That Bothers Me

Nut shaving, anime adaptations, and rich people building their own city

September 01, 2023

This Bothers Me

In the grand tradition of drag icon Coco Peru, this week’s issue is dedicated to things on the internet that bother me. Not major structural problems. Just minor to moderate gripes. Stuff that you look at and think, “that bothers me.” 

Drag artist Coco Peru in a Target grocery aisle saying, “that bothers me.”

Where is Your Legal Team?

An Instagram ad from “nutcaregrooming” with a before and after meme format using Ryan Gosling looking sad from Blade Runner and Ryan Gosling looking happy as Ken in Barbie. The before text is “how my balls feel after shaving.” The after text is “how my balls feel after Nutecare.” 

If you don’t have a legal team telling you you can’t use Ryan Gosling’s likeness and Warner Bros intellectual property in your ads, how well have you vetted your product? Who is gonna show up in court if something goes wrong? I’m not putting this thing near my nuts. 

Meta does seem to have a larger low-quality, scammy, and illegal product ad inventory problem right now so 🤷

Platform Updates

Instagram & Threads

The Rest of Meta 

TikTok

YouTube

Google 

Apple

Reddit

Twitch 

Snap 

Twitter

The Product 

The Dumpster Fire

Culture Movers 

Film & TV

Music 

Creator Economy 

AI 

Scams

Tumblr and Netflix Need to Cool It 

I like anime, but I’ve never connected with One Piece. And I’ve NEVER seen a live-action anime adaptation that looked good. But the geniuses at Netflix are trying to make live-action One Piece happen, and Tumblr is happy to sell them all of their ad inventory to attempt it. 

Yesterday, I opened up the app and saw:

  1. A masthead video placement with the trailer

  2. A custom content feed pinned to the top of my feed options 

  3. Ads for One Piece in the first two promoted post spots of my feed (maybe more; I closed the app after getting these screenshots) 

  4. Some creeping pirate clown thing literally covering up recommended content on the desktop sidebar

Media buyers, for the love of all that’s holy and good in this world, please push platforms on frequency caps. Being this aggressive and intrusive is so counterproductive. Most humans don’t want to post or consume more One Piece fandom content after being bombarded by this many ads for the same show. This campaign took me from One Piece ambivalent to One Piece hater. I am now an enemy of the One Piece fandom, and you can blame Netflix and Tumblr for that. 

San Francisco Empties Out

This is one of the best times of the year to be in San Francisco. Fogust is coming to a close, our delayed summer is starting, and all the burners leave the city for a week. Burning Man sounds lovely. I’d probably enjoy going at some point, but you also have to love the chill, easy-going vibe in San Francisco when so many folks are out of town. It's easier to get a reservation at that fancy restaurant. Transit isn’t as crowded. Folks, just relax a little. 

This is why I was thrilled to learn that a secret cabal of tech millionaires and billionaires have been buying up land outside of San Francisco to build a new city. Sounds great. The Bay Area needs more housing, the vibes are frankly a lot nicer here when the city empties out a little, and, frankly, these sound like the exact kind of people that I don’t enjoy running into in San Francisco. So I say go ahead and build your weird new tech worker city. This actually doesn’t bother me. 

What’s Bothering You?

Run into anything mild to moderately bothersome on the internet recently? Let it out in the comments, and I’ll feature some interesting gripes in a future newsletter.