The Brief is Back: Time for a Vibe Check

May has been an absolutely wild rollercoaster of a month for me. I just got back to San Francisco after a weeklong trip to Florida and South Georgia to visit with family and family-friends. Recharged by all that warm weather, I’m jumping back into Kinda Brief this week to try something a little different. Since it’s been a whole month since the last newsletter, I want to run through the recurring cast of companies and trends I normally cover and just check in on the vibes. Are the vibes improving? Have they deteriorated since April? Has another form of vibe metamorphosis occurred? Let’s find out! 

@danbanbam

An E-boy gets the Vibe Check... #houseofvibe #eboy

Oh, and full disclosure, I only started my normal link curation workflow back up last week, so don’t treat this as a comprehensive breakdown of May news. It’s more of a vibe. 

Vibe Check

🔀 Instagram & Threads - I’ve been using Threads more, and I’m pretty happy with it. It still feels like “normie Twitter,” but as long as I have Bluesky for my “weird and/or horny Twitter” fix, I don’t mind that. It was especially good for discussion and memes around X-Men 97 and I could see TV fandom generally really working on the platform. The new Tweetdeck style layout is nice. That said, I think the overall Meta-ness of things makes it hard for me to get too hyped about any of this. Speaking of…

⬇️ The Rest of Meta - Meta’s quest (not to be confused with the Meta Quest) to put AI everywhere really confuses me. I’ve yet to see anyone have something positive to say about April’s push to add Meta AI to every corner of their apps. Add the fact that Meta seems to have made it extremely difficult to opt out of having your posts used to train their AI, and the ick factor is high. 

😬 TikTok - They’re testing 60 minute videos, they launched new AI ad creation tools, they centralized their creator tools into a new hub, oh and they might get banned in the US. Creators are freaking out or in denial, the company is already planning layoffs, and the ban is going to court in September. 

➡️ YouTube - YouTube has games you can play in their app now. Which is cool I guess. Netflix has done something similar (you should absolutely play Hades via Netflix if you have it, great game) and while I’ve played a few of them (mostly Hades) it’s not game changing for me. Which is how I feel about YouTube games. They’ve also made some quality of life improvements to creator monetization tools, but mostly I’ve been busy watching the four hour Jenny Nicholson Star Wars Hotel video. 

⏬️ Google - Google announced a bunch of AI stuff at their annual I/O conference including expanding their “AI Overview” in search results which in addition to raising some serious questions about how Google’s relationship with the publishing industry, it also told people to put glue on their pizza. There’s a big SEO story brewing around leaked search algorithm data, but more importantly they told people to eat glue and rocks with their AI! 

⏳ Apple - Apple launched a new iPad that people liked (⬆️) then they put out an ad for said iPad that people hated (⬇️) but people seem to have largely forgotten that now (🤷). Looming over all of this are questions about how hard Apple will jump into the AI arms race with the next iPhone and iOS updates. 

⬆️ Pinterest - Here’s the thing, I’m currently working as a contractor at Pinterest, you should view everything I say about the company with a big “they sign his paychecks” level of healthy skepticism. That said, when I try to look at things objectively, it does feel like Pinterest is having a good moment, which is well summarized by Time’s 100 Most Influential Companies of 2024 list. 

⬆️ Bluesky - My weirdo corner of the internet keeps making small but useful improvements. It’s got DMs now and video’s on the roadmap. I still think Bluesky’s approach to customizable feeds, algorithms, and moderation should be the standard for social media services. 

➡️ Spotify - They launched a new typeface and it looks great. They are also bricking their Car Thing devices, which were things that went in your car to play Spotify. But like who had a Spotify Car Thing so who cares?

🗑️ X (formerly Twitter) - No major updates. Still trash. 

🔀 Internet Pipes & Tubes - “38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later.” So that’s not good, but as I shared last month there’s movement to restore Net Neutrality so the vibe is mixed. 

↘️ The Movies - Everyone is freaking out about Furiosa underperforming over Memorial Day weekend. Strike delays are making 2024 look like a down year overall for box office numbers. But I saw Furiosa in a busy theater this week (less than a week from it’s premiere date but after the “it flopped” narrative set in), and I really liked it. The last movie I saw in theaters before that was I Saw the TV Glow which I also loved. Go see a movie. 2024 is an odd year but there’s some good stuff out/coming soon

🤔 Streaming - There’s a Netflix, Peacock, Apple TV+ bundle coming. And a Disney+, Hulu, Max bundle coming. We live in a Cable but More Confusing era. On the plus side Hacks (streaming on Max) and Loot (streaming on Apple TV+) are very funny right now. So that’s something. 

⬆️ The Music Industry - One of the only true bipartisan points of agreement in this country is the fact that Ticketmaster sucks. So the DOJ suing to break up Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s concert ticket sales and promotion monopoly is a vibe improvement. 

 ⬇️ Publishing - The ongoing trend of newsroom layoffs and the looming threat of a possible AI induced world of Google 0 traffic are the real reasons the vibe is bad, but let’s detour to a zany reason instead. Former Presidential candidate and all around awful human, ​​Vivek Ramaswamy acquired a ~8% stake in BuzzFeed and is going around demanding they do stupid shit like hiring Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. None of this really matters for BuzzFeed because of how their duel class stock’s voting shares are distributed, but rolling your eyes at how annoying Ramaswamy is almost feels cathartic. 

 ⬇️ ⬇️ The Try Guys - The former foursome lost their trio status and is now down to just two guys.

🗑️🔥 OpenAI - So OpenAI put out a voice thing that sounds a lot like Scarlett Johansson in the movie Her. Turns out they’d approached her about officially licensing her voice for the product, she said “no,” and was very upset (and litigious) when she heard the voice they launched anyway. Sam Altman has said Her is his favorite movie (despite behaving like someone who has never seen it) and fired off a tweet that just said “Her” when they announced the totally-not-ScarJo voice. Oh and remember when the OpenAI board tried to fire Altman back in November? Former board member Helen Toner spoke about the incident on a podcast this week. Altman really seems like he’s somewhere on the total asshole to complete sociopath spectrum. 

 ⬇️ GenAI Generally - You’ll noticed that Generative AI is a pretty consistent through line with the bad vibe shifts in May. I don’t feel like dwelling on it further so I’ll just leave you with this: “Google Researchers Say AI Now Leading Disinformation Vector.” 

Misc Links 

Here’s some stuff that didn’t fit into the Vibe Check.  

• Discord’s turning the focus back to games 

• Tumblr launches its semi-private Communities in open beta

• Meta and Activision face lawsuit by families of Uvalde school shooting victims

• OnlyFans Model Claims She Got NYC Portal to Dublin Shut Down Over Flashing

*I’m very dyslexic, and this is a largely free project/hobby. I do not set aside the same time for proofreading that I do for other professional work. If you spot a typo that would cause a communication error, please reach out to gently let me know.