Live by the post, die by the post

Welcome to Garbage Weekend. It’s the internet garbage you know and love, but in a format that’s easier to read while you sit frozen in existential terror.

This week, the big story from Trump’s inauguration was Elon Musk, which is exactly what everyone involved wanted, probably. As befits an (admitted fake) gamer, Musk made a gesture that Nazi experts sure think was a Nazi salute. Musk posted through it, losing the support he had from the Anti-Defamation League in the process. Live by the post, die by the post — just ask Vivek Ramaswamy, who reportedly lost his position with DOGE after he took to X to blame the evils of America on Steve Urkel. DOGE, for those keeping track, is now officially just Musk’s new name for an old government office. Who could have foreseen this outcome?

Oh well, here’s some fun stuff…

• The Chinese cowboy of RedNote

• Tallest Barron

• Fantastic onion brothers

• A House meme that goes hard

• Being cool AF disorder

• A well-made but impossibly hideous hat

• It’s all kicking off in the comment section of the Botanic Gardens of Sydney YouTube livestream

• A deeply humiliating exchange

• sargant balls

• “How it feels to have a lil show you’re looking forward to watching after work”

Trying To Keep Track Of All The TikTok News? Panic World Can Help!

This week’s Panic World features the fantastic reporter and creator Rachel Gilmore. The episode is all about the long and extremely infuriating road to this month’s not-quite TikTok ban. We start with the earliest security concerns in the federal government and then spin through how things hit a fever pitch last year after the US government — and the media — became convinced that TikTokers were stanning Osama bin Laden. You can consume that fantastic audio content anywhere and everywhere, but if you’re looking for a link, you can click here.

AMERICA, THE FINAL SEASON

Some idiot in the House introduced an amendment to give President Donald Trump a third term. Does this have a chance of passing? Probably not. At 78 years old, does Trump have another term even in him? Also probably not. But conservatives are going to do everything in their power to make sure they stay in power. If only Democrats had the same drive. Speaking of Democrats…

Want to read a truly depressing piece about how Democrats still don’t understand the severity of the situation yet? Senior officials told CNN that they’re very interested in recreating a viral video from the pandemic that involved some senator making the worst possible tuna melt. Yeah that’ll save the country.

Steven Bannon is still feuding with Elon Musk. So is Sam Altman. Bannon, honestly, has every right to be mad. As we wrote on Wednesday, no one has really innovated on the playbook he created in 2015. Shocking that someone like Musk would happily take credit for the work of someone else.

PLATFORMS

Bluesky’s 2024 moderation report is a fascinating glimpse into how quickly social platforms turn to shit as they get bigger. Here’s the most shocking stat, in 2024, Bluesky increased by around 23 million users, which led to a 17x increase in moderation reports, which cover everything from spam to harassment to sexual abuse material.

Massive subreddits are banning links to X now. Most of them, of course, aren’t blocking screenshots of X posts because if they did, Reddit would cease to exist.

You can buy a phone on eBay loaded with TikTok on it for thousands of dollars. This is not the first time something like this has happened. About 10 years ago, phones with Flappy Bird installed on them were going for up to $100,000 on eBay.

NFL teams can’t join Bluesky. The New England Patriots started an account this week but were quickly told to take it down by the NFL. It turns out the league has a specific list of approved social media platforms for its teams. And it’s easy to see why they’re hesitant to expand the list, after the complete disaster that was their attempt to start an official Discord server last year.

WEB3 AND THE METAVERSE

Trump’s memecoin is tanking. Worth pointing out that more and more crypto diehards — the folks who genuinely believe cryptocurrency could replace real currency — are not happy about the flurry of Trump world crypto pump-and-dumps.

The US government sold all of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht’s Bitcoins while he was in jail. Some more Ulbricht news for you: According to The New York Times, his mom was heavily involved in convincing the Trump administration to pardon him.

OUR ROBOT OVERLORDS

A Chinese startup just launched a very cheap, open source AI model. It’s called DeepSeek r1 and it blows ChatGPT out of the water. But, no, you cannot ask it about Tienanmen Square.

Infamous antivirus software founder and maniac John McAfee has “come back” from the dead as an AI. Honestly, he probably would have loved this, so fair enough. So far, the AI has not posted anything yet about having sex with a whale.

FANDOMS

You can now watch a documentary about staging Hamlet inside Grand Theft Auto Online. The movie Grand Theft Hamlet, which Aftermath calls “hilarious and earnestly moving,” is a look into how GTA Online has basically turned into a social network, somewhere between Minecraft and Skyrim. It’s also a record of what happened to theater actors during pandemic lockdowns, in case you don’t have the energy for that.

The director of Flow posted a reaction video to the movie’s Oscar nominations. Unlike most Oscar reaction videos you’ll see, it’s just him and his dog. He’s also reposting cute memes about it, which makes sense for a movie entirely about a cat.

STREAMERS

A woman said she’ll be reporting the streamer Destiny to the police for allegedly sharing nonconsensual sexual material. There is another women suing him for the same thing. He claims that the images were not leaked by him, but by a third party.

The Toxic Avenger movie is finally getting a theatrical release. The movie was trapped into distribution limbo, but was saved by Cineverse, the distributor behind last year’s surprise horror smash Terrifier 3. Now it’s time to talk about Coyote vs. Acme.

Netflix is raising prices again. It is also more popular than it’s ever been. Eventually Netflix will hit a limit on one of those two things and it seems like they plan to squeeze as much money out of subscribers as possible before they do.

MEMES AND TRENDS

The horse electrolytes guy is finally getting a blood test. Excited to find out if he’s discovered an elixir for perfect health or if he’s already dead.

Comedian Theo Von claimed the Paul brothers pranked him at the inauguration. Logan Paul recorded Von falling out of his chair during the ceremony, leading Von to suspect Logan and his brother Jake of intentionally weakening the chair. Luckily, Katie Notopoulos has reported that “our nation has healed,” and the three worked it out on a podcast together, agreeing it was an accident.

Chess.com’s shitpost Elo rating was too high. The online chess site’s X account mixes serious posts about chess with dumb memes in the exact right ratio that, when they joked about adding a new move, a ton of X users fell for it.

DRAMA

Bryan Johnson shared night-time erection data for him and his son Talmage. In case you’re worried about privacy, it was Talmage’s idea.

Sketchy billboards for a seemingly fake LA wildfire charity popped up in Times Square. This was sent over by a reader named Clayton. If you follow the link on the ad it takes you to a private company owned by a DJ and entrepreneur. According to The City, the attorney general “is looking into it.”

The Nashville school shooter was heavily influenced by far-right influencer Candace Owens. Owens is already trying to get ahead of it by spreading misinformation about the attack and is claiming the shooter didn’t have a manifesto. He did. And he’s very clear in it that Owens inspired him, as a young black teenager, to align himself with white nationalism and carry out the shooting.

AROUND THE WORLD

Social shopping isn’t going away. Garbage Day is mentioned in this Rest Of World piece all about the rise of Chinese social shopping platforms!

What’s going on with London Lime e-bikes? Jim Waterson over at London Centric is trying to figure out why they keep breaking people’s legs. A corporate-owned municipal bike program possibly maiming the people who are using it as an alternative to driving feels like a good sign that we’ve reached a new stage of late-stage capitalism.

Uber is now offering a bus service in Brazil. The meme has finally come true.

P.S. here’s a real good post.

***Any typos in this email are purpose actually, but with more of carefree weekend vibe***