Hi! Welcome to the very first issue of The Good Side of the Internet. Super glad to have you here. For a brief run-down on what all the hullabaloo is about, please visit the About page for this publication.
This month’s links/reads were lovely and incredibly varied, as I’m sure every subsequent month’s will be. The newsletter has been split into three sections. The first is external links that I truly adored, with my own endorsements and a little explanation about why I enjoyed them. The second is similar, but within Substack. The third is a compilation of all the recommended readings on
over the last month.The ones with the little asterisk next to them come Highly Recommended (by me). Please do heed the trigger warnings if they’re present. For access to paywalled essays, feel free to reach out to me. I’m always open to discuss/debate/listen to your opinions about any of these links. In fact, if that happened, I would ENTHUSIASTICALLY participate, and ascend to a higher plane of joy. Happy reading!
TGSotI Reviewed
In Hassan, humans find themselves jockeying for territory with animals they love, revere—and are deathly afraid of. But the elephants weren’t always like this.
TGSotI Review: 52 is one of my absolute favourite longform websites. The topics of the essays published are so interesting and eye-opening, and unfailingly make me think. Mostly investigative, they’re all beautifully structured, and the website itself is such a fun design (both on mobile and web), making the reading experience super-smooth. This essay is no different. The tense relationship between humans and wild elephants in Hassan - a relationship I had never given much thought to before clicking on this link - is explained with so much care, nuance, and expertise.
The creative legacy of Gifs: Past, present and future* | It’s Nice That
The invention of the Gif transformed creative practices overnight, and gave birth to a whole new medium of expression. We dissect this history (or giftory?) speaking to experts and artists about the continued evolution of the funnest file type.
TGSotI Review: It’s no secret that I adore reading and learning about the Internet and social media, and all the ways in which our virtual activities/interactions/existences influence our lives. This essay about the invention and rise of Gifs - however you want to pronounce it - really taps into that part of my psyche. It’s satisfyingly thorough, and very illuminating. What I really like about it though, since I’m a bit of a narcissist like that, is how it makes no mention of one of the latest in-vogue opinions that seems to be floating around - that Gifs are dying. (You can read more about that here.) I firmly believe that whatever doomsday predictions exist about Gif usage will simply not come to pass in the near future. I’m a horse with blinders on. Convert to my POV by reading this essay. Highly Recommend!
Only cats: photographs of house-proud felines at leisure | Wallpaper
Swiss photographer Pascale Weber takes cat photography to new heights in a new book published by Hatje Cantz. In For Cats Only, every cat has got the cream.
TGSotI Review: This is one of the cutest photo-series’ I’ve come across. Honestly, you’d be doing yourself a favour by clicking on that link. The languishing cats await.
The First Family of Human Cannonballing* | Narratively
David and Jeannie Smith gave up their day jobs for a life of daredevil stunts —with six children in tow. Five decades, thousands of cannon shots and multiple Guinness World Records later, this stupendous family business is still defying gravity and all other expectations.
TGSotI Review: I love family profiles. It doesn’t matter if the members have done something completely awful or completely awesome - I just love reading about families, and their lives together and apart, and how those two converge. The Smiths, as featured in this essay, are nothing short of unconventional, and this profile does their truly out-of-the-box lives full justice. Or should I say, out-of-the-cannon? A family of trapeze artists, professional cannonballers, daredevil stuntpeople - traditions passed down from parents to children as nothing short of a legacy. It’s all fantastically intriguing, and fantastically brought to life in this profile. Highly Recommend!
SorryWatch - Analyzing apologies in the news* | Website
SorryWatch takes apart apologies of all sorts. We praise the good ones (and discuss what makes them good) and fling metaphorical monkey poop at the bad ones (using savage words and holding them up to ridicule). All in a helpful spirit. We examine the research on apology, discuss important historical apologies — that’s some skywriting from Australia’s National Sorry Day in our banner — and take on apologies in pop culture. We welcome your apology-related pointers, questions, dilemmas and suggestions for shaming.
TGSotI Review: I’ll admit, one of my preferred past-times when I can’t seem to fall asleep is to watch (and feel a sense of superiority over) public figures apologising for various transgressions, big or small. (Is any transgression ever really small on social media, though?) It makes me feel better about myself. I like hmm-ing and haw-ing over all the wrong things they say, and being cynical about the occasional right things they stumble over. It’s also interesting to note how it’s become such a phenomenon - The Celebrity Apology. The YouTuber Apology. The Corporation Apology. Nothing is un-apologisable. Nothing is private. This website is so fun to peruse, since it dissects exactly those points, and makes me really feel like I’m getting to the crux of the apology, you know? I can now pass the same, scathing judgement with adequate information and stone-cold data. Highly Recommend!
Crushed.* | The Atavist Magazine
When Johna Ramirez’s son joined a wildly popular circle of tween YouTube influencers, it seemed like he was fulfilling his Hollywood dreams. But in the Squad, fame and fortune came at a cost.
TGSotI Review: I am obviously not the only person concerned about the whole YouTuber/TikToker/Influencer-as-a-real-job thing. I hate how the rise of tweens/teens having completely warped personalities and perceptions of themselves and the world is a very concrete thing that’s happening right now. Allow me a moment to be Aged and Grumbly, but there can be no good reason for a 12-year-old to grow up worrying more about what their better side for the camera is and how exactly they should modify their personality to get more views and how they can generate more revenue streams than, like, math homework. I’d never have survived middle/high school in 2021/22/23. I barely made it out when I did. Like all Atavist pieces, this essay is wonderfully structured and concrete in details, despite its depressing and concerning subject matter. Highly Recommend!
In praise of boredom | Instagram
One afternoon I had nothing to do and so …
TGSotI Review: This can be summed up by the last sentence in the post itself - “One afternoon I had nothing to do and so I did everything.” So charming, so quaint, and so very relatable.
Finding Awe Amid Everyday Splendor* | Noema
A new field of psychology has begun to quantify an age-old intuition: Feeling awe is good for us.
TGSotI Review: With how meme-ified the whole ‘finding beauty in the mundane’ and the ‘experience childlike wonder’ things have become, I think it does a splendid job of legitimising those statements, and of recontextualising how one feels about, well, feeling. It reminds me of a Tumblr post I had stumbled upon a while back (that I can’t seem to find at the moment), about how occasionally, you just have to look at life like you’re an alien from a different planet that’s exploring Earth for the first time, and discover how lovely people are with the rituals and habits and tiny joys. Of course, I appreciate all the scientific research cited in this, but the phrasing of one sentence truly drew me in - “To experience awe, to fully open ourselves up to it, helps us to live happier, healthier lives.” Highly Recommend!
Beyond Borders* | London Review of Books
‘Julien Keller’ was the nom de guerre of Adolfo Kaminsky, who died in Paris last month aged 97. It was largely thanks to him that the German-occupied zone of wartime France was flooded with false documents.
TGSotI Review: I’ve become quite cynical about pretty much everything in the last few years. A sad side-effect of that is probably how disillusioned I am now about people who are objectively awesome, and who have had so much large-scale impact on huge historical events. But every once in a while, I’ll come across a lovely, in-depth profile like this one, that removes some of that cynicism and disillusionment and jaded-ness. This piece left me in so much awe and respect, and is written with just the right amount of detail to keep you reading. Highly Recommend!
In-house Links
This section contains links to pieces from different Substack newsletters. The reason I’ve demarcated it is because there’s more room for interaction with the authors here. (Also because the formatting is very cute, I love that box.) The ones with the little asterisk are from some of my favourite publications, which are, in my opinion, well worth subscribing to.
Super fun comics from
A lovely and truly relatable ode to baths from
One of the funnest issues of
(and that's saying something, because they are all so incredibly fun) *Something that desperately needs to be more widely acknowledged by
The most well-articulated argument for something I’ve been trying to put into words for YEARS from
*
The thodi Masterlist
(I didn’t want to make this section too crowded, so I haven’t included the blurbs for each link. If you’d like some context about each one before clicking on it, I recommend navigating to the thodi issue that contains those blurbs.)
From i’m a big fan of noses (Mar 4)
You Can Do 5 Things from
*The Orca and the Spider: On Motherhood, Loss, and Community*
Librarian finds love notes, doodles in books and shares them with a grateful public
From you know what that is? growth. (Mar 11)
From co-star (Mar 18)
Reading As Counter-Practice from
*
From on being a container (Mar 25)
That’s a wrap for March ‘23! Feel free to make me the happiest person alive by reaching out to discuss any of it. If you want the tinier, but week-lier, version of super fun links (along with poetry, book, and song recommendations, plus a sometimes-nonsensical-sometimes-profound-sometimes-toopersonal writeup), we’d be happy to have you over at
.If you’d like, please share this with your friends. Or your mother. Or on your Instagram story that you share a Spotify link on once in six months. Or anybody who you think would enjoy it. This is a fresh-out-of-the-oven publication, and I am deeply passionate about telling people what to read.
Thanks for reading, and see you next month!
lovely !! this is exactly what i needed to finish the week on a strong note🫡🫡 i’ll make sure to read dome recs during the weekend, thanks🫂
🫡🫡 hope you enjoy them!!