Yesterday's Tabs Tomorrow

Sorry there were no Tabs yesterday, but instead here is an ultra-rare free Tabs on the People’s Friday, so I hope you’re not mad. Jesse Singal isn’t mad about his big transphobic scoop falling apart, in fact this is funny to him. He’s laughing about it from Internet Prison. Nilay Patel isn’t mad that he practically co-founded The Verge but they’re still making him write affiliate-marketing copy for printers. Elon Musk isn’t mad that all of Twitter’s blue chip advertisers have cancelled their expensive no-results-required brand awareness campaigns and now he only gets paid when someone buys a Ridge wallet. He loves it actually. Wouldn’t you like a Ridge wallet? Elon gets $0.08 from each sale. Adrian Chiles is allegedly not mad about his naked OnlyFans impersonator, who allegedly makes several thruppence a day allegedly reading Chiles’ alleged columns in the altogether for Chiles’ alleged fanciers, who allegedly call themselves “Chillies” according to alleged sources. And Barney Frank is not mad that his signature bank regulation law was weakened in 2018 but he is mad that regulators shut down his Signature Bank when they discovered this piece of corporate cringe.1 In fact Frank is so mad that he turned his New Yorker interview into the rare mutual Chotining.

But this week’s least mad media nitwit is figurative and literal grandma-killer Bethany Mandel, who complains about The Wokes2 for a living but when asked to define “woke,” came up with this:

Roll that beautiful transcript:

If I were asked to define woke on live television I would simply say that it means “alert to the systems of oppression that act on and around us,” but obviously I’m no expert. That doesn’t even sound scary, let alone like one of the greatest evils plaguing society. Aymann Ismail, who noticed that Mandel also couldn’t define “woke” a year ago, asked her what happened:

Now there’s someone with a gift for language. Tom Scocca covered wokeghazi in depth, if you’d like to cringe along at the other anti-woke buttsniffers. And “Merriam-Webster defines ‘woke’ as…” writes Thomas Chatterton Williams in his freshman English comp essay for Teen Atlantic Magazine today. D+ Tom, see me after class.

Hey remember the metaverse? Paul Murray went looking for what Facebook spent thirty six billion dollars on and it was the kind of depressing that tips unexpectedly into full-on despair,3 so c.w. for that I guess.

Vice: “AI Injected Misinformation Into Article Claiming Misinformation in 'Navalny' Doc.” It’s tempting to blame AI here but the story seems to be that someone went to an AI chatbot and asked it to fabricate sources that claim Alexei Navalny has diabetes. Surely we know better than that, here in Maruary, 2023?

Tabs Safety Bulletin:

• Do not wear claw clips in a car:

• Do not get between “Puddinfingers” Ron DeSantis and his J-e-l-l-o:

• The “Girls” ten year critical reassessment is underway. Please be alert to your surroundings if you choose to “re-introspect.”

• The Massachusetts Supreme Court has “reaffirmed a basic liberty established by the founding fathers: the right to be rude at public meetings.” Please seek shelter immediately.

Finally: BATS INNOCENT !!!!!!!!!!

Today’s Song: It’s new gecs day! Here’s “mememe.”

The Season 8 playlist is underway, and Seasons 4-7 are collected in the All Tabs playlist, which is now about twenty four hours worth of previous today’s songs. If you want an amazing playlist of all your own favorite songs, it’s simple: just add one song every day for two years and counting. I can’t believe it’s only Thursday.