Stay logged off, read this tomorrow

Read to the end for a really good American Chopper meme

July 05, 2021

Happy Fourth of July! As the subject line implies, don’t read this on Monday. Enjoy your precious logged off moments. But if you do have the misfortunate of reading emails today, here’s a bunch of fun stuff to stare at and click on. And, as always, consider subscribing to Garbage Day!

GETTR Didn’t Have A Good Fourth Of July Weekend

On Friday, I wrote about former Trump spokesperson Jason Miller’s new social network. It’s only a few days old and it’s already filled up with spam bots and hentai. And its problems continued into the weekend.

The official launch was yesterday. Fourth of July, get it? Redditors and TikTokers started raiding the app. Apparently, GETTR’s commitment to free speech meant they had no way of moderating anything properly. My favorite example of this was Twitter user @spurtmagoo, who was impersonating Christian “comedy” site, The Babylon Bee, on GETTER. According to screenshots they shared on Twitter, @spurtmagoo was eventually banned for using the fake Bablyon Bee account to post a tribute to Jeffrey Epstein.

And it seems like things are only getting worse for GETTR. According to an exclusive from Salon writer Zachary Petrizzo this morning, its API was compromised and hackers now have access to everyone’s personal information. Which seems, not ideal? Oh, also, the app was full of hentai last week, but now it’s full of Sonic the Hedgehog porn. And GETTR’s source code leaked.

More like… GETTR done, am I right?

Pinterest Banned Weight Loss Ads

This is both very cool and extremely interesting. Pinterest announced last week that they are prohibiting “ads with weight loss language and imagery.” This includes things like weight-loss testimonials, references to BMI, and even before-and-after weight-loss content.

Pinterest’s overall moderation strategy over the last few years has been one of the most proactive and, oftentimes, radical, of any major platform. In April, it launched a Creator Code, which makes users responsible for things like factchecking, inclusivity, and trigger warnings.

Pinterest, like Tumblr, is one of those massive drivers of invisible web culture, but because it’s not directly in the spotlight, it’s easy to miss how the site is responding to the same problems that sites like Facebook or Twitter are dealing with. Even more interesting, as its moderation has become stricter and more heavily enforced, Pinterest has actually consistently grown. It’s almost as if moderation policies that keep your website from becoming a hateful rats of nest of chaos make people want to keep coming back!

The Toby Keith Theory Of American Conservatism

Toby Keith has a new song out. It’s incredibly horrible. Also, the lyric video is insanely ugly. The song is a massive bummer and all around sucks. I was going to say that I actually kind of like Keith’s “Proud To Be An American” song, but I looked it up and it turns out that was sung by Lee Greenwood.

The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology’s president, Richard Hanania has an interesting thread on Twitter about Keith’s music and how it seems to line up with American conservatism more broadly. Hanania thinks country music will become increasingly apolitical post-Trump because there’s nothing aspirational to sing about.

This isn’t totally related, but here’s unbelievably horrible conservative rap song I came across on Reddit a few weeks ago.

A Crypto Company Picks An Unfortunate Name

Polygon, a pretty well-known company for building Etherum-based networks, announced over the weekend that an NFT protocol was launching on Polygon called “Nonce Finance”. Here’s the problem. You see, “nonce,” is a term in cryptography for a number or word that is only used once in a communication. “Nonce” is also a British slang word for pedophile. You can imagine how this has been received on Twitter.

Channel 5 Went To A Pick Up Artist School

Andrew Callaghan is back with a new video and it absolutely deranged. The scene with the guy named Stanli sings at the camera made me profoundly uncomfortable.

Flag Mashup Bot Makes An Interesting Flag

Flag Mashup Bot is still going! Over the weekend, it mashed up Chad’s flag with the British Virgin Islands and made British Virgin Chad. My favorite reply was from user @Theallknowinsas, who wrote, “Chads and virgins finally unite to create France... Once again”

Saddam Hussein Memes Are So Hot Right Now

You can see more similar memes here on Twitter. The memes are riff on a BBC infographic from 2003 that was supposed to show where Hussein could be hiding underground. I’m not totally sure how it’s gone viral now and actually Know Your Meme doesn’t seem to have it either. If you think you know what caused this to pop off now, shoot me an email!

A quick aside: While trying to do some research for this I unthinkingly googled “Saddam Hussein hole,” which, in retrospect, could have been a very risky search.

Rebecca Black Gets An Apology

America’s Shroomjak Frenzy Rolls On

I wrote about this meme last week. There’s not much to it tbh. Anyways, this post was sent to me by my buddy Bijan. Shroomjak is so hot right now.

A Truly Perfect Video

Is This The First Instance Of “Smol” On The Internet?

Technically, it was “smoll,” but this may be the first instance of “smol” online. The post was published in January 2015 by user frougpepe. 2015 honestly feels way too late to be the first use of “smol,” but this might actually be it. According to Know Your Meme, “smol” first appeared in 2015 and the term “smol bean” emerged from a tweet from Twenty One Pilots’ frontman Tyler Joseph in June 2015. So this could actually be it.

Here’s A Big VR Cat

This actually amazing bit of VR is currently in Shinjuku, Tokyo. According to Japanese culture site, Sora News 24, the cat apparently will just randomly appear in-between ads. If you want to check it out, there’s a livestream.

Some Stray Links

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

Reply

or to participate.