The Uncanny Valley of Twitter’s 2022 Trends

Brian Feldman has a singular approach to explaining the internet. The roots of the early viral video where a little kid gets wacked in the head with a basketball are still being investigated. The creator of the art was interviewed by him. A meme of a cartoon character. He has a new project called www.whatshappening.online. The archive is an attempt to explain to people the nature of the conversation and get them to join in.

You can pick through them now via a calendar or a timeline, thanks to the laborious cataloging done by Feldman. It's interesting. The project looks at a very human attempt to explain the world. They are trying to create clear and helpful mass communication in that they absolutely fail.

It's fun to flick through whatshappening.online. All sense and logic is erased from the moment in the pithy descriptions of each moment. A flat affect is both frightening and comforting. There are tragedies and fears of a year. Another chance to make a noise before being forgotten.

Lauren Boebert was given an award for being the "hottest woman in Congress" but her name was spelled wrong and she received a gift card to Red Lobster.

The 1939 German invasion of Poland is discussed after Putin announced a military operation in eastern Ukraine.

During his appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1992, wrestler Randy 'Macho Man' Savage was asked "Have you ever cried?"

The idea of trying to explain a news event to tens of millions of people at the same time is something that I am sympathetic to. It makes things easier to read.

When conservative talking heads began to claim that the social network was suppressing right-wing topics, he became enamored with the descriptions. Human editors decided what to highlight for people. You can disagree with editorial judgments but the effort is to help people. It would be better if companies tried and failed to do that instead of outsourcing it to automation.

The hit rate is automatically low according to the descriptions of the trends. It will either be too much of an explanation or not enough. Familiarity doesn't matter. This form has an inherent strangeness.