Five things worth sharing from the last week or so, brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Matt.
1. By age 35…
Earlier this month, Marketwatch published an article about financial milestones, stating that by age 35 people should have twice their salary saved for retirement. It’s a nice idea, but far from reality for most of us poor, cash-strapped Millennials. Twitter caught wind of the article and the ‘By age 35’ meme was born. Here’s some Tweets I can totally relate to.
by age 35 you should have a kitchen cabinet dedicated entirely to plastic bags that contain other, smaller plastic bags
— vytas (@peakysblinder) May 20, 2018
By age 35 you should have at least two thirds of your hard drive space taken up by recursively nested copies of the hard drives from all your previous computers
— Alex Kerfoot (@akerfoot) May 20, 2018
By age 35 you should have at least one fork in your cutlery drawer that you just don’t like, and actively frown at if you accidentally grab it.
— Nutella Enchanted (@chrisopotamia) May 20, 2018
2. Shut up, friends
Instagram is adding a new feature that allows you to mute your friends’ posts and stories. It’s been a long time coming, and will be seen as a welcome addition for most. As an on-off Instagram user myself this is the update I’ve been looking for; I can continue following my intolerable friends and family without having to actually see them in my feed – ideal.
The feature will be rolling out over the next few weeks, you can read more about it on the Instagram blog.
3. Happy GDPR day!
It’s finally here; the GDPR deadline is today and thank the lord for that because wow if I had to spend one more day deleting emails from needy brands I think I may have lost my mind. “Please don’t go”. “We’ll miss you”. “Let’s stay friends”. Goodbye. Nope. You are not my friend.
A quick chat in the office this morning revealed that there are still a lot of businesses out there struggling to come to terms with what GDPR actually means, or have seemingly ignored it entirely.
And now the fun wait begins for the first official GDPR breach story. Do your worst, brands.
4. Stories for everything
Introduced by Snapchat way back in 2011, the ‘stories’ format has become increasingly popular across social networks and apps in recent years. Facebook and Instagram have since replicated the video format, with Instagram Stories in particular proving to be a huge hit with users – it raced to 100 million daily active users within two months of launching in August 2016, and as of November 2017 that figure soared to 300 million.
The latest company to jump on the stories bandwagon is holiday rental site Airbnb. The creatively named Airbnb stories will allow guests to show off their trips using the tried and tested stories format, which is essentially a sequence of short videos accompanied by a caption and location tag.
It’s an interesting move by the company and marks a shift its direction toward becoming a more socially driven service.
5. You don’t know what you’ve goth ‘til its gone
You know what I miss? Goths. Back in the early-2000s you couldn’t move for goths – there were goths in schools, goths in shops, I even had a sort of goth on my football team – but today they’ve all but disappeared from public view. Why? I blame global warming.
Goths may be gone/going, but they’re certainly not forgotten. Every year since 2009, May 22 has marked World Goth Day – a day where, according to the website
“the goth scene gets to celebrate it’s [sic] own being, and an opportunity to make its presence known to the rest of the world.”
In a fitting tribute to our sad, big booted friends, here’s everyone’s favourite video of some cyber-goths (like a goth but more powerful) dancing under a bridge.
