Season Four Finale

The New York Post is in its element covering the ignominious collapse of Governor Grabass, checking in yesterday with “Italian Americans mad at Cuomo for dismissing creepy behavior as cultural” (🤌 Mama mia!) and “‘Cuomosexuals’ lament fall of groping gov: Cuomo was my shamelessly sexy God.” The Post is terrible but it’s hard not to enjoy when they go after a worthwhile target.

A possible $10 billion valuation for Mail… kimp? Phoebe Bridgers covered Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters,” and it’s ok. Albert Burneko addressed the urgent question of how one is meant to own a toilet brush. And the slim hope that asteroid Bennu was going to hit the Earth this century has been extinguished. At best it won’t demolish the remains of our failed civilization until sometime after 2135.

Nestflix is a huge collection of fictional movies within movies and shows within shows. They’re all here: Kickpuncher and Kickpuncher 2 (Codename: Punchkicker), Les Cousins Dangereux, McBain, Wheel of Fish and many more. If this was a real streaming service it would be the best one that ever existed.

But What Have We Learned?

It turns out that reality is fractal. The closer you look, the more there is to see. Tabs lives way down in the micro end of the Mandelbrot most of the time, so let’s zoom back out and revisit some of the major hyperbolic components of these last seven months.

We met and immediately canceled Bean Dad. We had an insurrection. We got really into sea shanties for a minute, that was weird. We inaugurated President Bernie’s Mittens. Gamestonks went to the moon. Eeby Deeby. We declined to eat the Dark Nacho. Reply All worked the Notes App, but Nellie Bowles just couldn’t get anyone to care enough to cancel her. We met ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴏʟᴅ ʙʟᴏʙ and here it remains. “Dusty heap of chins” Piers Morgan self-canceled. The media industry was terrible, part mcmxlvi, but at least we preserved the integrity of Zack Snyder’s creative vision.

Shrimp Cereal Guy Jensen Karp and the Big Stuck Boat happened on almost the same day, did anyone else remember that because I sure as hell didn’t. Shrimp cereal guy disappeared instantly though, while the boat remained stuck for days. “Villainous real-estate developer in a live action Minecraft movie” Matt Gaetz got himself in trouble with his crooked buddy, but still remains in Congress because I guess they couldn’t think of a jail worse than that.

I explained what NFTs are, so no one ever has to do that again, you’re welcome. “Basecamp’s CTO… yelled ‘Hello my name is David Heinemeier Hansson, and this is Jackass!’ then body-surfed a shopping cart off a cliff, faceplanting directly into his entire L.” The New York Times covered some Facebook news. Billy G. got swole.

The Plagues kept happening, the whole time.

Shenk Toobin’ed. Eve Fartlow’ed. Bustle relaunched The Outline and called it Gawker (it was still bad though). The Guardian was a Twitter thread and The Verge was a Google doc, yea and a third of the seas were as blood. Batman “enjoys clams casino in his box lunch.” We didn’t understand scale. The girlbosses melted down. The Pacific Northwest melted down. We set the ocean on fire. We met the real Cat Person. Things kept happening and no one seemed able to stop them.

I figured out how to make GAN art and confused everyone. We broke some Bourdain news with Helen Rosner. “The Divorced Man’s giant space dong” had its seven minutes in heaven. The Alex Cooper Profile Olympics inspired us all with the spirit of international tabsmanship, I wrote at least one good headline, the beach made us old, Charlie brought us all into The Information Realm and finally, we finished the Season 4 Playlist.

But maybe the real tabs were the friends we made along the way? We had guest tabs from Original Intern Bijan Stephen and Daisy Alioto, and we got to know and love Season Four Interns Pernell Quilon, Tess Lynch, and Linda Yu (who contributed an incredible open thread post too). Senior Graphics Intern Alison Headley and Junior Graphics Intern Garrett Miller made it look nice, and Senior Forest Witch Jessie Guy-Ryan knows what she did. So does everyone in the Subscriber Discord, who are the closest thing that exists now to the Awl comments section (h/t Dello).

Last, but not least:

Thank you, for reading, tweeting (or not tweeting if that’s the role Tabs plays in your information diet), subscribing, commenting, replying, and hopefully laughing. Let’s all just agree that nothing important will happen in the next three-ish weeks, and I will see you all back here on September first for SEASON FIVE. Until then, I’ll see you on the trail.

(Also on Twitter and in the Discord, let’s be realistic.)