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Blog

Images from No More Kings Day – WeHo

Earnest Pettie4 months agoJun 14, 2025
Blog

2024 Professional Wrap-up

Every year, I begin work wondering what I could possibly do that could be new or different, and...
Earnest Pettie9 months ago
Blog

New “Flowers” and an awards update

It's been a year since my last post about Flowers. A year ago, we had a premiere screening in Hollywood, and we'd released two of three videos we'd produced in the series. Last Friday, we released the last in our latest batch of videos, bringing our total to six. In the meantime, our series has won several awards!
Earnest Pettie10 months agoDec 16, 20241 Comment on New “Flowers” and an awards update
Essays

How to deal with the feeling of too many “trends”

There's an opinion becoming dominant in the world of "trends" that the Internet is generating too many trends too quickly for anyone to keep up with, that the word itself is becoming meaningless as a result. I think this perspective is the antidote.
Earnest Pettie12 months agoOct 13, 20242 Comments on How to deal with the feeling of too many “trends”
Essays

How Coyote VS Acme and Alicia Keys connect to my favorite corner of the internet

The NFL's altering of Alicia Keys's Super Bowl performance and Warner Bros. cancellation of Coyote vs. Acme call to mind one of my favorite corners of the internet, Lost Media.
Earnest PettieFeb 18, 2024Feb 18, 2024
Essays

Flowers: Chicken Noodle Soup (a personal reflection)

It’s 2006. You open YouTube in Firefox and see the Flash-based video player showing low-resolution footage of kids...
Earnest PettieJan 19, 2024Jan 19, 2024
Blog

7 years of Doordash orders

I just realized you could download all of your data from Doordash, so I downloaded my ZIP file...
Earnest PettieJan 15, 2024Jan 15, 2024
BlogEssays

2024: Year of the Billionfluencer

The rise of billionfluencers marks a shift as billionaires are now seen as objects of fandom, wielding great influence through social media, directing discourse and attention.
Earnest PettieJan 10, 2024Jan 11, 2024
Essays

Why music is memes and we make the hits

In today's landscape, the popularity of a song is often less about a song speaking to you and more about a song speaking for you.
Earnest PettieJan 5, 2024Jan 5, 20242 Comments on Why music is memes and we make the hits
Essays

Is Everything Fandom?

As the things that traditionally bound us together have receded in our social lives and the internet is increasingly that social glue, have we allowed fandoms to replace institutions in our lives?
Earnest PettieDec 29, 2023Jan 10, 20241 Comment on Is Everything Fandom?
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Quick thoughts

6 days ago

Cliches aren’t born; they develop from the abuse of repetition. I think that the speed and scale at which generative AI works will likely send certain phrases and constructs speeding into their second lives as cliches faster than we’ve ever experienced. The em-dash discourse was just the beginning.

2 weeks ago

My theory. All the people in the drug ads you see on TV exist in the same world. They’re in a horrible Truman Show style environment where they are being coerced into demonstrating positive effects of the drugs. They can’t not smile or they get moved to “the control group.”

3 months ago

The Studbudz All-Star weekend stream is better than any sports-related programming I’ve ever seen, including F1: Drive to Survive. They should win every kind of Emmy, including daytime and regional.

3 months ago

The white pages would be wild to a young person. A book with everyone’s phone numbers AND addresses that you had to pay EXTRA to be excluded from.

4 months ago

YouTube’s 20th continues with a trends report we released today. Some parts of this story will be very familiar, but I think you’ll find surprises in the data. https://www.youtube.com/trends/report/tr25-20th-birthday/

RSS Books

  • Earnestp started reading Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins February 4, 2025
    Earnestp started reading Convergence Culture
  • Earnestp finished reading Generation X by Douglas Coupland February 2, 2025
    Earnestp finished reading Generation X
  • Earnestp started reading Generation X by Douglas Coupland January 30, 2025
    Earnestp started reading Generation X
  • Earnestp finished reading Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken January 18, 2025
    Earnestp finished reading Ultra-Processed People
  • Earnestp started reading Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken January 6, 2025
    Earnestp started reading Ultra-Processed People
  • Earnestp wants to read Generations by Neil Strauss January 6, 2025
    Earnestp wants to read Generations
  • Earnestp wants to read Generation X by Douglas Coupland January 6, 2025
    Earnestp wants to read Generation X
  • Earnestp finished reading The kill order by James Dashner January 6, 2025
    Earnestp finished reading The kill order
  • Review of "The kill order" (3 stars): Serviceable prequel January 6, 2025
    None
  • Earnestp finished reading Extremely Online by Taylor Lorenz September 22, 2024
    Earnestp finished reading Extremely Online
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