Conceptually, this weekly column is intended to provide readers with a glimpse of what happened on the internet while they were out doing other things. But as the coronavirus continues to spread, and folks are being asked to stay inside, people are going out less and looking at screens more. But the pandemic is also creating a lot more threads to keep up with. As Covid-19 essentially closes the US—and the world—businesses are shutting their doors in record numbers, putting millions out of work. Meanwhile, testing is still lagging in the US, and everyone is so focused on the coronavirus people have stopped paying attention to the presidential primaries and the greatness of Megan Rapinoe. Yet, those are just the big headlines, there's still a lot else out there. Get comfortable in your “working from home” pants, everyone; this is what the internet has been saying over the past seven days.
Does Cats Need CGI Anuses?
What Happened: What could be the one thing to successfully distract the internet from the coronavirus? We’ll give you a hint: It involves the most talked about movie of last year and CGI anuses. There’s an Avengers: Endgame joke to be made here, surely…
What Really Happened: It has, thankfully, not been all Covid-19 this week on the internet. To celebrate the digital release of Cats, there was also … whatever the hell this was.
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You can just tell where this is going, can’t you? Look, people are stuck inside their homes. Choices were made, and they were entirely the choices you would expect.
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If you’re thinking, “this became a thing because everyone just wanted something to think about that isn’t virus related,” then you’re probably right. But it certainly became a thing this week, with mainstream media eagerly jumping on the bandwagon. Even legit movie industry figures got involved, somewhat surreally.
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(Just imagine what the Knives Out sequel could be like now, with Rian Johnson thinking about a butthole cut. Just imagine.)
Of course, not everyone got it. Or maybe they got it far more than everyone else.
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The Takeaway: At least no one is overstating the importance of the Butthole Cut and just enjoying it for the dumb distraction that it clearly is.
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Who's Watching the Watchmen?
What Happened: If everyone is relying on the internet to bring folks together and deliver information while we’re stuck inside away from each other, what happens when it fails to do so?
What Really Happened: With social distancing and self-quarantining becoming the norm around the world, the internet is becoming even more important in people’s lives as a tool with which to communicate, with platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook assuming even more central roles in how we talk to each other and share information—which makes it a problem when things start to go inexplicably wrong, disrupting that communication in worrying ways.
People started noticing that something strange was happening with Facebook pretty early in the week.
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Turns out, there was a reason why this was happening, and it wasn’t a malicious plan to feed the world misinformation.
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A bug was marking legitimate links as spam, which seems like a pretty big problem right now—and also a fairly strong indictment of the AI being used to identify spam by Facebook, really. Still, at least they found it in time, and, well, actually, just because you know something is a problem doesn’t mean that the problem’s solved, apparently.
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As Facebook inevitably tries to sort out the mess, here’s a fun little postscript to the whole thing: The day after the bug was identified, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a press call to discuss how the platform was adapting in light of the virus, and guess what he said?
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“Making sure [people] see info from trusted news outlets and orgs first” sure feels like a weird flex to make at this particular moment, but sure. It’s worth adding, quickly, that Twitter announced this week that it is also pushing legit Covid-19 tweets harder than the alternative.
The Takeaway: Look. Someone had to make this joke.
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Marco Rubio's Spelling Shortcomings
What Happened: Spelling, it turns out, is very important when you’re trying to make a point.
What Really Happened: But enough about how our technological institutions are stumbling, let’s just take a moment to look at some of the mistakes made by political leaders last week. Like, for example, this tweet from Senator Marco Rubio, which set out to clear up a few things about social isolation in response to Covid-19, but also made folks a little more confused.
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OK, firstly: That’s not how you spell martial law. Secondly, who was asking about this? And thirdly, everyone noticed that’s not how you spell martial law. No, really.
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Of course, the tweet became a meme pretty quickly, because of course it did. Yes, a lot of people made the same joke.
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In what was perhaps the greatest punchline to the whole thing, Rubio realized his mistake and did his best to fix it, which in itself ended up going wrong.
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Oh, Marco. You tried, at least.
The Takeaway: Everyone is awaiting the final step in Rubio’s Twitter evolution by this point, let’s be real.
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Vanessa Hudgens WYD?
What Happened: At this particular moment in history, there are certain things that perhaps people just shouldn't vocalize. For example, seeming bored with the idea that people are going to die from a global pandemic because it slightly inconveniences your social plans. Looking at you, Vanessa Hudgens.
What Really Happened: Celebrities! They’re the people that we should no better than to turn to for useful information in times of crisis no matter how much we love small horses. (Actually, listen to Ariana Grande, she knows what's up.) If you need proof that stars don't always know what they're talking about, look no further than Vanessa Hudgens' comments last week. Hudgens, star of High School Musical and Bad Boys for Life, wasn’t too impressed by the social isolation brought on by Covid-19, and took to Instagram to complain about it. To say that her complaints were … ill-considered would be a kindness; although the original post was deleted—for good reason—this is the internet, so of course it survived and was reposted. Take a look at what she had to say for yourself.
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The response was what you might expect, considering.
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That might sound like a joke, but no; Ashley Tisdale’s quarantine video is something that actually happened, because, well, things are pretty weird in the world right now.
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But let’s get back to Hudgens. The feedback on her comments—comments that Hudgens clearly knew weren’t a good idea in the original video—was so bad that Hudgens responded the next day.
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Then, this happened.
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Welp.
The Takeaway: Anyone who had “a global pandemic will cause a High School Musical revival” in their list of 2020 predictions got proven very correct last week, it seems.
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