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Gettr Is Here? Gettr Is Over? What Is Gettr lol

GETTR is a new right-wing social network that was launched this week by Jason Miller, a former spokesperson for Trump. POLITCO had the scoop on the app this week. What is it? Well, it’s like Parler and Gab, a online safe space for conservatives to share Daily Mail articles and talk to porn bots.

There was apparently some confusion following GETTR’s launch about whether or not former President Trump would join the site. All of these right-wing social networks are trying to become the digital hub for Trump now that he’s barred from Twitter and Facebook. This is not unlike how Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax are all trying to become Trump TV, to a certain extent.

Senior White House correspondent for Bloomberg Jennifer Jacobs broke the news yesterday that not only will Trump not be joining GETTR, he has plans to start his own platform. Sure, bud. While GETTR doesn’t have Trump as a user, according to Recode, it is full of racist content. Even funnier, according to Mother Jones, it’s also completely stuffed to brim with hentai. Weird how that keeps happening.

Oh, and, according to @th3j35t3r, GETTR’s top user, one included in promotional images for the app, is a stock photo.

Trump did sign up for Rumble this week, though. Rumble is a right-wing video platform. Though, its top video this morning was “Bulldog chills out hard while watching TV”. Will be interesting to see if Trump can outperform the chill bulldog.

According to Slate, Andrew Torba, the Christian fundamentalist founder of Gab that even other hardcore conservatives hate, has been having a meltdown over the Trump’s Rumble signup. Torba has been simping for a Trump Gab account for years. Torba and other Gab users spent the week publicly theorizing if Trump’s Rumble account is linked to some kind of Jewish conspiracy.

I’ve written this a few times in Garbage Day, but it’s worth repeating: conservative-only social networks don’t work. Yes, they quickly fill up with nazis and anime porn, but they lack the one thing that Twitter, in particular, gives them — immediate access to liberals and members of the media to cyberbully. More than that, there’s no sense of domination on a site like Gab or GETTR. In fact, right-wing users are so desperate to carry out violence against others that, when they were all siloed together on Parler, they spent months organizing an irl coup.

I’m also beginning to wonder if all these apps are their own grift in a way. Loudly launch a site no one will ever use, claim it’s a free speech sanctuary for Republicans, do the rounds on all the right-wing news outlets, and wait for it to fill up with the worst people on Earth, refuse to moderate it, wait for Apple to ban it from the App Store, and then go back to the right-wing news outlets and screech about liberal cancel culture impacting your ability to share hentai with white nationalist flat earthers or whatever.

Oh, one last thing lol. GETTR, as of today, is now being brigaded by Groypers. So, I’d say this app’s got about a month left in it.

Would You Pay $60,000 For An Influencer’s Used Hot Tub Water?

I learned this week that two influencers named Sommer Ray and Adin Ross filled up a SMART Water bottle with water from their hot tub and listed it on eBay. According to some reports the auction for bottle of water got as high as $90,000 before it was removed from the platform.

Ray and Ross are part of the ongoing “hot tub meta” happening on Twitch right now. Dexerto reported that last month they got really close to being banned because they didn’t list their hot tub stream under Twitch’s “Pools, Hot Tubs & Beaches” category.

Obviously, this isn’t the first instance of an influencer selling, uh, water they’ve bathed in. Long-time readers of Garbage Day will remember Belle Delphine, who, in 2019, went viral after she sold what she claimed was her bath water. Things at the time got so out of hand that the water was tested for DNA. It didn’t have any in it.

A Clubhouse Update

Clubhouse is officially available for Android users now. There was some question about what that would mean for Clubhouse’s slumping download rates. The Wrap estimated in mid-June that Android users might lead to a 179% jump in download rates. Well, it doesn’t seem like things are as optimistic as they may have looked.

According to Business Insider, yes, Android downloads of Clubhouse are up, though the Android downloads are still 25% down from the app’s iOS download peak in February. And iOS downloads have all but cratered over the last few months.

Why does any of this matter? Clubhouse was touted as the great new frontier for the internet because its core feature set made rich people feel important. The digital equivalent of a CEO retreat. And it did so while actively ignoring black creators and tastemakers. But now we’re beginning to see the first real set of post-pandemic internet trends emerge. Huge vaccinated (and unvaccinated, unfortunately) chunks of American internet users are going back outside. People’s lives are, perhaps not returning to normal, but solidifying into a new normal and that’s having a real impact on how we use the internet. App Annie has a Q2 report out that paints a really fascinating picture of what apps are growing and what aren’t. The key takeaway: Short-form video is now the predominate form of social media in the US.

App Annie notes that Clubhouse and other forms of social audio did have a big first half of the year, but, again, it’s hard to imagine people running home from newly-opened restaurants to listen to a live audio panel about Elon Musk’s dogecoin spin-off or whatever.

The Curious Case Of ATLScoop

Earlier this week, I sort of publicly spouted off about how I don’t fully understand what Facebook and Instagram are anymore. To connect the previous item about Clubhouse to this one, it feels like the millennial internet is cracking and a new one is taking its place.

I got a reply about something that absolutely wasn’t on my radar, but I wanted to share here because it’s fascinating. Back in March, a huge local Instagram page for Atlanta was accused of blackfishing and being secretly run by a white Republican woman. You can read the whole story of what happened over at butter.atl. It’s wild.

A Really Good Tweet

How Conservative Outrage Bait Works

Emerson T. Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the DFR Lab, has a great thread about how Ilhan Omar controversies are seeded by right-wing news outlets and then spread out of control on Facebook. As Brooking mentions in the tweet above, what’s really interesting about instances of online outrage at Omar is that because conservative outlets are able to create such a viral frenzy about something, it then forces non-right-wing news outlets to cover the story. And, even if they’re debunking the story or defusing it, they are still inadvertently amplifying it. Click through to read the whole thing.

Existentialism On Facebook

OK, one last platform thing. As I wrote above, I fundamentally don’t understand what mega-platforms like Facebook and Instagram are anymore. I don’t use Facebook and I have reached an inactivity level on Instagram where it is now emailing me to tell me how many unread messages I have.

Sarah Fischer at Axios recently wrote about what she’s calling the “social network identity crisis.” She pulls together a lot of good threads about exactly how scared of TikTok apps like Facebook and Instagram are. On Thursday, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri announced that Instagram was “no longer just a square photo-sharing app.” Which, OK, sure, but then what is it?

What I think is kind of funny about all of this is that Facebook and Instagram are clearly frightened by TikTok and are racing to compete with its absolutely massive cultural domination. But Facebook’s main strategy seems to be to make their apps even less distinct. Meanwhile, I can describe TikTok to someone extremely easily: It’s a short-form video app. Now, in the same amount of words, tell me what Facebook is.

If you want to dive more into this, this week’s episode of my podcast touches on all of this, as well as Facebook’s new Bulletin product, which I’d argue is part of this same identity crisis.

A Very Good Painting Instagram

I recently came across this on Reddit and, honestly, it’s just a really good account. She’s an artist named Tahlia Stanton and her painting videos are extremely relaxing.

Meet Shroomjak

Not totally clear why this is 4chan post from January is all over my Twitter timeline right now, but here we are. (“kys” means “kill yourself” btw.) There are now a ton of shroomjak memes all over Reddit. My personal favorite is this one, which, if you get it, you really get it.

A Crazy Stat About Robinhood

According to Robinhood’s pre-IPO filing, almost 20% of the app’s revenue this year was from selling cryptocurrency. And of that 20%, a third was from dogecoin specifically. What’s crazy about this is that Robinhood doesn’t let you actually own cryptocurrency. When you buy dogecoin on Robinhood, you can’t move it to another trading platform or even your own wallet. You’re essentially buying an IOU. Which means, almost 20% of Robinhood’s business is selling people the idea of buying cryptocurrency.

Ska Tune Network Has A Pop Covers Album Out

It’s the Friday before the Fourth Of July. Listen to this ska cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” our new national anthem.

A Redditor Has A Question About An Emo Wedding

This was sent to me by my friend Ellie. Here’s the important part of the post:

Now, you may have noticed the flair on the post in the screenshot. Somehow, the commenters decided that this is an “Everyone Sucks Here” situation and the comments on this post are harsh! And I’m actually not going to share them because I absolutely do not agree. Don’t let your horrible conservative family dress like preps at your queer My Chemical Romance wedding!!!

Some Stray Links

• “Guardian Australia strikes deal with Facebook to licence news to the platform”

• “Is Pinterest the new old Instagram?”

• “The Unending Allure Of the Tattoo Boyfriend and the Pretty Girlfriend”

• “Watch a Police Officer Admit He's Playing a Taylor Swift Song to Keep Activist's Video Off YouTube”

P.S. here’s a good productivity hack.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***