In China, everyone watches everything together. Why? Because of something called “bullet comments,” a fusion of a comment section and content that is collectively created by anyone who’s ever watched a given video before. We have similar practices here. Users pin comments to specific moments in DJ mixes on SoundCloud. Livestreams on Twitch and YouTube have furiously active comment sections alongside videos. Genius famously tries to "annotate the world."But there’s nothing here that quite matches the culture of “bullet comments” in China. A fascinating piece in Logic by Christina Xu explains what bullet comments are and how they came to be so ubiquitous in China: "Bullet comments, or 弹幕 (“danmu”), are text-based user reactions superimposed onto online videos: a visual commentary track to which anyone can contribute."They represent the essence of Chinese internet culture: fast-paced and impish, playfully collaborative, thick with rapidly evolving inside jokes and memes. They are a social feature beloved by a generation known for being antisocial.
And most importantly, they allow for a type of spontaneous, cumulative, and public conversation between strangers that is increasingly rare on the Chinese internet. "The invasive social feature can also be found in more unlikely places: apps for reading comics or streaming music, e-commerce platforms, even narrative cutscenes in the middle of popular mobile games. Bullet comments have become a ubiquitous social layer woven into any digital experience."I've written before about how our relationships are increasingly virtual and geographically dispersed, causing us to cluster together in digital spaces that simulate what it was once like to hang out together. We often watch or play alone, but add a layer of group chats, Discord servers, comments sections or FaceTime conversations to simulate conviviality. To cure our loneliness. We've only managed to jury-rig through a series of clumsy overlapping technology solutions what China seems to have perfected. Xu continues: "热闹 (rè nào) is hard to concisely translate into English with its personality intact.
Literally meaning "heat and noise," it describes an atmosphere of bustling conviviality"A night market sizzling with smells and chatter is re nao, as is a table-slapping game of mahjong after a big family meal. Re nao is as central to the Chinese vision of the good life as freedom is to America’s; it’s deep-rooted in a way that defies rationality."For young Chinese people, bullet comments are a dose of re nao that fits better into their lives than the karaoke, mahjong, and alcohol-fueled banquets preferred by their elders. The post-’90s generation is stereotyped—and often self-identifies—as shut-ins. A Peking University study of 3000 post-’90s people from across China found that 62 percent ranked 'staying at home to surf the web' as their favorite activity. 'Hanging out with friends' came in at 39 percent, while 'going to the bar' was ranked lowest, at only 3.4 percent."Until we have digital spaces that match the communal vibe and immediacy of bullet comments we'll have to make do with our clunky system of apps. If anyone wants to watch Baki, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deadwood or Succession with me, let's start a group chat.
The live-action Aladdin was directed by Guy Ritchie!? (NYT)
Werner Herzog has never watched Terminator and does not know what it's about. (Vanity Fair)
If you can't get enough former Esquire editor-in-chief Jay Fielden, you will love this 4-minute long train wreck of a promotional video from his time at Town & Country. (YouTube)
There was Cliff Wife... (NYMag)
...And there was MS-13 Hoax Guy aka Shane Morris. (The Daily Beast)
I'm not bullish on the influencer market, but using this viral tweet about a failed influencer clothing line feels like selection bias to me: just because one influencer's brand flopped doesn't really mean anything. (Twitter)
This hit song doesn’t exist
Hearing a song in memes is the new hearing a song on the radio. I’ve written that memes are the new music kingmaker. First TikTok made Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” the biggest hit of the year. And now a recording ripped from Instagram and popularized in a series of funny fan-made videos is rocketing to the top of Spotify’s charts. The only problem? The song doesn’t really exist anywhere officially. Playboi Carti and Young Nudy’s song “Kid Cudi” first appeared in an Instagram Live video - it was really just a preview of an upcoming collaboration by Playboi Carti, Young Nudy and producer Pi'erre Bourne ostensibly intended for the just-released Nudy/Bourne album Sli’merre. From that one quick preview, fans ripped the audio. Then the leaked track took on a life of its own. The high-pitched vocals inspired baby-themed meme videos that quickly went viral on Instagram and Twitter and probably hit every single Zoomer and millennial group chat. Still, the song had not been released, but a running joke of how often people have heard the song is common on Twitter. Just from memes. That’s where Lil Kambo comes in, a sophomore in high school who uploads songs for fun to Spotify.
He’s not an artist but he has a monster streaming hit! He’s just a kid with an account - most importantly though, not just one account on Spotify, but accounts on Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and Twitter, of course. Because that’s where he opportunistically sources his viral material. Noticing that people can’t get enough of “Kid Cudi,” he posted a snippet of the song to Spotify under the title “Kid Carti.” He worked Reddit - posting the Spotify snippet to the Playboi Carti subreddit. Fans found it. The song quickly rocketed to the top of Spotify’s Viral US chart despite not ever being officially released and despite not even being released under the artist’ names. Powered by 2.3 million streams, the song hit No. 1.Then it got taken down. It does not exist on Spotify anymore. It can be found on YouTube if you’re intrepid enough. Now Playboi Carti, Young Nudy and Pi'erre Bourne have a bonafide hit on their hands with no way to get the song to the people. It will most likely appear on Playboi Carti's upcoming project. But they better strike while the iron's hot.
The whole Pelosi chopped-and-screwed video thing was a complete snooze. As if we didn't know that people love to spread misinformation? Much cooler: AI used to animate heads using only one picture. (Twitter)
Matthew Schneier is moving from the Times' Style section to New York. (WWD)
The zoom on Huawei's new phone camera is insane. (Twitter)
Why Facebook will look like Uber
Some of us will work Facebook like a gig. The rest of us will not. When Facebook rolls out is own currency, those of us who need the extra cash will work the ad-watching mines - probably in between operating ride-sharing gigs, delivering meals and helping people mount their TV’s through TaskRabbit. The rest of us will opt out of watching some of those ads. This is one version of our future with Zuckbucks a.k.a GlobalCoin, Facebook’s nascent cryptocurrency. There are a lot of reasons why it makes sense for Facebook to develop its own blockchain-based currency and a lot of reasons to be skeptical about not only using it but also about the wisdom of rolling it out now/soon. But buried in the coverage is a few of the potential uses for the currency. Those uses hint at what might be. This currency will work kinda like Itchy and Scratchy Money: it’s tied to the dollar, you use it for in-app purchases, send it to friends through the family of Facebook apps and Facebook takes a cut every time. Why it makes sense for Facebook, from FT:
To encourage Facebook’s vast user base to spend more time and money on the platformTo address user concerns over Facebook’s advertising business modelTo collect more data on users, such as spending patternsCharging small transaction fees in a market this size would add billions of dollars in revenue
Why some are skeptical, from Lex: "But even if Facebook does launch a cryptocurrency why would anyone want to use it?...Facebook has broken user trust with security leaks and privacy breaches. Facebook’s coin makes sense for the company, not its users." But let's say GlobalCoin is launched. All of a sudden, Facebook becomes a service: users could accrue GlobalCoin like loyalty points on a credit card. Users could get paid a fraction of a point when they shop or interact using the currency. One other way users could be rewarded with GlobalCoin is by watching ads. Well, that's an easy way to make money! No one notices Facebook and Instagram ads anymore except for all the wrong reasons. When the ads aren't lazy simulacra of traditional brand-building ads, Facebook and Instagram ads have recently warped into a Home Shopping Network that feels like it's produced and hosted by extremely well-meaning but still-learning robots. Ads made by no one for products made by no one but made just for you, all presented with a clumsiness that makes the whole Instagram-oriented product economy feel like it's really made for no one at all.
Paying people to view ads for NASA-engineered breathable business shirts or hyper-comfortable athleisure sneaker-shoe hybrids is a fittingly surreal end to this decade's direct-to-consumer gold rush: mercenary products finding their mercenary market. These ads already slink by glazed over eyes with only an occasional chuckle at how wrong they feel. No one will miss them. Who wouldn't watch a few ads for money? People who a) don't need the money or b) are too busy/contented posting high-engagement content on Facebook and Instagram. Which brings us to another way users could be rewarded with GlobalCoin: by posting. If Facebook could reward you for watching ads - essentially just an interaction with a post - what other types of interactions could they incentivize? Axios' Felix Salmon sums it up: "Right now, whenever you post to social media, you're doing valuable unpaid work for the Big Tech platforms. The users they value the most are the ones who create engagement and stickiness. If it had its own currency, Facebook could print money to reward such behavior."Scrolling and posting: soon lucrative.
👽 SPECIAL UFO SECTION 👽
We all read the Times article about the Navy pilots' reporting of UFO's, right? Does anyone have a guess why the Navy is sharing this information right now? Is there someone at the Navy with an axe to grind with other government agencies like the Pentagon, intelligence communities or the other branches of the armed forces? Or does the Navy just not know what the other government agencies are up to/know? If the latter, I still don’t get why the Navy is making the announcements now and I really want to know! Please sound off with opinions.
Further reading: — The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
This is also what the internet is becoming: a dark forest
The Many Health Benefits Of Meth
In low, pharmaceutical-grade doses, methamphetamine may actually repair and protect the brain in certain circumstances. But stigma against the drug could be harming patients and holding back research.
Robert Plant and David Gilmour Set to Launch New Podcasts
Plant's launches next month and Gilmour's launches this week
How Many Bones Would You Break to Get Laid?
“Incels” are going under the knife to reshape their faces, and their dating prospects.
Why We're All So Turned On By Our Gender-Swapped Snapchat Filters
A psychologist’s perspective on those super-viral videos
Officials Fear El Chapo Is Planning His Escape From Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center
He's in Manhattan.