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Have you ever had a panic-inducing moment of TV FOMO? You know, that feeling when the rest of your friends are talking about the latest Game of Thrones episode and you feel completely out of the loop because you just never got into dragons and white walkers and George R.R. Martin’s homicidal writing tendencies? For you, R+L=J could just as easily be some weird algebra equation, not the foundational theory of Jon Snow’s parentage.

I had a moment like that last week. The rest of my co-workers were tossing around Stranger Things conspiracies, talking about Eggos and the number 11 and I was completely in the dark. I hadn’t had time to binge the show — which is a bit ironic since I write about TV for a living.

As they mused about Dungeons and Dragons characters and Winona Ryder’s truly terrible haircut, I was gripped with an odd sense of anxiety. I suppose I could chalk it up to the paranoid psychosis every TV writer is experiencing these days — that there will never be enough time to watch and write about every show on television or, worse, that I’ll be the last to know about a truly excellent new series on TV — like the Duffer brothers’ nostalgic Netflix drama. But I don’t think that feeling is limited to just me and my group of peers who get paid to geek out over the state of TV’s present landscape in 1200-word columns online.

That nagging sense of anxiety has become the norm in an era that’s come to be known as “Peak TV,” and it’s changed how we watch television in ways that both force viewers to broaden their horizons and retreat into their comfort zones. Last year, FX president John Landgraf introduced the concept of Peak TV, predicting the number of scripted series on air in 2015 would “easily blow through the 400 series mark.” He wasn’t too far off and that number — while being mind-blowing in terms of sheer size — also represents a shift in the way we, as an audience, think about and watch TV.

Peak TV was born thanks to a rise in both original programming and the number of platforms through which viewers watched said programming. This increase in content and the channels through which it’s hosted brings some much needed diversity. We now have shows about female inmates, black women in positions of power, gay couples, transgender people transitioning; shows that explore the stigma of mental illness, that dedicate entire episodes to topics like abortion, rape, hate crimes and racism. Whatever you call it, we are living in a new age of television, one with infinitely more choices than ever before. The problem has now become: How do we choose?

The easy answer to this question would be, we choose what to watch based on what interests us. That’s partly true — no one’s going to spend six seasons watching AMC’s The Walking Dead if they aren’t at least curious about what a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies might look like. But the more complicated answer involves looking at how this era of Peak TV has redefined the way we watch and think about television.

Years ago, ritual watching — watching a new episode of a show weekly in a permanent time slot — is how most TV viewers consumed shows. But this practice of ritual watching — or appointment television — has slowly been shifting, thanks to the rise of Peak TV and the new form of taking in television: binge-watching. With so many new series available, the only way to keep up is to binge them. Being able to binge shows, controlling the form of consumption, instead of having to tune in at an appointed time each week, means the power dynamic has shifted.

NETFLIX

Instead of big name networks controlling when and how people watch television, viewers themselves are making that decision. With streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu making entire seasons and series available at once, we no longer take our cues from content producers, content producers take their cues from us.

Great. Networks aren’t deciding what we watch and how we watch anymore, we are. But being able to choose has presented a new challenge: How do we filter the shows we watch?

To answer that means we have to understand the social component that dominates television watching. With appointment viewing it used to be more obvious — people would tune into a certain show every Sunday night in order to have plenty of water-cooler fodder the next day at work. That still exists — you can’t come in to the office on a Monday morning without hearing someone geek out over last night’s episode of Game of Thrones — but the rise of Peak TV and the surge in binge-watching has changed the game.

Now, it’s harder to stay in the know when it comes to TV because there’s just so much of it. Into drug kingpins? Try Breaking Bad. Love a good forbidden romance? Head over to the CW or ABC. There’s something for everyone out there but the flip side of the coin is, not everyone’s going to like everything. So, what happens when a majority of people in your social circle watch a show you haven’t tuned into yet? Do you give into the compulsion to watch, though you may not be wholly interested in doing so?

“There’s a couple reasons people watch things they’re not really crazy about watching,” Pamela Rutledge, Director of the Media Psychology Research Center says. “One, because if a lot of people you know are watching something, you’re curious as to why they like it and second, you need social capital so that when everyone’s sitting around the dinner table and they’re talking about Stranger Things, you can participate. If you can’t participate, you’re not part of the group and if you’re not part of the group, you’re an ’other.’ It triggers a very basic instinct to be part of a tribe. It’s a survival thing.”

Survival watching. No, we’re not sheep, and just because one person, or even a group of people like something doesn’t mean you have to also. But I’d bet good money that everyone, at some point in their life, has tuned into a TV show solely because everyone else was watching it.

HBO

There’s no shame in that. In fact, in the era of Peak TV, the social element of television watching has become even more influential. Because, if you think about it, what better system of filtering the hundreds of shows available to us is there than word of mouth?

That’s where social media comes into play. The internet has a huge role in this new era of television. We’ve taken the ritual viewing out of television through binge-watching and with hundreds of shows and multiple platforms hosting them, we’re not limited to traditional means of choosing what kind of content we like. Instead of networks presenting us with a finite menu of shows to watch each week, we now have a buffet laid before us, and it’s not advertisers or even critics who have the biggest impact in what people choose to watch — it’s other people.

Social media expands not only your choices but who you can talk to about your choices. No matter how exotic your tastes, there’s a good chance you can find some with similar interests online — we’re talking specifically about 21st century TV here. It makes it easier to tap into shows and series you may have never heard of otherwise — expanding your entertainment horizons and becoming a recommender system for other people who share your interests.

In other words, it shifts the means of spending your social capital. Sure, if you haven’t tuned into Game of Thrones yet and your co-workers are geeking out over the “Battle of the Bastards” episode that happened the night before or throwing around parentage theories about Jon Snow, you’re still going to be left feeling out of the loop. Maybe, instead of GoT, you spent your Sunday night watching Preacher, or Veep, or binge-watching old seasons of Gossip Girl. You might not be able to have face-to-face conversations about any of those shows with the people in your immediate social circle. If not, maybe it’s a matter of shifting where you talk about television. A community of fellow fans is now only a click away. Whether you join a Reddit thread or start following fan accounts on Twitter, you can find people to talk to about anything — TV included — you just have to look in different spaces.

All this is to say that the idea of survival watching isn’t necessarily a negative one. It’s not like we’re holed up in dark rooms with bloodshot eyes, forcing ourselves through season after season of a show just so we can have something to talk about with our friends. If anything, survival watching pushes people to not only expand their choices in media consumption, to go outside their comfort zone when it comes to the shows they normally watch, but to also expand their social circle — at least, online.

Social media has balanced out the anxiety we might otherwise feel when faced with 400 TV shows coming per year because, no matter your taste in TV, online you can always find someone else who shares those same interests.

There’s a Darwinistic quality to TV watching these days. Shows live, die and evolve based on what they can offer a viewer: a good cast, a great story, the ability to trend on social media and be worth talking about the next day. It’s our job as fans to weed out what we’re interested in, what we’re not and figure out where we land in the social conversation of television. Maybe that’s the true nature of survival watching: adapting to your environment: opting for membership in more than just one tribe; recognizing which shows add value to your (social) life and focusing more energy on them and less on trying to have your eyes glued to every popular TV show that drops in a week. Because in the age of Peak TV, that’s just impossible.

Snapchat

Traveling comes with little annoyances that tug at the back of your brain (before they turn into full-blown rage headaches). Sometimes it’s the lack of seats on a train. Sometimes it’s the lack of air conditioning when it’s 90 degrees in the shade. Sometimes it’s that flight that just can’t seem to get off the ground, stranding you at a gate with a couple hundred strangers all antsy to get to their destination. And, according to one survey, sometimes it’s people who take way to long to get that perfect selfie.

Miss Travel, a dating app for the wanderlust set, recently published a survey of 35,288 of their users that asked what annoys them most while on the road. Clocking in at number one with 31 percent? Snapchatters. But we all like to take shots and post them up, that’s just the way things are these days, so what is it that so annoys travelers about Snapchat in particular? Well, the biggest issues seem to be “travelers taking too long to photograph a certain site, not paying attention to their surroundings, and getting in the way of others.” Which, yeah…that’s a pain the ass, especially if you’ve spent your savings on the trip of a lifetime.

The rest of the top five annoyances from Miss Travel’s survey were flight delays, pay Wi-Fi, pungent food on planes, and the monsters who fail to push their luggage trays into the scanners at security and therefore stop the entire line while TSA reminds them that “sir, we don’t do that.”

The takeaway? We now live a world where many of us are more tolerant of flight delays and that one person’s reeking tuna sub than we are of someone taking 30 minutes for that perfect Eiffel Tower selfie.

Translated caption: We don’t need Camembert and wine; we need an ‘in love’ photo with the Eiffel Tower in the background

(Via The Daily Meal)

Castleski / Shutterstock.com

Twitter has had one very rigid rule over its brief existence, and that’s that tweets are limited to 140 characters. And this isn’t changing. What is, changing, though, is how those characters are counted, and that’s a pretty big deal. Here’s what you need to know.

The main beef many users have had with Twitter is that everything you included in a tweet counted towards your 140. If you put in a photo, that would eat up a fair number of characters, 24 to be exact. A web address — sharing a news article for instance — would also cost you enough characters that you might have to reconfigure your comment. Even quoting a tweet cost you characters. Not anymore. Now, your 140 characters are dedicated to your tweet, regardless of what you’re appending to it. GIF, photo, link or quoted tweet, you’ll be able to post with the full 140.

Also in the works is a change to replies, where the Twitter handle of the user you’re replying to won’t count in the tweet either. This one we’re a little skeptical of, not only because is it a spammer’s dream — mention 500 people at one time? Great for business! — but it could also be a way for trolls to harass more people at once. Still, Twitter claims it’s on the way.

More space to tweets is great, but it’s not the only thing Twitter is missing: We’re sure the company will figure out what feature its userbase most wants next eventually, though.

(via Mashable)

One of the fundamental problems of social media, if you’re running a company, is that some of your customers might have their own agendas — which they try to tether you to, then share with millions of people. So it was when Skittles found themselves used in a tangled metaphor tweeted by Donald Trump Jr., and how the brand reacted deserves credit.

For those blissfully away from the news cycle, Donald Trump Jr. posted the meme above about Syrian refugees, using an analogy with a bowl of Skittles. If three of the Skittles were poisoned, and you didn’t know which three, you wouldn’t take the risk of eating them, goes his argument. Many called it an attempt to draw political capital off the Chelsea bombing. It was also clearly an attempt to, yet again, incite the alt-right without acknowledging it. The idea of refugees as “poisoned” food dates back to Nazi Germany, where it was used to indoctrinate children, and after the death of Trayvon Martin, racists on the internet have made Skittles into a meme.

Skittles had a blunt response:

It’s notable because so many brands get this painfully wrong. In 2011, for example, Kenneth Cole made light of social unrest in Egypt, and then promptly began digging itself a deep, spacious hole as it tried to apologize. In Australia, Jenny Craig made the mistake of sponsoring shock jock Kyle Sandilands, and doubled down on the choice for awhile, before finally backing away. Even at least somewhat sincere attempts to help have gone wrong, like Bing’s attempt to raise donations for Japanese earthquake victims with retweets.

Needless to say, “crisis communications” from brands are low priority in any election, especially one as fraught as this one. But Skittles deserves kudos not just for rejecting the horrible meme, but also for explicitly acknowledging that’s all they can do, and that they don’t want to cash in, whether via those outraged over the meme or those who agree with it. It sets a solid precedent that more brands should take to heart; namely, there are time when shutting up is the best for #branding.

Getty Image

At the end of September, if you pulled up Facebook, you likely saw a little reminder that today was a good day to register to vote. If you’re one of the 146 million people already registered, you likely ignored it alongside the game notifications and ads. But it was a good reminder, it turns out, for a dramatic number of people.

It was pretty simple: Running between September 23rd and September 26th, the little banner redirected to the government’s voter registration portal, which walks new registrants through the process. Data from 16 states shows that Facebook’s reminder worked, with some states reporting a twenty-three-fold increase in registrations the day the Facebook note went live, according to Mashable. Illinois, for example, went from just under 3,000 registrations to just over 30,000 the day the notice went live. It was so effective, nine different states praised Facebook for getting the word out.

It was most effective the first day it went live, with some fairly dramatic drop-offs the second day. That said, though, many of the states wrapped up the campaign with higher numbers than they had before it started, which is good news for the effort. It also raises the question of what else Facebook can do to raise awareness. It’s often talked about as an advertising platform, and it undeniably has issues surrounding privacy, but this demonstrates there may be some upsides to the social network in all our lives.

(Via Mashable)

Netflix

When it first found its way to the US, Black Mirror had the enviable coolness factor that comes from being a little-known UK import. People had to sing its praises and pressure their friends to jump aboard the Outer Limits-style sci-fi anthology series that was blessed with a dark edge and a deeply-held antipathy toward, not modern technology, but the ways we have responded to and been changed by it. When the show finally broke out on Netflix, the praise and recommendations became ubiquitous as the growing army of fans clamored for more from creator Charlie Brooker. Finally, with the release of season three, those wishes were granted, but the reception was somewhere between positive and mixed.

If you watched those six new episodes, though, you may be dealing with more than just your overall view of what you witnessed. In that the show glides so closely to our techno-present in its view of the techno-future, you may be feeling concern for what was forecast. And because we want to really tweak those fears and unsettle you further (sorry), we decided to go through the third season of the show and rank the episodes based on feasibility with a quick look at the state of the tech featured therein.

Shut Up And Dance

Netflix

The Story: An awkward teenager (Alex Lawther) gets a mysterious text message from a hacker who used his webcam to tape him whilst he was pleasuring himself. They threaten to release the tape to his mother and the world at large if he doesn’t follow a set of orders which eventually push him to extremes. Others are lured into the same trap, but any shred of sympathy that the viewer has for the victims of this cruel extortionary game are removed when the true extent of their despicable behavior is revealed.

The Reality: Cyber blackmail has been a problem for more than a decade. While the episode focuses mostly on men, in many cases, it’s women who are targeted with this crime. As for using someone’s webcam to take unwanted video of them, well, people like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and FBI head James Comey put tape over their webcams according to The Guardian. There are also companies that sell stickers and other devices to cover webcams in a more fashionable way, indicating that the threat is quite real and that it has a lot of people’s attention.

Feasibility: 5 of 5

Nosedive

Netflix

The Story: Social media bleeds into reality even more than it already has as all human interactions are rated by users, with immense pressure to be incredibly positive, cheery, and complimentary in a society that caters to those with the highest ratings while shunning those with those below a 2.5, a rating earned by being coarse or otherwise unpleasant.

The Reality: Remember Peeple? It was an app/privacy nightmare that more or less let you do exactly this. As for the societal consequences that might come should we ever embrace such a measurement of people’s true worth, well, there are already benefits in place for social media influencers, so why should anyone think that that would lessen or not become institutionalized if a Peeple like app rose to prominence?

Feasibility: 4 of 5

Playtest

Netflix

The Story: A backpacker winds up taking a job testing a truly immersive VR experience that utilizes implants to mess with brain chemistry and create hallucinations. Bad hallucinations, in some cases.

The Reality: A brain implant that can control your mental chemistry has already been engineered, and even tested in mice. The goal, though, is to assist anxiety and depression sufferers by letting them remotely regulate their brain chemistry, not to play Whack-A-Mole.

That said, as these neural implants are tested and put into use, it seems likely that they’ll be paired with the pioneering PTSD therapy that uses virtual reality to let users re-experience traumatic memories. So while you might never experience this as entertainment, you might know somebody who will do it to get past a tough time in their life.

Also, as powerful as tech companies are, it doesn’t seem super likely that they’d be able to hide a pile of brain busted human test subjects. So that element brings down the feasibility score a touch.

Feasibility: 3 of 5

Hated In The Nation

Netflix

The Reality: “Drone pollinators” are, in fact, in the works, although they’re very rudimentary. That said, with colony collapse becoming a grave problem that might damage our food supply, work is intensifying to figure out what can take over the role of bees in the pollinating process.

As for the killing via the internet idea, replace “bee drone” with “Predator drone” and “hashtag game” with “poorly written algorithm” and you’ve got the day-to-day reality of living in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries with terrorist groups. And innocents are definitely caught in the crossfire, as the US has admitted to over a hundred innocent deaths due to drone strikes. It’s not nearly the same as what’s presented in the season finale of Black Mirror, but there are enough elements (including the rise of internet rage mobs) to make people a bit wary of drone tech.

Feasibility: 3 of 5

Men Against Fire

Netflix

The Reality: The military’s goal with training is to get soldiers who think clearly under fire and who follow orders. While basic training has some psychological effects when you go through it and can have psychological effects for years afterwards, the military’s main goal isn’t to have people with guns panic at the sight of the enemy. It’s to take aim and shoot them without stopping to think about it, which may, in the long term, be a bit more creepy.

Feasibility: 2 of 5

San Junipero

Netflix

The Story: The idea of a cloud-based afterlife is introduced. In the episode, people can choose to be uploaded into a preconstructed fantasy world that mirrors the recent past (the ’80s, the ’90s, etc) when they die (and beforehand to sample the goods). They can also interact with (meaning sleep with, hang out with, drink with) other inhabitants. Essentially, it’s the fountain of youth made real and given a rad soundtrack and fab clothes.

The Reality: While downloading the brain is still largely science fiction, we’re rapidly figuring out how to upload knowledge directly to the mind. Still, “whole brain emulation,” while still almost entirely theoretical, is absolutely something scientists are working on, in part because by cracking the mysteries of the brain, we can figure out how to create truly boundless AI.

That said, it’s not clear what, precisely, “uploading” your brain would do, or who’d want to do it. There’s a thick ethical quagmire here: Can your brain be uploaded without your consent? Should the “uploaded” be aware of the fact they’re just impulses on a computer chip or not? Who pays for the electricity and power this will eat up? All of that will need to be resolved before any sort of digital retirement home exists.

Feasibility: 1 of 5

So, there you have it. An uncomfortable look at how close we are, as a society, to this latest batch of Black Mirror episodes. Be honest, considering the cynicism of the show, are you really surprised that we ended up ranking the most upbeat episode as the one that is the farthest away from reality?

Vine/Shutterstock

Vine made a splash in 2013, as the novelty of creating seven-second videos enthralled a surprising number of people and created an entirely new class of social media stars. But, apparently, that wasn’t enough, and Vine is shutting down.

The news was announced via Medium and it won’t be immediate. However, the mobile app is being discontinued, and as that’s more or less how Vine accumulates new clips, it’s effectively the end of the service.

Vine, as goofy as it could sometimes be, definitely had an influence on pop culture. If you’ve ever heard the phrase “on fleek,” for example, it came from Vine:

The site was arguably perfect for capturing tiny, funny moments, and it’s largely served as a comedy site since its inception. It was also a powerful tool for musicians to share short clips and to reach out well beyond the usual audience, and losing the service might be a problem for some parts of the indie music scene.

That, in turn, raises the question of what’s next. It’s not particularly clear what will be happening to the service or its videos. It seems likely that Vine will be folded, at least to some degree, into Twitter’s larger functions. But that will likely be of little use to those who’ve built a large following on the service, and were hoping to parlay that into larger success. One hopes, though, that Vine manages to preserve its enormous archive of video and other moments. If for no other reason that we want to keep our favorites around. Below, you’ll find some of the Uproxx staff’s favorite Vines, and share yours in the comments.

And finally the two greatest Vines ever made, the Duck Army:

And this llama:

Trot on, DMX Llama. Trot on.

Vine/Shutterstock

This isn’t some kind of trend forecast: Vine is officially, definitely dead. Our favorite home of shouting duck videos, conversations at unnatural speeds and “but that backflip tho” is going the way of countless social media platforms before it. Which means that the apps owner, Twitter, is a currently flooded with corny journalists making “six seconds of fame” jokes — deftly avoided here — and of course, gathering around their digital campfires to swap stories about all-time favorites.

In spite of the app’s general spirit of playfulness and disposability, Vine does leave behind a serious legacy. It’s made legitimate stars out of comedians, filmmakers and English language flouncers alike, and many of them will find ways to move on to other available avenues. In fact many of them already have moved on to Facebook, citing better promotion of their work. You don’t become a star on a nascent technological platform without being a bit adaptable to the times. But an area that might not recover as quickly is the music world, where this silly little app had an out-sized influence and now leaves behind quite the hole.

Vine Was An Outlet For Aspiring Rappers

The idea of promoting music, which typically comes in two to four minute chunks, over a six-second video app still seems a little odd when you write it out. But the hook has always been the most important part of any track looking to catch on with all of us in the unwashed masses, and there’s no denying that Vine has given us some of the most persistent, earworm-y songs in recent memory — especially when it comes to rap.

The fact is we’d have no idea who T-Wayne or Chedda Da Connect was if enthusiastic fans hadn’t found the time to “quote” his songs in service of a joke, brag or dance. We wouldn’t be so invested in the court case of Bobby Shmurda if Vine users hadn’t seen something in his hat toss and shimmy. And we definitely wouldn’t be talking about how New York rap is back. Young M.A. and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie are doing alright now, but it takes three to make a trend.

The importance of Vine is even more apparent in the less cred-obsessed world of dance crazes. Plainly put, your parents wouldn’t know what a whip or a nae nae was if short clips of folks doing the dances didn’t spread like wildfire through the video app. Big Will would be a complete unknown and DJ Esco wouldn’t have the world’s most delightful dance to his name. We may wonder why “Juju on the Beat” had to do Crime Mobb like that, but it’s only because of Vine that we’re thinking about it at all.

Vine Breathed New Life Into Unsuccessful Singles, Old Favorites

Carly Rae Jepsen released an album of b-sides to an album almost nobody heard earlier this year. Outside of a few CRJ mega-fans — here’s where the entire Uproxx Music staff raises their hands and sings “guilty!” in unison — it was a release destined to sink quietly back into the ether. But Carly’s fans and a few others saw potential in an upbeat track about dipping out on a lover called “Store.”

Much in the same way they had done for the saxophone peal that kicks off Emotion, Vine users turned this Jepsen track’s repetition of “I’m just going to the store” into an absurd joke. The app was equally crucial in pushing “Run” by AWOLNATION to prominence. No one was looking for a new song by the guy behind “Sail,” but throw in a few malicious umbrellas and suddenly everyone’s interested.

Even old hits were given new life on the platform, if not for the way that they served as a punchline, then for how easy it was to parody them. Nick Fraser took the smoothest song ever written about dance-floor boners and made it the slickest thing that anyone has ever done with one foot on a disconnected toilet.

And countless kids brought Ghost Town DJ’s low-key classic “My Boo” back into the spotlight when the short-armed anti-dance craze #runningmanchallenge took over everyone’s feeds earlier this year.

But perhaps Vine’s greatest contribution to music was it’s ability to be used as a six-second sucker punch.

Vine Was One More Platform To Take The Piss Out Of Mega-Stars

The biggest thing to come out of all social media is that we need our stars to be relatable now. And we take great glee in bringing them back down to Earth when they aren’t. Vine was a place to watch stars fall on their face on a loop for eternity and another way to engage with, dissect and subvert the biggest names in music.

Vine provided a place where haters and fans alike could take glee in pulling apart successful tracks and reconstructing them to suit whatever joke they were telling. Take, for example, the insane amount of “Hotline Bling” snippets that popped up after we all realized that we weren’t going to able to escape it this year.

Now that’s all gone and it doesn’t look like something else is out there to take its place. The “10-year-olds sing for seven-year-olds” app Musical.ly might serve as a talented kid signal booster, but it’s a well-known fact the below-10 crowd is decidedly un-dank. It’s unlikely that we’ll see a place that allows us to laugh along with the music industry the way Vine did for quite some time.

Soylent

Roughly a year ago, Chipotle’s biggest problem was parents objecting to its cups. Revenues were rising, new restaurants were opening at a breakneck pace, and the burrito chain was on its way to fast food dominance. Then the first reports of food poisoning hit, and spread like wildfire. A year later, the company is still hurting.

Now Soylent is facing the same problem — as a combo of social media call outs and our increasing awareness of food safety issues smash into brands like a freight train. Looking at Chipotle proves particularly instructive about the damage this can do. It’s attempting to get into burgers as it struggles with a sinking stock price and a wolf, in the form of activist investor William Ackman, at the door out to change, and possibly disassemble, the whole company. And Soylent’s problems might be even worse.

Soylent sells “food replacement” items, powders, drinks, and protein bars that are intended to offer a quick meal; think Slim-Fast for nerds. In theory, one serving of Soylent has all the fat, carbohydrates and other nutrients needed in a quick, convenient package. Soylent is largely a niche product aimed at Silicon Valley coders, and has been subject to both admiration and scorn thanks to its oddly confrontational messaging (it announces it’s “proudly made with GMOs”), deliberately generic packaging, and unconventional CEO. But the product has proven popular among the time-crunched and those that have little interest in food beyond nutrition.

Lately, however, the company has been plagued by reports of diarrhea, vomiting, and other issues. The problems started with its recently launched “food bar” product, with dozens of users reporting severe stomach problems. The issue has spread quickly, with Soylent’s flagship product, a meal replacement powder, now also causing illness.

Not helping matters is the fact that Soylent can’t seem to figure out which ingredient is the culprit. It claims to have tested its facilities and come back clean, and that as far as it can tell, the issue is with one of a handful of ingredients, which the company is removing in a new formulation it hopes to launch in a few months. But the problem may be unstoppable already, as Soylent’s niche audience consists almost entirely of people heavily plugged in and extremely vocal about their concerns (sometimes with winning puns).

Food companies can recover from scandal, if they’re big enough and work hard enough. Few remember Jack In The Box’s 1993 food poisoning catastrophe, which killed four children and permanently injured 178 others, thrusting E. Coli into the public consciousness. But more and more, one scandal is all it takes to sink any company, and food companies in particular face a vicious spiral of negative social media posts, followed by negative news coverage, each feeding off the other. Sweeping stories under the rug doesn’t work in the internet era.

The interplay between tech, food, and upset users has been a big conversation late. The entire restaurant industry seems to be at war with Yelp and its userbase over unfair reviews and entitled service, with the widely held belief that bad Yelp reviews can drive a restaurant out of business. Local restaurants, and niche food companies, in particular, are even more vulnerable because their audience is only so large, and once negative word gets out, it can be impossible to dislodge. Being Googleable for the wrong things is hard to shake. Remember the homophobic pizza shop? It closed in less than a week after it went viral.

Much depends, for Soylent, on what its next steps will be, how they get ahead of this, and whether the problems continue. But regardless of who they afflict, the food industry’s social media problem isn’t going away.

Soylent

Shutterstock

Every day, millions of people wake up and immediately check their Facebook to see what’s new, who’s doing what, and whether they’ve received any notifications that aren’t Candy Crush requests while they’ve been sleeping. And every day, millions of other people admonish social media users for spending too much time on the internet, caring too much about how many “likes” they get, and wasting away their lives while doing something unhealthy. Turns out, though, that using Facebook isn’t making your life worse; it could actually be helping you live longer!

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggests that having a healthy social life online isn’t too dramatically different from having one off-line, as long as there’s a strong element of support and engagement. According to a press release about the study (via The New York Times), users who use Facebook “moderately” and receive friend requests appear to be at a lower risk for mortality. (Sending out friend request after friend request doesn’t seem to have any positive effect on how long you live, though, although it’d be interesting to know how getting banned from sending too many friend requests affects one’s chances of living to be 100).

The researchers studied over 12 million profiles of people born between 1945 and 1989 — but don’t worry, the study authors didn’t look at your profile directly; according to The NYT the profiles were “aggregated before they were analyzed to preserve privacy.”– and found that those with larger social networks online (even those that would be considered “average”) tended to live longer than people who had smaller ones. Of course, there’s no numeric threshold for how many friends you need to live longer (although it’d probably be best if you stopped sending out Candy Crush invites so that people would keep you on their list) but it seems enjoying an online social presence could help you enjoy a longer lifespan!

Of course, this study comes with the same caveats as any other study that suggests that something or other can/will change or better your life. First, more research needs to be done to make sure that the results here aren’t just correlational and can apply to other social networks; second, Facebook was involved in the study (it did not fund it), and while the authors claim that their results weren’t influenced in any way, it’s still a good idea to be a little skeptical.

Still, if nothing else, at least the study suggests that your friends online are real (even if they live thousands of miles away and are possibly catfishing you). Awesome!

HYPE

Snapchat has reached the pinnacle of social media — namely being tied to stories of dumb criminal behavior and being misused to violate the privacy of strangers. It also gets imitated a lot, both established social networks and by upstarts. The app’s latest competitor, however, might just give it a run for its money.

Hype, created by the founders of the dearly departed Vine, is pretty much Vine meets Snapchat. See for yourself:

There’s a lot of, ah, inspiration from Snapchat here, especially in that, if you want, you can pack the frame with digital stickers, effects, and the like. While some of it, like any Snapchat inspired app, feels a bit cluttered or frenetic, it’s also easy to see the appeal of combining all that with livestreams, especially if you’re trying to do something a bit more content-dense. And adding aspects like polls and other interactive features has some genuine use.

That said, at its worst Hype can look like a science fiction parody of the news of the future, packed with graphics but lacking in any actual depth. A little fiddling with the iOS app found that Hypers, as the site’s users will likely be called, are still messing with it to see what works. But if Hype can find the right users and a niche in the social media ecosystem, it might just live up to its name.

(Via The Verge)

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It’s harder than ever to tell who your real friends are. That’s not just because a recent study revealed that most of the people you consider friends don’t even like you that much (the truth hurts, but it will set you free!) but because Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and SnapChat make it so easy to connect and see the intimate details of other people’s lives. Which, of course, makes it hard to divorce yourself from the fact that most of the people you refer to as “friends” on your timeline are people you wouldn’t recognize in real life (or just added because they were hot — no shame, we all do it.)

So what is a friend? How many are you, a well-adjusted individual in this modern age, supposed to have? Is the person who’s constantly liking your Facebook statuses someone who actually cares about you? Does your friendship of 15 years still count if your bestie didn’t wish you a happy birthday on Facebook (to make it official)? And is it possible to be truly close friends with someone you haven’t ever actually met, even though you converse via text, email, and social media on the daily?

In Kate Murphy’s above mentioned New York Times Article (which you should read in full), she explored the ways in which you can tell whether someone’s an actual friend or just that MVP who likes all your lame tweets. And, in the spirit of making your birthday parties and get-togethers easier to plan, we’ve put together a primer on how to tell whether the people you worry about returning your texts are really worth it.

Friends are an added value to your life.

ABC

Here’s something to consider the next time you’re analyzing your relationships: Which people in your life — aside from the ones you’re related to and would feel too guilty cutting off — add something to your daily experience that makes you feel happy? And which people are out there giving you more drama than you imagined any adult over the age of 20 ought to have?

The reality is that friendship is really important can have a real influence on your life. A 2006 book written by Tom Rath, the founder and former director of Gallup, revealed that people whose best friends have good health habits are five times as likely to pick up those same habits, that people who make friends at work feel more connected to their jobs (especially if they have a “best friend” on the job), and that even marriages are more successful if both partners feel that there’s a sense of friendship between them, regardless of physical intimacy. So find people that are there for you and recognize how much of an impact they’ll have on your everyday life. Rath suggests doing a “friendship audit” to make sure that you’re getting what you need from the people you spend the most time with and then “sharpening each friendship to its strength.”

We know that may sound sort of icky — after all, you shouldn’t be keeping a pokedex of your nearest and dearest — but it’s really not as bad as it sounds. It’s true that not all your friends will be all things, so recognizing what each of them brings to the table and then adjusting your own ideas of that friendship will make it easier and more enjoyable for each person to remain close. It’s also a good idea for saving a bit of your own sanity. When you know which friends to go to when you want to vent, and which friends to go to when you need some tough advice, you’re going to have a much better time.

Something else to think about: In her piece, Murphy points out that true friends are the type that are just there for the relationship and not to gain something. Of course, this is highly debated (after all, leveraging your connections into opportunities isn’t a crime), but it makes sense to reason that the people you’re close to on a deep and emotional level shouldn’t always be trying to get something from you. Advice? Sure. Support? Absolutely! But if they’re only calling you up when they heard you got a promotion or received an invite to some media-studded soiree (read: an event hosted by one of the lesser Kardashians), they’re probably not the kind of people you want around.

You’re able to be vulnerable with them and they’re able to be vulnerable right back.

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One of the most difficult things in the world is to let someone see the real you — the one you’re certain literally no one really wants to be friends with. Real friends — even if they’re ones you mainly see on-line — know that you’re not perfect. And they’re pretty cool with it (until they have to drop some real talk, which always comes from a caring place). It’s a myth that you’ll never annoy or argue with your true friends. Trust us — you will. And they’ll drive you a little crazy, too. But that doesn’t mean that your friendship isn’t real. In fact, it might actually be a testament to how strong your bond is (as long as both people are able to be vulnerable with each other).

Think about this: How open are you able to be with the people closest to you? Are you the one always sharing? If so, that’s a good sign you’re in an imbalanced friendship. And if it’s the other way around, what are you getting out of that relationship? The real magic happens when you and the other person are able to be real with each other without (too much) judging.

They’re one of the five people you actively want to spend your time with.

NBC

Despite what you learned in high school, even the most popular people only have two or three friends and then just a whole mess of acquaintances. That may sound a little sad (#squadgoals and all that) but it’s actually a blessing that we can’t turn all the people we like into the lifelong friends we’d like them to be. Not only would it suck to walk around like an emotional sponge 24/7, but the reality that there are really only a few people you call on a regular basis is comforting because it blows the lid off the myth that the best and coolest people have more friends than they can count. You can’t!

There really is some evidence that you can have too many friends: It’s called “Dunbar’s number,” and it comes from British researcher and anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who studied the connection between “brain size and social relationships” and found that our puny brains only have space for 150 people at most. As Dunbar drilled deeper into how we process these connections, he found that you only have room for 5 people in your most inner circle, 10 people in the layer outside of that, and approximately 35 people in the next layer. Everyone else is lumped into the last 100 people on the outermost layer. So can you be popular? Sure. But you’re kidding yourself if you think that you can feel that strongly about all 150 people and that they can hold that same feeling for you. As we’ve already learned, friendship is very lopsided and considering that half of the people you consider friends may not regard you in the same way, it should actually be comforting to know that you don’t have to worry that much about the people outside of your iron-clad circle of trust.

This number is also important because you’ve got to take into account the effort you need to put forth in order to maintain an equitable friendship with someone. It’s not just boys’ nights out and baseball games, but an emotional investment that both parties take seriously. And if we’re so limited on who we spend energy on, then it’s probably best to reshuffle some people back into the acquaintance category — one study suggests that you can tell whether someone is a friend or not based on important cues such as mutual knowledge, intimacy of self-disclosure, and relaxation — and try to build a relationship with someone who’ll be there for you when the going gets tough.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that you should just limit your social circle to five people. But don’t beat yourself up about chilling with all those people you totally mean to hang with and just can’t find the right time to get together. They’re probably hating themselves for the same thing. Show us one person who’s not regularly regretting not following up on that dinner they were supposed to have with someone they really like but don’t see enough of, and we’ll show you a stone cold liar.

You know their life outside of status updates.

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Look, having your friend request approved doesn’t make you an actual friend. That may sound obvious, but you have no idea how many people just add whomever and then like their status updates because their new friend is making a real effort to keep everyone informed of what they had for lunch. But would you come up to that person in public and mention that status update? Would you even be able to recognize the person in the street? It’s easy to imagine you’re much closer to your online friends than you thought — especially when they retweet you! — but just because they’re giving you curated highlights of their life doesn’t mean you know anything about them. No one lives their actual lives on Facebook. (Although a new study does suggest that having a strong presence on social media could help you live longer.)

Ironically, as one commenter on The New York Times piece pointed out, Facebook has diluted the whole meaning of friendship, making it hard to connect with people when likes and shares are the main currency of closeness. If you’re finding that there are people you really want to connect with, you need to make a real effort to do so, and be prepared for rejection because, yes, people do think it’s weird when you try to deepen your relationship from a casual “like” situation into an actual friendship where you eat dinner together and don’t spend the entire time instagramming.

Their Honesty Makes You The Best Version Of Yourself

Mashable

You know what really sucks? People who take pride in being “brutally honest” and are constantly saying things that make you want to jump out of a window because a) that’s not how honesty works, and b) being honest doesn’t mean being a tactless monster who completely disregards the feelings of others. Even when you need some of those truth bombs dropped on you, a true friend is one whose honestly will come from a place of compassion rather than the excitement of being right about something.

Have you got one of those friends that’s always telling you things about yourself that you didn’t know when you didn’t even ask? That’s not someone who’s being honest for your benefit. Someone who really cares (and wants to keep you as part of their top five) will not lie to you, but will tell you the things you need to hear without shaming or hating. Instead, they’ll be focusing on making sure that what you’re hearing will make you the good/better/best person they know that you are. And that goes both ways.

Feeling like your honesty (about yourself and your friend) is both appreciated and reciprocated is one of the truest signs that your friendship is on the right track. After all, what’s the point of hanging out all the time if you can’t ever admit that you really liked Suicide Squad despite the fact that everyone else hates it and you understood absolutely nothing the entire time?

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That Twitter can be a dumpster fire on a train crashing into a septic tank is not news. Over the years, the company has made some effort to corral the trolls, but they were half-measures at best. Now, with rumblings that users feeling unsafe on the platform has torpedoed potential sales, Twitter is finally dropping the hammer.

To do this, they’re expanding the power of the mute key. Now, in addition to muting users, you can mute conversations, hashtags, keywords and phrases. The toxic sludge will still potentially be there, in other words, but at least you don’t have to see it. Twitter also claims that they’re retraining their notoriously lax support team, although a quick check of Twitter demonstrates that they have a long, long way to go.

While it’s good that the company has finally acknowledged what users have been demanding for years, it’s a bit sad that it took the company’s failed attempts to find a buyer to kickstart the process. If Twitter had only respected the concerns of its base before now, it might have a better reputation among its core users. Still, when it comes to freezing out online bullies, better late than never.

(via Wired)

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Instagram is reportedly launching new tools in an attempt to weed out trolls, according to the New York Times. On Tuesday the social media app announced plans to allow users to turn off comments on their posts and remove certain accounts from their followers list.

In addition, the app is trying to create a welcoming atmosphere by letting people like individual comments — much like its parent company Facebook already does for its users’ posts. In a new post on the company’s official blog, Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom said the goal of the updates was to create a better atmosphere for users. “In the coming weeks, we’re also adding the ability to like comments by tapping a heart icon next to any comment. Liking lets you show support and encourages positivity throughout the community,” he wrote. “These updates still mark the beginning. We will continue to work to maintain Instagram as a welcoming and safe place for everyone.”

Like any social media outlet, Instagram isn’t immune to online harassment by trolls. In September, the app rolled out tools that would allow its users to filter out abusive words in order to clamp down on offensive posts, comments and messages. Of course people could circumvent this problem with turning their profiles private, but if they approved the users, they could only go as far as blocking them to stop them from following them. Now a private profile will remove a user with an official Instagram notification indicating they have been removed as a follower.

It’s a major step forward in the battle against harassment, as Instagram and other companies have enacted new policies to help deal with the issue across the board.

(Via New York Times and Instagram)

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The U.S. government has begun asking some foreign travelers to share their social media accounts. The story originated at Politico and was verified by Mashable, which spoke to a rep for Customs and Border Protection (CBP). While some privacy advocates are criticizing the new protocol, Mashable noted that it’s not as panic-inducing as some would think.

The CBP will be asking for this information from travelers working through the Visa Waiver Program. This program allows travelers to enter the country for 90 days without a visa. The information is collected when travelers fill out an Electronic System for Travel Authorization form, which is used by the CBP to examine whether a traveler is a security risk. The request comes as many groups (such as ISIS) are using social media to recruit members and promote their messages. While Twitter has cracked down on the media savvy terrorist groups, they are still finding loopholes to communicate their messages.

The act may seem like the government is infringing on people’s privacy, but it is voluntary, and no one will be barred from entering the country for a refusal. But some privacy advocates are concerned, since the information can be shared with “appropriate federal, state, local, tribal and foreign governmental agencies.” In October, the ACLU penned an open letter saying this request could lead to first amendment violations:

“Many of these travelers are likely to have business associates, family, and friends in the U.S., and many of them will communicate with their contacts in the U.S. over social media. This data collection could therefore vacuum up a significant amount of data about Americans’ associations, beliefs, religious and political leanings, and more, chilling First Amendment freedoms.5 Indeed, the PIA acknowledges that DHS/CBP is likely to collect First Amendment protected information as part of this program.”

The program has already been in effect, but it is not known at this time whether it will be changed.

(Via Mashable, Politico & ACLU)