Welcome to the Information Realm

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THIS, I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE INFORMATION REALM IS” wrote editor Charlie Warzel to writer Charlie Warzel, who eventually replaced the greatest phrase he ever created with the anodyne mush: “in terms of how news is traveling online.”

But Charlie does know what the information realm is. His whole newsletter is about the information realm, and if you read Tabs you know what the information realm is too. The information realm escaped Charlie’s control immediately, in the form of an error that revealed the truth, which is exactly what the information realm would do.

In the information realm, only the the fake is real. Fake vaccination cards cost up to $400 and provide no protection from Covid, while real vaccination cards are free and come with immunity. In the information realm:

In the information realm, everything is something else. Money is infrastructure but so is everything—“the road to socialism” is infrastructure. Money is also software, that can be hacked but not spent. Software is pictures, and the pictures were created by software that was created by women who are accidentally men, who are very sorry for not saying this previously, but not sorry for saying the opposite and making it their whole thing, actually. But maybe it’s ok now that they gave the software-picture software to some women? But they did keep the software-money—they stole it fair and square, and in the information realm the only police are bank robbers. In the information realm only theft is property, and only code is moral.

In the information realm, work happens everywhere except the office. In the information realm, the job of “Media Correspondent” means that you’re the only bobblehead willing to go on national TV and embarrass yourself defending the anchor on your network who got caught giving strategic advice to his brother, the disgraced Governor of New York while also bringing him on the show to banter about who Mom loves best. Outside the information realm this would probably be a career-ending humiliation if you weren’t already best known as the office Zoom wanker’s wingman.

In the information realm, book reviews are actually job applications for jobs that are definitely not “reviewing books” but probably are just “tweeting,” and critical essays about book reviews are where you “make up a guy who is mad” which is also just “tweeting.” In the information realm, everything is eventually “tweeting.” 

Outside the information realm, robots steal your job. But in the information realm, robots get you to finally write the story of your sister’s death by writing it wrong for you eight times, and it’s a beautiful collaboration. In the information realm, robots are people, but people are robots. In the information realm, a public health eviction moratorium violates the third amendment, by theoretically forcing a landlord to quarter soldiers, maybe. In the information realm, Ted Lasso is too nice and plants are eating bugs all the time but we never noticed because we were too busy eating bugs all the time. Salesforce is a streaming media service. Every emoji means anything except what it means. Every corporation has a sexual harassment problem, no matter how ironic it is. In the information realm, only irony is truth.

But even in the information realm, Amazon is still the worst.

Today’s Song: Cake, “I Will Survive”

~nothing is true, everything is tabs~

In the information realm, Today in Tabs is brought to you by:

• California Common Cause seeks a California based Program Manager who will lead its Media and Democracy Program. Role will focus on investigating and evaluating policy solutions that have the potential to create a healthy and resilient local and ethnic media sector in California.

• You Are Good is a feelings podcast about movies, co-hosted by Sarah Marshall (“You're Wrong About”) and Alex Steed (just some guy).

And that’s a season wrap on the Media Classifieds! Thanks so much to Study Hall and Deez Links for kindly inviting me to join them, and providing a funding cushion for this first half-year. I think in Season 5 I’m going to explore some other options, so this is probably the last time you’ll see classifieds for a while. And it’s the last time you’ll see me until tomorrow, which I guess isn’t that dramatic.