we need to talk

Bonjour,

Sometimes being on trend is the worst best thing that’s ever happened to me.

ily,

Writer: Natasha (insta)
Editor: Deana

The perfect tweet below sums up something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently: media literacy.

The reason the tweet is perfect is because (1) it hits home, (2) it’s a touch mean, (3) it’s building off this meme format and (4) Addison Rae is the perfect level of famous and random to invite to a party. No notes, Nic.

Yesterday, the Twitter account Pop Crave broke the news of Harris’ running mate before most legitimate news outlets.

The chaos-craving meme-lord in me could not love this more. However, the tax-paying, law-abiding citizen can’t help but worry.

The trend of unserious accounts becoming responsible for the distribution of very serious news is not new, but it feels like we are reaching levels of velocity and confusion previously unseen.

Pop Crave has been around since 2015, posting pop culture news and celebrity gossip with a self-effacing awareness that’s refreshing. In the last few years, parody accounts have spawned from there, with accounts Poo Crave and Poo Crave España.

It’s the 2024 version of The Onion, but what’s different today from 20+ years ago is that we’re all consuming content at a rate that is making us mentally ill and media illiterate.

Now, of course, despite how it might feel, not everyone on the planet is living on brain-rot-city Twitter dot com and getting their news from the timeline. But Twitter is to information laundering as that one friend who is the glue of the group. You get what I mean? That friend group doesn’t know how to hang out without her, and the spread of false information can’t happen without her (Twitter) either.

So, in an election year, it’s hard not to have a quick CTA to think about the spread of misinformation, the distribution of AI-generated content, and taking two seconds to DYOR even when it’s just not that serious.

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