Washed Weekly: The Dark Side of Cocomelon & Twitter's Algo
Let's just get to happy hour.
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What I’m Cooking, Drinking, And Watching This Weekend
by Dave
What I’m Cooking
As embarrassed as I am to admit this, I don’t have a meat market that I frequent. Pretty sad, right? A grown man who claims to own a garage with a refrigerator in it buys his meat from a grocery store butcher. Pathetic. I bet he uses a pellet smoker too. Yikes. Well, that’s about to change.
We have a business development guy here at Washed Media, and he’s good for a lot of things. If you ever find yourself in need of keg shell, keg pump, or any other type of keg accessory, he should be your first call. He has a guy. Now that I’m 39 with two kids, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunities to take advantage of this hookup. Can’t wait. Brett also has hobbies. He’s a provocative writer, as we’ve learned in recent days. He’s a style icon, a geography savant, and a pioneer in the buffalo chicken dip realm. But it’s at pickup hockey where I think Brett does his best work: networking.
He introduced us to Harbs, a guy that produces more testosterone than this entire office combined, and who famously let us use his boat for a Mugsy Jeans video. He might own half of the company now. Brett’s a very good networker. When he let me know that he had a meat market guy, I was all ears.
“I have a meat market guy,” he said.
The kid has a way with words.
I don’t have a plan, but I’m going to the meat market to acquire meat. Instagram is telling me it might be a brisket blend burger weekend. I’ll get the hammer ready to Gallagher these beauties out. Imagine not pulvering your burger.
What I’m Drinking
I’m going to tell you what I told Will deFries about two hours ago: I’m walking into his Derby party with a sixer of Red Stripe on my shoulder. It’s not your grandma’s Kentucky Derby drink, but it’s mine. I was at the Shell station down the street yesterday, and I saw a guy, probably mid-twenties, walking out of there with a six-pack on his right shoulder. Where was he going? Did he have the day off? Was he just pregaming our back-to-back game fives? I caught some inspiration. I’ll probably drink four of them and leave the last two in Will’s fridge as tribute. Let’s have a weekend.
What I’m Watching
Friday night is THE night. We’ve got two (2) closeout game sixes, and there appears to be heavy overlap. If you think I’d even consider not watching Stars-Knights and Mavs-Clips at the same time, you’re crazy. We’re going two screens, one of which will unfortunately be a laptop, and we’re going to have ourselves a Friday night. These late nights are starting to wear on me, but when we have that joint Mavs-Stars parade around downtown Dallas next month, you’ll find me going full Harvey Danger sitting atop a flagpole with tears in my eyes and a bottle of Thunderbird in my hand.
As for Saturday night, I’ll be fresh out of the first annual deFries Family Derby Kickback. I’m behind on Tourist Sauce, so I’ll probably have a lowkey evening watching my good internet friends play golf in Australia. About twenty minutes in, I’ll throw out some feelers to my high school pals about getting out of the country for a golf trip. Since I do this every time they drop a new season, I can tell you that one guy will hit me with a heart, one will go thumbs up, and the other three won’t even acknowledge it because there’s no way they have that kind of leash and we all know it. Guess it’s about time to launch a Washed Media golf vertical. We’re coming for that ass.
The Secret Lives of Cocomelon’s Dan and Lavelle Schmidt
by
The camera crew had finally packed up for the day which meant Dan got his first moments of silence since waking up. This wasn’t uncommon for him at this point — since TomTom, YoYo, and JJ were born, his free time had been all but taken up with routines, appointments, non-stop cleaning, and (of course) filming with the entire family due to the extreme pressure from the fandom they’d inadvertently gotten from Netflix.
His finger hovered over the mouse as the screen acted as the only light in the room. Despite Lavelle seeing the credit card charges earlier that month, it hadn’t deterred him from adding new subscriptions at the same clip he had in the months prior. OnlyFans was the drink of choice.
Lavelle sat under a blanket on the couch downstairs. She knew what he was doing. She always knew what he was doing. And after years of couples counseling resulting from the fallout of their open marriage, she had become okay with it. While they both realized the mixed emotions of an open marriage simply couldn’t be for them once TomTom was born, they also still felt the need to keep things fresh.
While Lavelle still hadn’t totally sorted through the incident with Dan and their second nanny, there was also a part of her that was simply jealous they hadn’t asked her to be involved. Just like in their college days, Dan liked to keep his trysts separate from Lavelle to not only protect himself, but to protect her, too.
Tonight, however, an emptiness fell over Dan as he checked updates from StArBuNnY888 and LuxuryHolly. His mind couldn’t stop fixating on their argument back in February after he randomly saw her photos pop up on the NaughtyWives subreddit.
Not only was that not in their post-therapy verbal agreement, but she was really willing to put their reputations at risk by posting full-face photos to Reddit? Even after reiterating that their Netflix contract would be null and void should she be caught, she still didn’t seem to understand the risk/reward of posting such reckless photos.
He clicked out of the OnlyFans tab and reluctantly navigated to Reddit. He remembered her username: InLuvWithTheCoCo2222 — again, reckless in his mind. While he knew there was a chance he’d go to her profile and see new photos again, he also couldn’t live with the dark cloud over his head that she could still be secretly doing it behind his back.
The page loaded. A new photo posted 3 minutes ago. He shut his eyes in disappointment and removed his leather gimp mask with dismay. Not just disappointment that she was clearly posting from the couch downstairs, but disappointment in what their marriage had become.
Looking up at the skylight, he yells into the night sky.
“WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY? Why, God, why?”
She could hear him yell. Dropping her phone onto her blanket, her heart began to sink more than ever before. That is, until she heard his footsteps coming down the stairs. Her heart had now broken through the floorboards, creating a hole inside of her deeper than the one she felt like their entire marriage was in.
He held his phone up and pointed to it.
“Tell me this isn’t you,” he pleaded. “Tell me.”
“I’m so sorry, baby,” she whimpered.
The rage in his eyes quickly shifted to tears of pure devastation.
“Come over here,” she requested while patting the seat on the couch next to her. “Come sit down next to mama.”
He sat down and buried his face into her shoulder; his tears forming two wet spots on her cashmere. She wrapped her arms around him and embraced him, reiterating numerous times that he’s “the only man she’ll ever truly love.”
And deep down, he did somehow know that was true.
She reached forward and grabbed the Cohiba Robusto blunt she had rolled just after putting YoYo down. “Hit this,” she told him. “I know a little green always makes you feel better.”
He drew it in and tried to hold it as long as he could. Blowing it out, the entire room became hazy as his favorite episode of Caroline in the City came on the screen. Looking up at her with tears in his eyes from the harshness of the Gorilla Blue strain she had shipped in earlier that week, he whispered, “I couldn’t live this life without you.”
They kissed while her fingers went through his hair.
Steam Room: Elon’s Twitter
by
Casual gore and unsolicited full-penny are NOT what I want from my online experience. Enter the Steam Room™ with me, if you will.
I’m getting out in front of something before we get started: I’m never calling it X. It was Twitter for years and it was doing just fine. More than fine, actually. It was perfect. A billionaire overspending on a social media app as a hobby and rebranding it because he has a weird obsession with the letter X doesn’t change that, at least for me. It’s called Twitter and the posts are called tweets. Sharing a tweet is called a re-tweet. Moving on.
I love Twitter and I don’t plan on leaving it any time soon. It’s still the best social media platform for my money. It’s an ever-breaking news source, but it’s also where the funny happens. That meme your bestie sent to you on Instagram that made you laugh your butt off? It started on Twitter. They all do.
However, I’ll be damned if it didn’t used to be a much better place. Since the Elon takeover, we’ve seen some changes that have severely impacted my online experience. Negative impacts.
Let’s start with the new verified user program. In the golden era of Twitter, having a checkmark next to your handle meant something. You had to earn it. I had one and the day I got it was a big damn deal. I earned it for being an esteemed member of the media (obviously). I used it with integrity, not for evil, not for engagement farming.
On Elon's Twitter, any Joe, Dick, or Harry can purchase their own checkmark for a few bucks. That iconic blue badge that used to carry some weight, some clout, doesn’t carry shit anymore. Why does it matter that it’s available for purchase? Because people with verified accounts have their tweets and replies promoted above all others. It’s RUINING the replies.
You’ll click on a tweet about a breaking college football story or maybe it’s just a hilarious meme, but instead of reading comments about the post itself, you’re greeted with a barrage of “my pussy in bio” OnlyFans spam and total losers promoting their own videos or get-rich-quick internet schemes. Crypto bros, OF models, grind mentality hardos, and alpha Twitter are taking over. You have to scroll down 50 replies to get to the real ones. I’m tired of it.
The worst, though, and I mean the WORST part of the new Twitter is the demented algorithm that decides what I should be viewing on the app. I don’t want to see dark, twisted content when I hop on the TL, but Twitter has decided all on its own that I’m interested in seeing high-speed, head-on motorcycle collisions or street fights that end in comas or paralysis. On a list of things that pique my interest, you will not find kidnappings or pitbull attacks, yet here we are.
A few months ago, first thing in the morning, I opened Twitter with a cup of bingbong in my hand only to see a video, from an account I do not follow, of an elderly woman’s literal guts spread out across a busy intersection like you see peanut butter spread across a slice of bread. Apparently she was caught under a bus and was dragged a hundred or so feet. Intestines, large and small, just smeared across pavement in 4K. One could surmise she died fairly instantly considering her spleen and brains were 75 feet apart from each other. Who wants to see that?
Just last night, I was served a video of a man accidentally shooting a hole in his hand with a pistol. A couple weeks ago I was served a video of a carjacker absolutely smoking a construction worker going about 50 MPH. A few days ago I was basically forced to watch a woman’s parachute fail to open after nose-diving off El Capitan. I’ve become numb to 9/11 footage at this point. I see people drowning, people beaten, suicides, alligator attacks, electrocutions, domestic violence, and stone cold murders on a daily basis.
I’m just looking for laughs, Elon. Cut the shit.
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Will, you are a mad man. I'm speechless. I haven't laughed that hard in a while at my desk
I am 31 and have no kids but do I need to be watching cocomelon?