sucks ever more life out of Elon’s Twitter. There’s more to come and more to know when it does. About the only thing we know in this moment is things are changing. But they always are. Score this moment for Meta. Enjoy the ride while we watch it play out.

Oh, and you can find me on Threads at https://www.threads.net/@warnercrocker