Weekend Edition | 5.10

In case you missed it

• We launched a new website called Clone! The story behind the design is here. 

• Brown Dirt hats are on preorder, for $35 you can bundle yours with an annual subscription. 

• Henfluencer Tove Danovich came on Tasteland to talk about chickens, beekeeping and more. 

• We’re throwing a party on May 16th at Jane Motorcycles in Williamsburg. You can RSVP here. FREE DRINKS. 🍹

Hiiiiii it’s Daisy Alioto

I’m blown away by the positive reception for Clone. Eventually, we will shift most of our link curation there (with future opportunities to get Clone in your inbox). In the meantime, here are some of my favorite headlines that appeared on Clone this week. Keep scrolling for other links we liked. 

• Why I can’t quit The New York Post (The New Yorker) 

• Bratz hair is at risk (The Economist) 

• This Coinbase campaign is meant to mess up your TV (It’s Nice That)

• Bill Ackman owns a $4.9 million pocket watch (Bloomberg Pursuits) 

• Wait, Partiful’s founders worked at Palantir? (The Cut) 

• “An interaction between two proteins is key to keeping memory intact over time.” (Quanta)

• The most valuable commodity in the world is friction (Kyla’s Newsletter)

• An Oral History of the 2000 Webby Awards (Inc.)

• A crypto founder faked his death. We found him alive at his dad’s house (SF Standard)

• When journalists write fiction (The Creative Independent)

Newsletter continues below

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DIRT X BOYS CLUB

Clone is a partnership with Boys Club, a media/marketing company and community for “dumb smart people and/or smart dumb people.” We had Boys Club founders Deana Burke and Natasha Hoskins on Tasteland last month. Here’s an excerpt from our interview:

Francis Zierer: I want to introduce an idea I read earlier today in An Obituary for Millennial Culture by Drew Austin. There was this paragraph that stood out to me: “After all, millennials have nowhere to go. The internet is where they live. The boomers own property and land; in lieu of more traditional assets, the wealth that millennials accumulated online is their generational nest egg.” 

Deana Burke: That hits, yeah. 

Natasha Hoskins: I feel like there's something actually quite comforting about the idea. It’s nice to know that misery loves company and we’re all in it together, it’s not a product of my own personal failing. 

Daisy Alioto: Yeah as someone who has built my business online I have these moments where I’m like, “It’s fine if all of this doesn’t work out because this isn’t my real life.” Really? Somebody call Annie Dillard because that’s how you’re spending your days, bitch.

FZ: You need to introduce more friction. I'm very pro friction. The removal of friction is literally death, the end result of a frictionless culture of frictionless software is literally death.

DA: You're right, Francis. I'm just going to say it because we're all thinking it: Twitter needs to be ribbed for her pleasure. 

FZ: Okay, how would you rib Twitter? How would you rib Twitter? 

DA: That wasn't a real suggestion. Keep it moving.

NH: I've done this a little bit with Instagram. I was off Instagram for a while and then I started Instagram again and I have tried to keep it under a hundred people that I follow. So I will very regularly go through and unfollow a bunch of people. The main reason is like I don't want to have parasocial relationships with people that I follow on Instagram. If I can't pick up the phone and call you, then I shouldn't follow you on Instagram.

DB: Here's a contrarian take and this is said from someone in the active throes of addiction with social media, with Twitter specifically, and a minor addiction to TikTok. I wanna say in defense of internet addiction: Every couple of days I see a post that makes me feel like I am bearing witness to the vast expanse of human creativity.

Have you guys seen the guy singing Frank Ocean in rural China? How special is it to be able to see things like that and to be able to think about the world now in this new way. Of course It's overwhelming and awful in many ways, but there's a part of it that feels like what an incredible time to be alive to be able to see all this.

DA: We need to talk about your website, which is a Google Doc. And it's magnificent. I love how when you first relaunched it in that format, people were like trying to warn you. They're like, by the way, I could edit this. And it's like, yeah, that's the point. But I'm curious, what have you learned or observed of the visitor behavior through this time since launching?

NH: The response has been really positive, which has been really, really nice. I'm surprised at how little people shill. I thought a big issue was gonna be that we're gonna need to go there and like clear out people's self-promotion constantly. And that actually has not happened as much. People have a respect for the space that I'm actually quite surprised by. And that might just speak to the audience that is around Boys Club and people feel like they're in Boys Club, so they want to respect the land that we own as millennials, this Google Sheet. This third space.

DB: With great power comes great responsibility. And people seem to abide by that. ✨

OTHER LINKS WE LIKED THIS WEEK

• Laurie Stone wrote about the experience of modeling lingerie for Blank x Chantelle in her excellent newsletter, Everything is Personal. I think about her analysis of Don Draper and Rachel Menken’s relationship constantly. 

• Jane Pratt’s favorite things include Boy Scouts shirts (Strategist)

• “For F. Scott Fitzgerald, the electric shock of desire is always strongest just before the circuit is closed. The theme of delicious anticipation runs through everything he wrote.” (NYR) 

• Clue perfumery of Warm Bulb fame bridges scent and sound (Illinois Public Media)

• André 3000 is making menswear again (GQ) 

• Hermès hikes prices in the US (WWD)

• Ralph’s Hamptons (Ralph Lauren)