Earnest content is back, baby!
We’re now officially in the era of the Biden presidency, and with it comes a number of immediate policy changes as well as an apparent reversion to cute internet content. Like this video of a parrot singing along to a Led Zeppelin song.
The video was originally uploaded in 2020, but that didn’t stop it from going viral this week right before Biden took office. And we’re likely to see a lot more earnest, fluffy content on our feeds this year. Now that Trump is banned from Twitter and other social sites, and we don’t have to worry about waking up to tweets from the POTUS that are inciting violence, things are a little more peaceful online. Emphasis on
This week on the internet: What we watched in 2020
A roundup of our entertainment coverage this year. Dec 23, 2020, 1:39 pm
Happy Holidays! We’re doing something a little different in today’s newsletter. Below, you’ll find our year-end streaming recommendations from our culture staff. From acclaimed films to silly TV shows, here are the best things we watched in 2020. Bonus: Scroll down to read about how this year felt like a Damon Lindelof show.
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Our top film-watching experiences of 2020
Movie theaters shut down in the spring, cutting off a weekly activity for many film buffs. We learned a lot from the experience. It forced us to tweak our at-home setups and get comfortable with projectors and drive-ins again. Being home all the time also encouraged us to revisit old films. The result? A year where many of us watched films at home alone or virtually with others as our p
Sometime early on in the pandemic, the conversation shifted from “What did you do this weekend?” to “What did you watch this weekend?” As we all sat at home, waiting for a vaccine (which is thankfully now on the way), we consumed a lot of culture.
Some chose books and music, but a majority of us turned to our streaming services to keep us occupied. And while movies offered a brief escape, nothing was better suited for quarantine than TV shows, especially ones with several seasons. In other words, we watched
a lot of TV in 2020. Below is a list of notable TV shows that we enjoyed this year.
Being online more in 2020 changed us
Did being home all the time change how we acted online in 2020? TikToks of people uncovering something bad or surprising at their jobs blew up (more on that, below), and more people were “canceled” this year than last. So, the short answer is yes, lockdowns and social distancing definitely affected internet culture.
The lack of social events and offices meant that we vented more of our feelings online and that we had the time and space to pay attention to particular posts that maybe wouldn’t have received as much traction in a “normal” year. People also gained large social media followings for documenting their pandemic life, like gardening legend Gerald Stratford and actress January Jones. From March to December, social media became a lens through which we viewed the outside world from home.