No Tweetdeck for Old Men

The Daily Beast has a long (LONG) profile of far-right YouTuber and whiny beanie baby Tim Pool by Robert Silverman, who went all the way back to 2006 and dug up skateboarding clips from before Pool’s beanie had matured into its uniformly black adult plumage. In over 11,000 words backed up by a positively Tabs-ian density of links, Silverman follows Pool’s emergence from Occupy Wall Street, where he livestreamed any conflict he could find, to the annoyance of activists and delight of cops, through his unsuccessful stints at Vice, where he told a female colleague “Women are too emotional to be good journalists; their feelings get in the way,” and Fusion, where he stood out as lazy and unproductive at an outlet that also employed Felix Salmon.

Today Tim Pool sits approximately one step past Joe Rogan in YouTube’s greased right-wing extremism funnel, and collects six figures a month for spreading the ideas of “far-right personalities like Brittany Pettibone, Lauren Southern, Carl ‘Sargon of Akkad’ Benjamin, Mike Cernovich, Mark ‘Count Dankula’ Meehan, Gavin McInnes, Anthime ‘Baked Alaska’ Gionet, and more,” while attracting little of the scrutiny those ideas usually entail, which is ultimately why a profile this exhaustive of a person this exhausting is worth doing.

This weekend a verified twitter account claiming to be grimdark cowboy author Cormac McCarthy made a nearly amusing post about social media engagement.

@CormacMcCrthy also had some thoughts about kombucha. Of course it’s fake, as Alex Shephard confirmed with McCarthy’s publisher. Let’s draw a charitable veil over the details here and just say it fooled a lot of people who should know better, but maybe didn’t realize that “verified” on Twitter just means someone confirmed that the account exists. McCarthy has a long history of not being on Twitter, including the time he didn’t die in 2016, and the other times he didn’t join Twitter, in 2015 and in 2012. I’ll see you all back here in five years when we do this again!

The Tab Sommelier: Might I suggest this evening the delightful pairing of Luke Winkie’s On Posting newsletter about the inexorable logic of the algorithms driving hustle-hustler Gary Vaynerchuk to scavenge New Jersey garage sales for manga and Pokémon cards (topnotes of wistful schadenfreude floating above an ironic, coppery finish) with Alexandra Marvar’s Verge story about the inexorable logic of the algorithms driving suburban teens to scavenge their Gen-X parents’ closets for Ed Hardy t-shirts to sell on Depop (a bold and brassy nose but a surprisingly subtle, regretful palate). We also have a very special two-Dirts combo: Patrick Nathan on the “Unusual Videos” YouTube channel and the crucial difference between pace and velocity, and Alex Aciman on browser tabs as “hoarded aspirations.” Both are quite earthy, as you would guess, but the connoisseur will find the gentle differences in bouquet, dare I say… stimulating?

Leon Chang released an album of rhythm-game style beats called “Leon Mode.” Jon Allsop in CJR: “How major media outlets screwed up the vaccine ‘breakthrough’ story.” Feds raided a Bitcoin podcaster in New Hampshire, to make sure the wrong people aren’t laundering money. Among the seized loot:

The Nod’s Brittany Luse and co-host Eric Eddings, who kicked the first rock of what would eventually become a landslide at Gimlet’s Reply All, are bringing back their previous show For Colored Nerds, in a partnership with SiruisXM’s Stitcher. Make sure you own your IP, everyone. HBO’s Woodstock ‘99 documentary is extremely watchable, but afterward I was like “wow, there sure was a lot of sexual assault? And… Moby? And why did they skip over Rage Against the Machine so fast?” Craig Jenkins makes a good case that “the message of the documentary isn’t ‘How do we make sure this never happens again?’ It’s ‘Look at these naked morons.’” Bacon is not going to disappear from California, but pro-cruelty Slate editor Jordan Weissmann doesn’t think we should risk it for the sake of luxurious four by six foot hog pens.

What Are Millennials Killing Today? Succulents.

Finally: Play/read Everest Pipkin’s exceptional game/poem “Soft Corruptor,” in Cordite Poetry Review.

Today’s Song: Squirrel Nut Zippers, “Hell”

~We wouldn’t ever eat anybody, would we?No. Of course not.No matter what.No. No matter what.Because we’re the good guys.Yes.And we’re carrying the tabs.And we’re carrying the tabs.~

It’s August second, which means I have been doing this for seven straight months (ok, I think I took one week off?). Normally I do two seasons a year with breaks in August and February, so early heads-up that I’ll be taking a break from August 13th until September 1st to go look at a lot of trees on the Appalachian trail, and then retool some things here in Tabs for Season Five. It feels weird taking time off as a subscription-supported writer, because it means I’m not delivering half of what you paid for in August. But the rest of the time I post way more than most newsletters that charge just as much, so I hope it evens out. Weird time to ask but hey, if you were to subscribe today that would be pretty reassuring! If you already subscribe, thanks! Not unsubscribing will be equally reassuring, but you can also: