What is social media, and what is the distinction, if any, between social media and social network sites/apps? I just want to see if there is consensus.
I created a spreadsheet of everything I watched across every platform and asked Gemini to create an Unwrapped/Recap style review of my year in media. I've gotta say... not bad!
https://earnestpettie.com/b/26nN

My 2025, Rewound. A recap of what I watched.
I created a spreadsheet of everything I watched across every platform and asked Gemini to create an Unwrapped/Recap style review of my year in media. I’ve gotta say… not bad!
Earnest Pettie's Rough DraftThis is the first in a series I've written on cultural relevance. I'm just trying to arrange the puzzle pieces we all see into one coherent picture.
https://earnestpettie.com/b/26mT
Pointless take: Last Christmas is not a Christmas song. It’s a New Year’s song.
There’s a loneliness epidemic because a whole generation has grown up without Tom from Myspace automatically being their friend.
Cliches aren’t born; they develop from the abuse of repetition. I think that the speed and scale at which generative AI works will likely send certain phrases and constructs speeding into their second lives as cliches faster than we’ve ever experienced. The em-dash discourse was just the beginning.
My theory. All the people in the drug ads you see on TV exist in the same world. They’re in a horrible Truman Show style environment where they are being coerced into demonstrating positive effects of the drugs. They can’t not smile or they get moved to “the control group.”
The Studbudz All-Star weekend stream is better than any sports-related programming I’ve ever seen, including F1: Drive to Survive. They should win every kind of Emmy, including daytime and regional.
The white pages would be wild to a young person. A book with everyone’s phone numbers AND addresses that you had to pay EXTRA to be excluded from.
YouTube’s 20th continues with a trends report we released today. Some parts of this story will be very familiar, but I think you’ll find surprises in the data.
https://www.youtube.com/trends/report/tr25-20th-birthday/
YouTube Culture & Trends - Culture and Trends Report: 20th Birthday
An entertainment revolution 20 years in the making
YouTube Culture & Trends