That Good You Need Part VIII
July 28th, 2016
There are a few people I know primarily from “The Internet”. I don’t mean people that I know from high school and now only see on Facebook, I mean people that I’ve been introduced to digitally, usually friends of friends, that I now regularly interact with digitally.
HOWEVER (dramatic music) this week I was able to hang out in person with one of my favorite Internet People, known on Twitter as @ajkob10, and known in analog life as Kobren. What always surprises me about these interactions is that they usually play out scarily close to how I think they’ll play out. Sure, it’s different than just reading about someone’s life on Twitter or seeing them on Snapchat, but it isn’t that different.
Kobren is pretty funny on Twitter, case in point:
As you might be led to believe, he’s pretty funny in real life, too. About 80% of Kobren’s Snapchats place him at a very specific location, and from that we were able to pretty accurately deduce what kind of place he’d like to hang out in.
This has been my experience with most of the friends I’ve made through digital means, they’re usually pretty cool and an accurate reflection of their real-life, in-person selves. Some of that might be because they usually are friends of friends, and that gives us a connection point, but there’s also the sense that this is one of the coolest parts of the time we live in, that you can legitimately be buddies with people you almost never see outside of a tiny screen of some sort.
That being said, watch out for catfish y’all
And now, That Good You Need.
My addiction to Twitter parody accounts.
While I am not personally interested in following a huge number of parody Twitter accounts, and while many of them are really, really awful, that doesn’t mean that a bunch of them are not pure genius. If you’ve never seen WWE Subway, for example, you’re in for a treat.
Many of you may find yourselves in some deep rabbit holes here, so just to add to the time-wasting devastation that awaits you, I recommend checking the “Likes” section of your favorite Twitter users. Sometimes you won’t find much of anything, but occasionally you’ll come across a goldmine (I literally just did this and laughed alone to myself for about 15 minutes). Here’s to hoping you don’t have anything important to do!
Stop Watching Movie Trailers
When he’s not analyzing Game of Thrones on HBO or recording his Podcast, Chris Ryan is writing for The Ringer. I’m uniquely prone to agreeing with the sentiment he presents here, that trailers often do more bad than good, because I recently saw The Secret Life of Pets.
As I sat there in the matinee, childlike, hugging an enormous diet coke, enjoying the movie just a little bit less than its cousin Zootopia, I was surprised just how many jokes from Pets made it into the trailer. It definitely hurt the final experience. Not only that, but the parade of trailers before the movie for various forthcoming animated pictures gave away so much of those movies, I felt like I didn’t need to see half of them. It hadn’t occurred to me before to simply stop watching trailers, but it certainly does now.
(Fast-forward to the premier of any new Star Wars trailer and my instant decision that I must watch it, no matter what Chris Ryan says. Still, like going to the gym or dieting, it was a nice thought while it lasted.)
An App to Deconstruct Your Food
I haven’t actively used Sage yet, but I did play around on the page for a while, and this is definitely something I’d encourage people to check out! While the interface is pretty enjoyable, the best part is that the app will actually tell you how much activity you need to engage in to burn off the foods you want to eat.
This is a thing I want all the time. I wish I had a biometric scanner in my arm that would instantly equate the food I want to eat into how much exercise I would need to do to remain in equilibrium if I ate it. In 2016, this should be a thing. Somewhere in this concept, there’s a great Bored Elon Musk tweet.
What Goes Into a Great Convention Speech
Jon Favreau has been putting out some excellent work recently, and this is no exception. He serves as a fascinating example of someone who rose to prominence in the political speechwriting game right alongside the candidates he worked for, first John Kerry and second a freshman senator from Illinois.
This is dope not only for the inside look at how these speeches come together, but also for the interesting and revealing look Favreau gives us of Obama at this critical point in his ascension to power.
Searching for the Secret Boehner Warehouse Party
This is on a whole new level. Not only do we discover, out of nowhere, that the RNC regularly produces a wildly exclusive, all-night bash hosted by the Speaker of the House, but Rembert Browne goes on a detective-style hunt to put clues together and FINDS IT. Thumbs up, indeed, Former Speaker John Boehner. Thumbs up, indeed.
Thanks for reading! Please recommend, respond, share, or complain! I’m going to try to find Nancy-Palooza, Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s secret music festival.
