Wandering around the Web: Tide pods and social mods

The past week observed further lunacy with the Tide pods craze as well as a gaming upgrade to Facebook

A tiding over

I didn’t want to approach the Tide pods challenge because I feared I’d be feeding into the idiocy, but when a bakery Instagrammed a Tide pod doughnut, I threw my hands in the air and wondered why on earth the food industry needs to take a hit.

Wake N Bake in North Carolina proudly (why?) shared a post of a glazed doughnut, with the trademark blue-and-orange colouring. “One of our Millennial employees (Caitlin) decided to take a moment to teach the youth the difference between what to eat and what not to eat,” the caption reads, “This is a Donut... you can eat this! Tide is for laundry silly. Available at our Carolina Beach location today!”

The mere act of eating a Tide pod shows the degenerative power of ‘challenge-scapes’ within the Internet. Whether someone’s doing it for the views, or doing it to avoid the heartbreaking FOMO, the collective need to participate surpasses the concept of a global community and lands on ideologies of, well, idiocies.

Users have fumed over the the data harvesting scandal.

Gamers, get social

Look out, Twitch, looks like there’s a new monetised streaming platform to come to town soon. While we love watching TheRadBrad play the latest Metal Gear Solid, there’s a bounty of opportunity with Facebook, given the ‘ready accumulation’ of views and interaction gamers will enjoy.

According to a press release, Facebook is “actively exploring ways for fans to back their favourite gaming creators via payments during select livestreams.” We have Guy Cross, Facebook’s head of games partnerships for North America, to thank. There are promises that streams will be able to run at 60fps and maintain a resolution of 1080p. Let’s be real, we know it’s an effort to keep users stuck to their blue-and-white pages. Win-win?

Rants and ramblings from excursions in cyberspace