For whatever reason, Gabe simply has never been subject to TikTok. Whatever it's doing, however it's trying to do it, it simply doesn't plug into his dealio. I never got into Reddit really, whatever its charms, and that's the bifurcation. They could ban TikTok, or not ban it, or only make it available between the hours of Midnight and One O'Clock, and he literally wouldn't know. I have sent him three to four hundred TikToks over the last six years or so and he just says he doesn't have it and will never have it. I suspect it's like when your cat gives you an inside-out mouse, and you're supposed to appreciate it, but you want nothing to do with it in any way, shape, or form. For a variety of reasons. You won't suddenly be inspired to investigate mouse recipes. You know?

Marvel Snap is back now, but holy shit. I sure as shit didn't know NuVerse was a subsidiary of ByteDance, but then, I wasn't aware that my youngest daughter wouldn't be able to finish the video she was editing for her homework because it is owned by ByteDance also and it got taken down with the rest of it. It's almost like these companies are supermassive chonks, and it makes managing them a herculean task. We have a hard enough time managing them when they're fucking based here! Shouts out to Lina Khan.

Lotta pageantry going on. Malicious compliance, maybe. I thought Matt Stoller's piece about it in his monopoly newsletter BIG was more detailed than most conversations on the topic. Of course, I have to go back to my basic position, my bugaboo, which is that our reliance on all these fake Internets - Intranets, in the parlance - where other people own everything you do online and also determine who gets to see it or not and also who makes income from it is just weird shit. It's a conceptual thing; if you ask a younger person what the Internet is, it's more or less synonymous with WiFi. It's how they gain access to what corporations want them to see. The Devil, greatest trick, etc.

(CW)TB out.