Greetings from Greenpoint, where we’re busy stashing cookies in the pockets of our haute couture.
Round the office things continue apace. We're refining our paternity leave policy, working on a new client project (in the Midwest!), and vibing out to the snow super moon, which a couple of our employees have promised will have significant impact on our emotions and intuition. All we know for sure is that it was really big and impressive and impossible to fully capture in an iPhone photo.
On to the #content:
Parents are bad at social media
It’s 2019, and plenty of kids have had an online presence since they were born thanks to their Facebook-obsessed parents. For many of them, Googling their names for the first time at age ten or eleven and finding a wealth of photos or school sports stats online is a rite of passage, and often full of unwelcome surprises.
We’re all too familiar with the mommy bloggers, insta celebs, and Gwyneth Paltrow acolytes who've decided to go ahead and monetize their kids lives online (and who often refuse to stop, even when asked to by the kids themselves). But that's just the most obvious tip of the iceberg. The practice of oversharing your kids lives online is so common that it has its very own portmanteau: sharenting. Some kids find the exposure flattering and enjoy coming across photos or accolades on the internet, but for many others, the non-consensual sharing is embarrassing and invasive. In a modern-day version of My Sister’s Keeper, an 18-year-old Austrian girl is even suing her parents for posting content of her online since she was a baby.
The Millennial who lives life online and feels the need to share everything with everyone is an oft-repeated trope, but at least they typically boast some fluency with social media--and have some agency over the process. But the overwhelming need to share feels even ickier when applied to people who should know better. Sharing photos with family members is one thing; broadcasting constant images from your child's nascent life into the ether for strangers to pore over feels like at best a violation of privacy. And it doesn't help that social media companies, through algorithms, interactive design, and social science, encourage this kind of thing. At the very least, all of the actors in this should practice some Golden Rule common sense: would you want all this information shared about you without your consent?
Now please follow our dog on Instagram.
Things are happening
Watch how the world’s 15 most popular brands’ rank has changed over time. It’s fascinating, mesmerizing, and also please save us from our techno-futurist overlords.
Medium is launching not one, not two, not three, but four subscription publications with more to follow. The pioneer mags will cover science and technology, business, health and general interest.
In the department of dirty jobs done dirt cheap, The Verge has the story of what it’s like to be a Facebook moderator, and as you can imagine it is very much not good.
JFK’s former TWA flight center has been turned into a retro-inspired boutique hotel, and we would like to book an office staycation there now, please.
Our friends at Contently wrote about how hate-fueled headlines are the new clickbait, but explained why the traction is not sustainable. We love a good hot take, but not such major fans of the hate take.
The Museum of the Dog is back in NYC after a 30 year hiatus. Temple of the Dog, however, remains firmly in the 90s.
What We're Listening To
Temple of the Dog duh. As a matter of LHC company policy we condone stealing bread from the mouths of decadence.