TikDay in Tok

People on TikTok are saying “dupe.” Does it mean anything? Absolutely not, but if something happens enough on TikTok someone is required to make content about it and BuzzFeed’s Steffi Cao did a credible job. Authentic mass culture… dupe? Meanwhile startup culture has fully completed the transition from the “Uber for X” era to the “TikTok for X” era with the launch of Artifact, a “personalized news feed that uses machine learning to understand your interests and will soon let you discuss those articles with friends,” i.e. “TikTok for news,” launched by Instagram cofounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger according to a red-hot A.M. Platformer exclusive by Casey Newton. Facebook Paper… dupe? And Tarpley Hitt rated media brand Tiktoks, from “bad” all the way to “less bad.” She’s half right! All of them are actually terrible, and it brings me no pleasure to report that she missed the only good media TikTok, which is Morning Brew.

Hey, How Are Things Going Back on Twitter?

This is from the Chad Loder that Elon Musk personally banned, according to Davey Alba and Kurt Wagner’s Bloomberg report on Twitter’s new “Trust” and “Safety” minion Ella Irwin. The linked video is really quite something. And Elon’s babymama spent Holocaust Remembrance Day thinking about space Nazis:

Too Far Outside: Last Monday, Outside published a long article about the 2022 murder of gravel cyclist Moriah Wilson. The story is so firmly fixed on the perspective of Colin Strickland, a “buddy” of reporter Ian Dille and a cyclist involved romantically with both Wilson and the woman accused of murdering her, Kaitlin Armstrong, that it doesn’t even mention the victim, Wilson, until paragraph seven.

Joe Lindsey wrote a thread yesterday which describes the risks of a story like this and the ways this one failed to avoid them. But what’s most incredible is that the entire Outside story was prebutted all the way back in July, by Seth Davidson in his blog “Cycling in the South Bay.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a major longform feature so thoroughly and directly debunked this many months before it even ran.

Talentless Mr. Ripley “George” “Santos” stepped down from his Congressional committee assignments, which strikes me as a fatal mistake. The only way to survive his avalanche of competing scandals is total denial and the Mr. Burns disease strategy. Resigning from committees is an admission he should resign from something, which is a greased slide to admitting he should resign from everything. Until today he was… indestructible.

John Herrman thinks Amazon is full of garbage now because that is the path to maximum scale and profitability, in a grand future “vision in which Amazon doesn’t just control access to its own customers but to e-commerce customers in general, whether they intend to use Amazon or not.” Very plausible, and I hate it already.

Naomi Fry on “MILF Manor.” (Hamlet… dupe?) McMansion Hell never exactly went away but it’s back with Dictator Chic in Milwaukee. “Meow, meow meow meow, meow meow?” —CatGPT. And Tabs friend Delia Cai’s novel “Central Places” is out today.

Today’s Song: (speaking of “MILF Manor,”) Rival Sons, “Rapture”

Media career… dupe? The plural of “MILF” should be “Milves.” I’m starting to become concerned that there are some things you can’t always quit.