Twitter Is Imploding, and We're Having a Good Time Over There
Happy Friday!
Featuring horny chess players, insane tweets, and election chaos.
P.S. Like my newsletter? Make your friends sign up and feed my sense of self-importance.
Literally Just Something I Think Is Funny (Young People & Indigestion)
You’ll remember a few Good Links ago, I was waxing poetically (contextualizing a good link) about IBS. As sequel to that, I offer this brief little column about an Italian antacid called “Galeffi Effervescente” in which a sad young person explains that because this antacid is meant to be consumed as “sparkly liquid,” it makes him feel less like an old person than chomping on Tums does.
A Less Serious Item (Finally Addressing the Chess Anal Beads Thing)
Some of you have assuredly heard about the recent “chess guy uses vibrating anal beads to cheat” scandal, in which a guy playing extremely competitive chess supposedly used vibrating anal beads to cheat at chess. The Guardian took this scandal as an opportunity to write about how popular chess has become in the last five years:
But another notable development in chess’s growth came at the end of 2017, when the biggest chess website, Chess.com, pivoted towards making the game an esport by partnering with the streaming platform Twitch. Then came the multiplier effects of the Covid lockdown and the Netflix show The Queen’s Gambit, which sent chess’s popularity into the stratosphere. In August 2022 the popular and free website Lichess hosted more than 92m games – compared with 37m in August 2019 and 6m in August 2016.
It also talks about the growing interest women have in chess, and some interesting missteps around that growing interest:
Last year, Fide, the chess governing body, tried to capitalise on the growing interest from women in chess by signing a sponsorship deal with the breast enlargement company Motiva, which was immediately criticised as “gross” and “misogynistic”. The renowned chess photographer Maria Emelianova says many are still unhappy and it remains “a running joke” behind the scenes on the women’s circuit.
This Week’s Theme: Twitter is Imploding
Famously I love the website Twitter dot com. I spend many minutes, if not hours, per day scrolling and then cackling at tweets.
Like two weeks ago (was it even that long?) Elon Musk officially purchased Twitter and he has spent the interim driving the website into the ground by:
letting people pay $8 to be verified on the site, when previously Twitter verification was an honest-to-God vetting process
the above bullet point lasted for about 48 hours and he has since paused the product amidst an incredible wave of account impersonators, wreaking gorgeous and parodic havoc on the website
and don’t worry, because Twitter seemingly no longer has a communications department (remember the layoffs from above?), no one has been able to verify whether or not the paid verification is “actually gone for good or temporarily disabled”
I am concerned that Twitter will actually get run into the ground. I will sincerely miss it if it goes away. I recently remembered that the Library of Congress at one point was archiving every single tweet, but I googled it and it turns out they stopped doing that in 2017 and switched to only “selectively” archiving tweets (the most iconic headline of 2017, it turns out, was “Library of Congress Will No Longer Archive Every Tweet”).
I have tweeted upwards of 28,000 times I think because I find keeping a diary unbearable. I will be sad if the tweets have to disappear!
Anyway here are some of my favorite parody moments from people taking advantage of the new buyable blue checkmark (normally I would try to link tweets but Twitter is scrambling around to try and stop these):
P.S. Me right now
Politics (Not Too Much About the Midterms)
Obviously there were many elections this week, so you have already been brutalized by “politics” as concept. As such, I won’t spend time on it, and will instead direct you to this article about an insane Pennsylvania law that meant a dead guy was on the ballot in Allegheny County.
A Celebrity Thinger (Nick Cannon Having Another Baby)
Nick Cannon’s sperm, the gift that keeps on giving! It was recently announced that one of Nick Cannon’s many lovers (this word feels most technically true?) is pregnant with his 12th child. In briefly scanning this Cut article, it seems like at one point in late August/September, four different women were pregnant with his kids.
I share this with you because I feel frankly impressed by the way all these women seem to genuinely like Nick Cannon, and because, according to this article, one of the women finally said a word that’s making this all make a little more sense: Nick Cannon and all his kids’ moms (besides Mariah Carey, I think) are polyamorous!
Frankly? It’s giving HBO’s Big Love.
Flop Links (Justin Weighs In)
To start off this week’s FlopLinks with a thud, I wanted to give a special shout out to one particular celebrity Halloween costume that is still resonating with me, and all of us as a culture. It is of course Heidi Klum as the Worm with the Foreboding Aura. The more I look at it, the more I see the vision. To me, Heidi Klum and the sinister energy that radiates off of this outfit is the physical manifestation of what being in the trenches of a flop era feels like, and that’s beautiful to me. We must share this image for years to come.
Now into some mess!
Orientation Week at the Caruso Clown College
If you’ve never had a chance to catch up on LA politics and have a few extra brain cells to sacrifice, here’s how it’s going. This week, former-pop-star-turned-shoe-salesperson, Katy Perry, joined the ranks of our most annoying celebrity residents to endorse (supposedly, but not actually) Democrat and billionaire developer Rick Caruso for mayor over (actual) Democrat Karen Bass. Votes are being counted as I write, but currently the results are not looking great!
I don’t trust any celebrities. However, with every endorsement that comes in for Caruso, I can’t help but notice that each one is from a celebrity that I particularly don’t trust, or just have one-sided beef with. Here’s a list of some of them, and why:
Katy Perry - Has experienced two flop albums in a row. She’s been in the trenches too long, and at this point she doesn’t know what it means to not flop. Her judgment is clouded.
Chris Pratt - The triple threat of toxic masculinity, toxic religious ideologies, and toxic earnestness. I also get a sense that if this were a zombie apocalypse, he’s the type that would think he’s “built different” and hide a bite until it’s too late.
Gwyneth Paltrow - As fun as it is to reference her “I’d rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a tin” quote, she is a white woman who doesn’t believe in sunscreen and for that I don’t trust her!
Elon Musk - Many reasons to hate on this one - (see above theme of the week!)! Among them is this incident, which culminated in an Azealia Banks song being scrapped. That upsets me (as does everything he does).
As the votes come in, and more celebrities expose themselves to be as self-interested as we always thought they were, we still have a good rule of thumb in tact: whatever you see Chris Pratt doing specifically, just do the opposite!
What in Tárnation [LINK CONTAINS TÁR SPOILERS]
I really enjoyed Tár. You could even call me a Tárnivore. Cassandra did not buy into the TCU (Tár Cinematic Universe), and that’s fine, we’re colleagues who respect each other! However, we both agree that this film is a work of fiction, chronicling the downfall of a fictional character. You would think this would not be a controversial take, but that’s where you’re wrong! Someone didn’t grasp that part of the film’s equation, and it Totally Tárnished their experience with the film as a whole. Now, it’s your problem too, since this absolute ~icon~ wrote about thinking Lydia Tár is a real person for the Cut, as one does.
It almost feels like this person witnessed Tár flop publicly and thought: that’s an experience I might like to try soon. Reading it again now, it still doesn’t do a great job convincing me she truly believes Tár is a fictional character at this point in time. Even more fascinating is that, while the internet was running with all of this, our girl doesn’t care! She’s hitting the ground running and published two more completely unrelated pieces within 48 hours of her Tár Takedown - see below.
Looking through the rest of her history with The Cut, Tár is the only film-related post she’s published… ever? So why Tár, and why now? Either way, I’m obsessed and I need more from this legend ASAP! Maybe she’ll do Ticket to Paradise next and we’ll get to see what happens when she finds out Julia Roberts isn’t real.
A Recommendation (Something Quick)
Click for a blooper reel from Zach Galifianakis’ interview show Between Two Ferns.
The Interactive Bits (Interact with me!)
Have a link you think is good? Submit link suggestions here.