Wrapped is less about a person’s surprising listening habits and more about nebulous shifts in vibe. Yes, a lot of people listened to Chappell Roan and Kendrick Lamar this year. Is anyone a little stunned?
But this isn’t even just a Spotify problem. Many platforms now offer summaries of the year and almost all of them seem like a collective shrug. On TikTok, the promoted company that its users were very interested in being modest, very interested in Moo Deng. Yes, no joke. These revelations are just as shocking as the fact that there were 1.2 million posts on BookTok in the first 10 months of the year, something anyone who’s ever opened the app could probably tell is a big part of the platform.
Reading its annual report, I was reminded that, perhaps, TikTok’s algorithm has become too good at pointing people in the direction of sure-fire hits and less good at loading FYPs with videos that people will find incredibly inventive or fascinating.
In other unsurprising news, the excitement was big on Grindr this year. The hookup app’s Unwrapped report also named Charli XCX as Mother of the Year and found the Sex Position of the Year to be missionary. Actually, maybe that’s surprising. At least for Grindr.
My final thought, however, comes from an end-of-year mainstay that (I don’t think) is algorithmically based: the Oxford University Press Word of the Year. Determined by popular vote, expert input, and, as Oxford Languages president Casper Grathwohl told The New York Times, a little “dark art,” this year’s word is… drumroll … “brain rot.” Er, you know, the degeneration that comes from spending too much time looking at silly things online.
First, yes, it’s two words. Secondly, other people too noticed this discrepancyproving that perhaps all of the internet’s beloved New Year’s Eve traditions are feeling the heat of social media scrutiny this year. “Brain rot” also overtook “demure” and “romantasy,” BookTok’s frequent topic. So ultimately, perhaps the algorithms impacted this case as well, but not in the way you might expect. Maybe the real brain rot was all the decisions we made along the way.
Loose threads:
Martial law in Bluesky. Earlier this week, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol briefly declared martial law in the country. The country’s opposition parties have already moved to accuse himbut while it was happening, it served as one of the first big Bluesky news events to unfold on the platform. If you missed it, I suggest you go back and relive the moment through Verge introduces editor Sarah Jeong‘s semi-drunk dishes to the plate.
Tsunami warning in Bluesky. On Thursday, Bluesky had another big news event: a tsunami warning that kept much of Northern California, including the San Francisco Bay area, highly strung for more than an hour, sharing updates, jokesand enjoying the fact that there was a new place to go discuss these things.
A crafty dish. About Chappell Roan and Twisted Sister.
Do you need a vacation… something? Advent Carolndar back. It’s a fun little web show of Christmas carols invented by a couple of very clever theater nerds. If you haven’t seen it before, go back and watch all the episodes from previous years while you’re on your instagram page.