The 9 Big Things That Happened In January 2019
The first month of 2019 has been a weird one.
If you're reading this post, you're probably a Digg dot com reader, which means you probably generally keep up with What The Internet Is Talking About. But even the must astute news nerd can miss a major event or two. That's fine. It's good, actually. Especially if you went on a vacation or did a digital detox or something.
Still, it's important to keep up with The Story that is always unfolding in front of us, no matter how funny, exciting, depressing or infuriating it can be. Composed of some of the most trafficked, best-performing stories of the month, this One Big Post should catch you up to speed, starting with…
January 8 — Girl Wearing VR Headset Accidentally Drops A Digital Grenade And Mistakenly Makes A Run For It
Fresh off the heels of the holiday season, the internet was flooded with hilarious posts about loved ones receiving and either misusing or mis-appreciating their gifts. This amazing video falls into the former category. And when we say falls, we mean it in every sense of the word.
An instant hall of fame candidate for the "VR messing with someone's head" canon of clips.
January 9 — Guy Opens Up Broken Telephone, Uncovers A Portal To Hell
Unfortunately, nothing gold can stay. While a good-natured virtual reality tumble is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than a phone full of scary bugs, this clip much better fit the tone of January 2019.
An absolute abomination. Which brings us to…
January 10 — Jeff Bezos Joins The Canon Of Famous Men And Their Absolutely Deranged Sexts
Man, we should have known that the billionaires were restless as soon as Jeff Bezos' sexts leaked. Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon and the world's richest man, announced his plans to divorce his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, to whom he's been married for a quarter century.
Naturally, it did not take long for the man's weird sexts to hit the internet, which they did by way of the National Enquirer. A couple of standouts: "I love you, alive girl" and "I will show you with my body, and my lips and my eyes, very soon."
Of course, nobody sexts this shit in a vacuum. Bezos, worth an extraordinarily uncool $138 billion, boasts both the unshakeable confidence and delusion of an extremely rich man and the normal boneheaded horniness of a normal person. Those two ingredients form a powerful cocktail of stupid behavior, which the Jeremy Gordon detailed in the Outline nicely:
All those heavenly pretensions made earthly by the spirit possessing his brain, moving him to express himself with the grace of a Tool super-fan. The power of whatever birthright he believes he possesses is sapped by the horny. And so: "I love you, alive girl."
January 12 — UCLA Gymnast Katelyn Ohashi's Floor Routine Is So Freakin' Delightful It Hurts
I really don't have a ton to say about Ohashi's excellent routine other than, wow, this is so fun. If you somehow skipped it because you only follow gymnastics once every four years or you can't tell the difference between a double back layout and a back double full, no worries. Just hit the play button and look for the joy.
If you want to understand why these wild, fun, dance-y college gymnastics routines never seem to happen at the Olympics, read Dvora Meyers in Deadspin as she attempts to answer that exact question.
And if you want to understand why this particular routine from Ohashi is so special, take a look at this profile from the Players' Tribune about her triumphing over injuries, bullying and body dysmorphia to succeed in college gymnastics.
January 14 — The Astonishing Effects Of The Government Shutdown, In 8 Charts
The government shutdown ended on January 25, but 11 days before that there might as well have been no end in sight. After a handful of pay periods went by and societal cornerstones like airport security began falling apart, Vox put together a context-rich, chart-heavy look at how devastating this weird political chess maneuver was to those it affected most.
[Vox]
January 15 — Trump Orders Piles Of Fast Food For College Football Champions, Becomes A Meme
To celebrate the Clemson Tigers defeating the Alabama Crimson Tide to win the college football national title, President Trump invited the Clemson Tigers to the White House to help him consume a massive spread of food from Burger King. White House staff even snapped this haunted image:
Absolutely a bizarre photo. There is no question in my mind that it is 100% haunted. Keep in mind, this was in the midst of the federal government shutdown. Also, remember that a reported 57 black Clemson players turned down the trip to the White House.
And all the while this weirdo story was unfolding, President Trump's administration was doing things like this…
January 16 — He Was Born In Grand Rapids And Fought In Afghanistan, But The Local Sheriff's Office Still Turned Him Over To ICE
This story performed really well on the Digg Facebook page, which is unusual. On the social network best known for racist aunts and uncles going off, political stories tend to flounder.
The exception is truly egregious, disgusting stirring news. And Hamed Aleaziz's story for BuzzFeed News about Jilmar Ramos-Gomez is all of that and more. Pay careful attention to how Aleaziz frames this quote of a law enforcement official dodging responsibility for Ramos-Gomez's unjust imprisonment:
Chuck DeWitt, undersheriff for the Kent County Sheriff's Office, said that his officers had followed procedures and that everything about the case appeared routine. He regrets what happened to Ramos-Gomez but says that it was ICE, not the sheriff's department, that made the ultimate decision to identify him as a target.
January 22 — Whoa: Watch A Meteoroid Hit The Moon During The Super Blood Wolf Moon Eclipse
While our society fell slightly more into disarray, the non-human parts of the universe continued to amaze. This month's Cool Natural Phenomenon™: the Super Blood Wolf Moon Eclipse. Check out this neat clip of a meteoroid making impact with our briefly rose-colored satellite:
January 23 — Kamala Harris's Logo Is A Disaster. Here's Why
Here's another political-adjacent post that just crushed with the Digg audience. Senator Kamala Harris was just one of a handful of politicians who announced their candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential election. All of them have their pros and cons. According to conservative blogger and design critic Jonathan V. Last, the latter for Harris includes her campaign logo.
Last writes:
On paper, Harris, like Rubio, looks pretty formidable. And like Rubio, she has rolled out her campaign with a dumpster-fire logo. Seriously: It might be the worst political graphic design job in a generation… So, you know, there goes that campaign.
Is it that bad? I'm not sure. Do logos matter as much as Last is alleging? I'm not sure about that either. I personally don't think so.
But I do think it matters that the Digg audience — people like you! — turned out in DROVES to click a headline from a lesser known blog with "Kamala Harris" and "disaster" in the title.
The 2020 drama is here, folks.
January 27 — Future Of Digital Journalism In Question As BuzzFeed And HuffPost Lay Off 1,000
If the month had ended on January 26, I would have put BuzzFeed News' triumphant, essential and challenging story which detailed how President Trump allegedly ordered his indicted advisor Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. It's a tremendous piece of political reporting, which, though vaguely disputed in part by the Mueller investigation, sheds an unusually bright light on the dark dealings of the Trump White House.
Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier did a remarkable job reporting this story out. Unfortunately, another BuzzFeed News story overshadowed theirs the same week: BuzzFeed, HuffPost and a handful of other digital media companies combined to lay off four figures of staffers at the end of January.
Edward Helmore's lead in the Guardian:
Revenue-per-click, the business strategy that has informed digital publishers for years, was effectively pronounced DOA this week as leading players in a sector once viewed as the future of journalism announced deep cuts.
Here's to February <3
Did you like this One Big Post? Did you hate it? If you have criticisms, questions, concerns or queries shoot me an email at [email protected]. Make the subject line "January 2019 Post" so I know it's real.
