#thank you david for inventing bisexuality

[jane---prentiss]

the rumours are true david ward bisexual king

i mean. come on. if not gay then why gay?

[randomfoggytiger]

I think your interpretation of that scene is skewed and contributed to what happened. Whether or not the specific term “man crush” had been invented by the time of that scene, what David and Gary are discussing is bisexuality. Bisexuality has been around longer than we’ve had the words to talk about it and certainly much before either Gary or David’s times. My understanding of “the humor” in that scene is that David is describing the feelings of being attracted to a woman and comparing them to the same feelings he has towards Gary, thus verbally contradicting himself. It’s funny because while David is saying he’s NOT gay, he is describing himself BEING gay. (Re bisexual due to his history and admittance to wanting/liking/desiring women as well).

No matter the intent of the skit, the impact is a discussion of bisexuality.

Your response to the other person denies and rejects the duality of intent and impact and leans heavily on the insistence that only the intent is valid. Which is where I see the disconnect. (And how the hell do you know David and Gary’s initial intent with this scene?). If you speak with such authority, you need to give that same authority back to those in the same position as you. Neither of you were there in the making of that skit and both of your responses lay on the same level of assumption.

As someone who has faced continuous denial and rejection of my existence and identities, being cast away with words of “it’s just funny to me” is not funny to me and does more harm than good. It’s especially difficult to have discussions and back and forths online because you lose a lot of nuance and tone indicators when reading in your own voice and from your own perspective. I’m sure your impact of this anon will differ from my intent in sending it.

I’m interjecting my voice and my opinion on the matter because your “call-out” post made this all public and indicated that some sort of external input was needed or desired. You seem to be trying to understand what’s happening and without personally speaking to either of you or having any additional context out of seeing your post on my dash and clicking the links (seeing those posts for the very first time too) i understand how much it sucks to feel misinterpreted and wish you peace in whatever level of understanding you are left with.

Tagging this as "drama" (shorter than misconceptions) for anyone that wants to avoid.

Referring to this post.

Well, I only "know" because David has repeatedly said in all his interviews about the topic that the skit was about a "man crush" before the term existed, not about gay or bisexuality. I'm just repeating what he's said--reference (2:37 onward is the specific backstory.) It's funny either way; the original intent just tickled my funny bone more.

I'm fine that anyone can interpret it differently-- that's comedy-- but that doesn't give someone the right to paint me as a bigot for not agreeing with one interpretation, just as it wouldn't give me the right to lambast jewish-mulder for her own take on that skit.

And let's say you're 100% correct and I'm 100% wrong... am I a bigot because I accidentally hurt or minimized your or Anna's personal experiences? The intent is important: why was I brushed with the same brush as an actual bigot and dismissed so quickly without being given the chance to correct if I'd offended?

Thank you for taking the time to drop in with your thoughts. I appreciate it; and hope you have a lovely day.

[beemusik]

How David Bowie Invented Ziggy Stardust

Jason Heller’s book Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded is the story of how science fiction influenced the musicians of the Seventies. Out now in hardcover via Melville House, Strange Stars also examines how space exploration, futurism and emerging technology inspired the sometimes-cosmic, sometimes-mechanistic music the decade produced. In this section, Heller delves into the creation of Bowie’s most-famous alter ego, Ziggy Stardust.

A small crowd of sixty or so music fans stood in the dance hall of the Toby Jug pub in Tolworth, a suburban neighborhood in southwest London, on the night of February 10, 1972. The backs of their hands had been freshly stamped by the doorman. A DJ played records to warm up the crowd for the main act. The hall was nothing fancy, little more than “an ordinary function room.” The two-story brick building that housed it – “a gaunt fortress of a pub on the edge of an underpass” – had played host to numerous rock acts over the past few years, including Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, and Fleetwood Mac. Sci-fi music had even graced the otherwise earthy Toby Jug, thanks to recent headliners King Crimson and Hawkwind, and exactly one week earlier, on February 3, the band Stray performed, quite likely playing their sci-fi song “Time Machine.” The concertgoers on the tenth, however, had no idea that they would soon witness the most crucial event in the history of sci-fi music.

Most of them already knew who David Bowie was – the singer who, three years earlier, had sung “Space Oddity,” and who had appeared very seldom in public since, focusing instead on making records that barely dented the charts. His relatively low profile in recent years hadn’t helped his latest single, “Changes,” which had come out in January. Despite its soaring, anthemic sound, it failed to find immediate success in England. But the lyrics of the song seemed to signal an impending metamorphosis, hinted at again in late January when Bowie declared in a Melody Makerinterview, “I’m gay and always have been” and unabashedly predicted, “I’m going to be huge, and it’s quite frightening in a way.” Bowie clearly had a big plan up his immaculately tailored sleeve. But what could it be?

Before Bowie took the stage of the Toby Jug, an orchestral crescendo announced him. It was a recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, drawn from the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange. To anyone who’d seen the film, the music carried a sinister feeling, superimposed as it was over Kubrick’s visions of grim dystopia and ultraviolence. Grandiloquence mixed with foreboding, shot through with sci-fi: it couldn’t have been a better backdrop for what the pint-clutching attendees of the Toby Jug were about to behold.

At around 9:00 p.m., the houselights were extinguished. A spotlight sliced the darkness. Bowie took the stage. But was it really him? In a strictly physical sense, it must have been. But this was Bowie as no one had seen him before. His hair – which appeared blond and flowing on the cover of Hunky Dory, released just three months earlier – was now chopped at severe angles and dyed bright orange, the color of a B-movie laser beam. His face was lavishly slathered with cosmetics. He wore a jumpsuit with a plunging neckline, revealing his delicate, bone-pale chest, and his knee-high wrestling boots were fire-engine red. Bowie had never been conservative in dress, but even for him, this was a quantum leap into the unknown.

Then he began to play. His band – dubbed the Spiders from Mars and comprising guitarist Mick Ronson, bassist Trevor Bolder, and drummer Woody Woodmansey – was lean, efficient, and powerful, clad in gleaming, metallic outfits that mimicked spacesuits, reminiscent of the costumes from the campy 1968 sci-fi romp Barbarella. The Jane Fonda vehicle had been a huge hit in England, and it became a cult film in the United States, thanks to its titillating portrayal of a future where sensuality is rediscovered after a lifetime of sterile, virtual sex.

In the same way, Bowie’s new incarnation was shocking, lurid, and supercharged with sexual energy. Combined with his recent admission of either homosexuality or bisexuality, as he was then married to his first wife, Angela, Bowie’s new persona oozed futuristic mystique, which Bowie biographer David Buckley described as “a blurring of ‘found’ symbols from science fiction – space-age high heels, glitter suits, and the like.”

But what bewitched the audience most was the music. Amid a set of established songs such as “Andy Warhol,” “Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud,” and, naturally, “Space Oddity,” the Spiders from Mars injected a handful of new tunes, including “Hang On to Yourself” and “Suffragette City,” that had yet to appear on record. Propulsive, infectious, and awash in dizzying imagery, this was a new Bowie – cut less from the thoughtful, singer-songwriter mold and more from some new hybrid of thespian rocker and sci-fi myth. These songs bounced off the walls of the Toby Jug’s no-longer-ordinary function room. The audience, whistling and cheering, was entranced. A show eye-popping enough to dazzle an entire arena was being glimpsed in the most intimate of watering holes.

Although the crowd was sparse, people stood on tables and chairs to get the best possible view. The stage was only two feet high, but it may as well have been twenty, or two million – an elevator to outer space designed to launch Bowie into an orbit far more enduring than that of Major Tom in “Space Oddity.”

At some point, amid the swirl and spectacle of the two-hour set, Bowie announced from the stage the name of his new identity: Ziggy Stardust.

Like an artifact from some alien civilization, Bowie’s fifth album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, was unveiled on June 16, 1972. By then, Ziggy had become a sensation. After the Toby Jug gig in February, concertgoers embraced Bowie’s new persona in music venues around the UK. Attendance swelled each night, as did a growing legion of followers who dressed themselves in homemade approximations of Bowie’s outlandish attire.

Just as the album was released, he and the Spiders appeared on the BBC’s revered Top of the Popsprogram, performing the record’s centerpiece: the song “Starman.” For many of a certain age, watching Bowie on their family’s television that evening was tantamount to the Beatles’ legendary spot on The Ed Sullivan Show in the United States eight years earlier. “He was so vivid. So luminous. So fluorescent. We had one of the first color TVs on our street, and David Bowie was the reason to have a color TV,” remembered Bono of U2, who was twelve at the time. “It was like a creature falling from the sky. Americans put a man on the moon. We had our own British guy from space.”

Musically, “Starman” was an exquisite and striking slice of pop songcraft, exactly what Bowie needed at that point in his career. Lyrically, he smuggled in a sci-fi story that centers around Ziggy Stardust, who was both Bowie’s alter ego and the fictional protagonist of the Rise and Fall concept album, as loose as it was in that regard – it is more a fugue of ideas that coalesce into a concept. Through the radio and TV, an alien announces his existence to Earth, which Bowie describes in lovingly rendered sci-fi verse: “A slow voice on a wave of phase.” The young people of the world become enchanted and hope to lure the alien down: “Look out your window, you can see his light /If we can sparkle, he may land tonight.” But that alien is reticent, and his shyness makes him all the more magnetic.

Bowie sang the song on Top of the Pops clad in a multicolored, reptilian-textured jumpsuit, which Melody Maker called, “Vogue’s idea of what the well-dressed astronaut should be wearing.” In that sense, “Starman” is a self-fulfilling prophecy: before he could truly know the impact the song would have, he used it to describe its effect on Great Britain’s young people in perfect detail. He was the starman waiting in the sky, and the kids who saw him on TV soon began to dress like him, hoping to sparkle so that he may land tonight.

If Bowie intended “Starman” to be an overt reference to [Robert A.] Heinlein’s Starman Jones, the book he loved as a kid, he never publicly confessed to it. But the admittedly sketchy story line of Rise and Fall parallels another Heinlein work: Stranger in a Strange Land, the novel that had influenced David Crosby in the ’60s and, later, many other sci-fi musicians of the ’70s. The book’s hero,Valentine Michael Smith, comes to Earth from Mars; in Rise and Fall, Mars is built into the title. And both Valentine and Ziggy become messiahs of a kind – androgynous, libertine heralds of a new age of human awareness. Bowie claimed he’d turned down offers to star in a film production of Stranger in a Strange Land and had few positive words to say about the book, calling it “staggeringly, awesomely trite.” Be that as it may, he clearly had read the book and developed a strong opinion of it – perhaps enough for some of its themes and iconography to seep into his own work.

The opening song of Rise and Fall, “Five Years,” elegiacally delivers a dystopian forecast: the world will end in five years due to a lack of resources, and society is disintegrating into a slow-motion parade of perversity and moral paralysis. It’s a countdown to doomsday, with the clock set at five years. The song’s ominous refrain, “We’ve got five years,” is sung by Bowie with increasing histrionics, his voice sounding more panicked and deranged as he repeats the phrase. “The whole thing was to try and get a mocking angle at the future,” Bowie said in 1972. “If I can mock something and deride it, one isn’t so scared of it” – with “it” being the apocalypse.

“Five Years” set a chilling tone, but Rise and Fall didn’t entirely wallow in it. The coming of an alien rock star named Ziggy Stardust is relayed in a multi-song story that’s equally melancholy and ecstatic, tragic and triumphant. On tracks such as “Moonage Daydream,” “Star,” and “Lady Stardust,” Bowie wields terms such as “ray gun” and “wild mutation.” He also claims, “I’m the space invader,” as though he were channeling the ideas of his sci-fi heroes Stanley Kubrick or William S. Burroughs, particularly the latter’s 1971 novel, The Wild Boys.

As Bowie explained, “It was a cross between [The Wild Boys] and A Clockwork Orange that really started to put together the shape and the look of what Ziggy and the Spiders were going to become. They were both powerful pieces of work, especially the marauding boy gangs of Burroughs’s Wild Boys with their bowie knives. I got straight on to that. I read everything into everything. Everything had to be infinitely symbolic.” The photos of the Spiders from Mars inside the album sleeve of Rise and Fall were even patterned after the gang of Droogs of A Clockwork Orange; Droogs are mentioned by name in the Rise and Fall song “Suffragette City.” Furthermore, Bowie posed on theback cover of the album, peering out of a phone booth – just as though he were that other cryptic British alien who regularly regenerates himself and is often seen in a phone booth (specifically a police call box), the Doctor from Doctor Who.

Bowie also drew from work of the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. Born Norman Carl Odam, the Texan rockabilly artist released a twangy, oddball 1968 single titled “I Took a Trip (On a Gemini Spaceship)” that Bowie wound up covering in 2002; it was from Odam that Bowie borrowed Ziggy’s surname. And after going on a record-buying spree while touring the United States in 1971, he bought Fun House by the Michigan proto-punk band the Stooges, whose outrageous lead singer was named Iggy Pop. He jotted down ideas on hotel stationary while traveling the States, resulting in a name that was a mash-up of Iggy Pop and the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. Ziggy Stardust was a fabricated rock star, one whose sleek facade flew in the face of the era’s reigning rock aesthetic of laid-back, unpretentious authenticity. Instead, Bowie wanted to puncture that illusion by taking rock showmanship to a previously unseen, self-referential extreme.

When it came to Bowie’s urge toward collage and deconstruction, Burroughs remained a prime inspiration. A pioneer of postmodern sci-fi pastiche as well as the literary cut-up technique, in which snippets of text were randomly rearranged to form a new syntax, Burroughs straddled both pulp sci-fi and the avant-garde, exactly the same liminal space Bowie now occupied. Rock critic Lester Bangs accused Bowie of “trying to be George Orwell and William Burroughs” while dismissing him as appearing to be “deposited onstage after seemingly being dipped in vats of green slime and pursued by Venusian crab boys” – a description that sounded like it could have been cribbed straight from a Burroughs book.

In 1973, Burroughs met Bowie in the latter’s London home. The meeting was arranged by A. Craig Copetas from Rolling Stone, and the resulting exchange was published in the magazine a few months later. In the article, Copetas observed that Bowie’s house was “decorated in a science-fiction mode,” and that Bowie greeted them “wearing three-tone NASA jodhpurs.” The ensuing conversation ranged across many topics, but it circled around science fiction – and in particular, the similarity Bowie saw between Rise and Fall and Burroughs’s 1964 novel Nova Express, a surreal sci-fi parable about mind control and the tyranny of language.

In an effort to convince Burroughs of the similarity, Bowie offered one of the most revealing analyses of Rise and Fall as a work of science fiction:

“The time is five years to go before the end of the Earth. It has been announced that the world will end because of a lack of natural resources. Ziggy is in a position where all the kids have access to things that they thought they wanted. The older people have all lost touch with reality, and the kids are left on their own to plunder anything. Ziggy was in a rock & roll band, and the kids no longer wanted to play rock & roll. There’s no electricity to play it.”

Bowie went on:

“[The environmental apocalypse] does not cause the end of the world for Ziggy. The end comes when the infinites arrive. They really are a black hole, but I’ve made them people because it would be very hard to explain a black hole onstage.”

Curiously, it took him another twenty-six years before casually revealing in an interview that a sci-fi song called “Black Hole Kids” was recorded as an outtake during the sessions for Rise and Fall. He called the song “fabulous,” adding, “I have no idea why it wasn’t on the original album. Maybe I forgot.”

But Bowie dropped the biggest revelation about Rise and Fallin the 1973 conversation with Burroughs. Ziggy Stardust, according to his creator, is not an alien himself; instead, he’s an earthling who makes contact with extra-dimensional beings, who then use him as a charismatic vessel for their own nefarious invasion plan. But like Frankenstein’s monster being erroneously called “Frankenstein” to the point where it seems senseless to quibble with that usage, Ziggy Stardust continues to be widely considered the alien entity of Rise and Fall. Considering the shifting identity and gender of Bowie’s most famous alter ego, that ambiguity may well have been his intention. Talking to Burroughs, he ultimately labels Rise and Fall “a science-fiction fantasy of today” before reiterating its similarity to Nova Express, to which Burroughs responds, “The parallels are definitely there.”

Rise and Fall has always been as fluid as Bowie’s facade itself. Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion cast a shadow over Ziggy Stardust, especially the glammy incarnation of the many-faced character known as Jerry Cornelius – who was adapted to the big screen in 1973 for the feature film The Final Programme. It coincided with Ziggy’s own ascendency, not to mention the New Wave of Science Fiction and its preference for fractured narratives and multiple interpretations over linear stories and pat endings.

During their mutual interview, Burroughs brought up the then-current rumor that Bowie might play Valentine Michael Smith in a film adaptation of Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. Bowie again dismissed it. “It seemed a bit too flower-powery, and that made me a bit wary.” For his part, Bowie’s fellow sci-fi musician Mick Farren of the Deviants later admitted he always thought Michael Valentine Smith was a major influence on Ziggy Stardust. “I was certain someone would call him out for plagiarism,” Farren said. “Nobody did.”

Bowie may have denied his affinity for Stranger in a Strange Land by his boyhood go-to author Heinlein, but he was not shy about professing his love for one of the authors Lester Bangs compared him to: George Orwell. Almost as a footnote, Bowie told Burroughs, “Now I’m doing Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four on television.” That project would never come to pass, but it would lay the groundwork for his next, less famous sci-fi concept album – a jagged, atmospheric song cycle that plunged Bowie into the darkest extremes of dystopia.

[moro-nokimi]

some thoughts I’ve had in rewatching dn part 1

DICKHEAD

he’s pretty oh fuck

Light Yagami you glorious bastard

she’s so pretty

HE’S SO OVERDRAMATIC

SHE’S SO SMART

this animation is shit

I’ve aged ten years why is he like this

bitch I love this opening

THE FUCK

god this is weird since IT’S FUCKING RESTER’S VOICE ACTOR AS RAYE PENBER

Naomi Misora more like Goddess™

take a guess you nasty shitlord

oh shit

everything is green tinted

BITCH WHY DIDNT HE RECOGNISE THE VOICE

Light won’t hesitate, bitch,

he is Shook™

wow for once Light and I agree

THIS IS WHY YOU DIED RAYE

ominous

you really thought through this Raye 👀

wow that’s freaky deaky

his eyebrows are great. sad that he’s an ass

why do Raye and Gevanni look so much alike the fuck

I love David Hurwitz

THOSE NAMES ARE AWFUL

you’re pretty smart Raye

I’ve nearly called him Roy like three times thanks Gryphon

I can’t believe someone had to grunt into a microphone live to imitate the sounds of Agony

his handwriting is really nice fuck him

he fuckin dead

oh this is going to really cause a falling out

is that Trevor Devall

OH FUCK HE DIDNT

where’s my wife

can you believe Naomi Misora invented crying

I’m ready for death

ah yez. The Hidden Eyes Of Emo™

this soundtrack is awesome

that babyface tho

Aizawa gets so hot after the second arc

MATSUDA!!!!!!!

I have one emotion right now. it’s bisexuality

YOURE SO RIGHT

Matsuda was so awkward looking in the manga

shut up you eyebrowless fuck

THATS THE WHOLE POINT OF HIM STAYING IN THE SHADOWS AIZAWA JESUS CHRIST

tho,, you do have a point,,

Ide……………… you’re right, but jesus christ you’re dense

wow these guys can be dense

he sure did

oh my god Ide

haha aizawa’s face

that bone structure tho

why the focus on his groin

I really expected him to be hot the first time I watched this series. thanks, Alessandro Juliani, voice of my childhood,

IT’S THE BOYS

I keep thinking about the Pieta clue in llp every time I see that frame whoops

that hair is ridiculous

Is He An Itchy Boy

rookie mistake Soichiro

did AJ even take a breath saying that

the fuck

Aizawa is an Angery Boy

what makes you think anyone wants to listen to you that long you egotistical fuck

ew

nasty

not this shit

this is an amazing series where a smart ppl isnt actually written by a smart ppl it’s just loads of bullshit and I have to admire Ohba for that

oh no it’s this episode can’t wait to cry loudly

stg the director’s got a foot fetish

this theme but in eight bit

Ohba’s got a foot fetish fuckin knew it

I can’t believe Takada and I have a similar fashion sense

this is it she’s bisexual too

WHERES UR FUCKING BACKUP YOU NO SHOWERING FROG

Death Note doesn’t pass the bechdel test at all jesus christ

why are all the ladies storylines focused around men or have literally no other personality either due to lack of development or Ohba killing them off

that fucking face tho

WHY DOES HE NOT HAVE A NOSE

HE’S VOLDEMORT IN DISGUISE

Naomi’s hair is probably really soft

Oh No™

why do Light and Sayu have such a nice relationship if Quinn asked me to help them with their homework i’d tell them to fuck off

her voice is really nice

wow Naomi and I have the basic same fashion sense I don’t know how to feel about this

BITCH THATS TREVOR DEVALL BUT IN MIDO’S VOICE RATHER THAN AIZAWA’S

she has such good eyebrows

who the fuck murders someone over insurance fraud—wait, the mafia would

she’s so skeptical

oh dear

“who is this woman” A WOMAN WHO I WOULD LET KICK MY ASS AMIRITE

god she’s so smart

why are the chins in this series Like That

haha this animation is awful

she manipulated him with alcohol is what she did

girl your fiance is a fool and a half

DICKHEAD

i love this ending

[bizmediaweb]

The History of Social Media: 29+ Key Moments

Here, we’ve compiled some of the most pivotal “moments” in social media’s history. From the very first social networking site (invented in the 1990s), to recent changes to networks with billions of users.

So sit back, relax, and join us while we look back at what once was the future.

The 29 most important moments in the history of social media

1. The first social media site is born (1997)

On one of the first true social media sites, SixDegrees.com, you could set up a profile page, create lists of connections, and send messages within networks.

The site amassed around one million users before it was bought out for $125 million …and shuttered in 2000, though it later made a modest comeback and still subsists today.

2. Are you? Hot or Not (2000)

Who can forget Hot or Not ( AmIHotorNot.com )—the site that invited users to submit photos of themselves so others could rate their attractiveness. The site is rumored to have influenced the creators of Facebook and YouTube—and nurtured millions of insecurities.

After being sold off a few times, its new owners tried to revive it as a “game” in 2014.

3. Friendster (2002)

Then along came everyone’s BFF: Friendster.

Launched in 2002, Friendster was originally going to be a dating site that would help set up people with friends in common. You could create a profile, include “status updates” and reveal your mood. Messaging “friends of friends of friends” was also a thing.

Unfortunately, the site’s spike in popularity in 2003 caught the company by surprise and took a toll on its servers, impacting users, who increasingly looked to connect elsewhere.

4. Myspace: “a place for friends” (2003)

In droves, frustrated Friendsters said “sorry it’s not me, it’s you” and pulled up stakes for Myspace , the Friendster rival that quickly became the go-to site for millions of hip teens. Its customizable public profiles (which often featured music, videos and badly shot, half-nude selfies) were visible to anyone, and were a welcome contrast to Friendster’s private profiles which were available only to registered users.

2005 marked the apex of Myspace. The site had 25 million users and was the fifth popular site in the United States when it sold to NewsCorp that year. And that was the start of its decline from ultra-trendy to ultra-tacky.

5. Gaining traction (2003-2005)

In 2003, Mark Zuckerberg launched Facemash, described as Harvard University’s answer to Hot or Not. “The Facebook” followed in 2004. Registering its one millionth user that same year, the site dropped the “the” to became just “Facebook” in 2005, after the “Facebook.com” domain was purchased for $200,000.

Around the same time, a tidal wave of other social media sites swept ashore:

LinkedIn emerged, targeting the business community. Photosharing sites like Photobucket and Flickr, social bookmarking site del.ici.ous and the now ubiquitous blogging platform, WordPress also came into existence.

YouTube also launched in 2005. Anyone remember “Me at the zoo”—the very first YouTube video of that man and the weirdly watchable elephants? It now has 56 million views.

News-aggregator-cum-snark factory, Reddit arrived that year too.

6. Twitter hatches (2006)

Despite its 2004 birth date, 2006 was arguably the year Facebook truly took flight: it opened registration to everyone and went from an exclusive Harvard-only club to a global network.

Twttr, the site that eventually became known as Twitter also took flight in 2006.

The first tweet ever, posted by co-founder @Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006, read: “just setting up my twttr.” So glad they changed the name, because “twttr” scks!

Dorsey originally envisioned twttr as a text message-based tool for sending updates between friends. Apparently in the early stages of its development the twttr team racked up some steep SMS bills. TechCrunch reported twttr’s first users were sending breaking life updates like: “Cleaning my apartment” and “Hungry”. (My, how times have(n’t) changed!)

7. LinkedIn “in the Black” (2006)

In sharp contrast to other networks, LinkedIn—once known as “Myspace for adults”—was the first to offer users paid premium packages. Its Jobs and Subscriptions area, the site’s first premium business line, helped bring in revenue in the early days.

In 2006, just three years post-launch (and three years before Facebook!), LinkedIn turned a profit for the first time.

“As far as we’re concerned, a year of profitability is but a ‘taste’ of the success we aspire to achieve at LinkedIn,” said social media manager Mario Sundar, in a blog post lauding LinkedIn’s first year “in the black.”

The site’s profitability would be a recurring theme in the stampede towards IPO—both LinkedIn, and numerous copycats.

8. YouTube makes partners (2007)

Through YouTube’s elephantine beginnings, buzz grew: it gathered nearly eight million daily views between its May 2005 beta its official launch in December 2005. Then, things escalated quickly: ahead of its acquisition by Google in the fall of 2006, the site grew to 100 million videos being watched by 20 million dedicated users.

In May 2007, YouTube introduced its partnership program, which has been key for the site. The initiative is what it sounds like: a partnership between YouTube and its popular content creators. YouTube provides the platform and creators provide the content. Profits from advertising on creators’ channels are then shared between the two parties. And that’s how Lonelygirl15 and your favorite YouTubers got their start.

9. Tumblr and the age of the microblog (2007)

In 2007 the social network described as “Twitter meets YouTube and WordPress” came a-tumblin’ along. 17-year-old David Karp launched Tumblr from his bedroom in his mother’s New York apartment. The site allowed users to curate pictures, videos and text and “reblog” their friends on their “tumblelogs.”

Soon after, the term micro-blogging became widely used to describe both Twitter and Tumblr, which both allowed users to “exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links.”

10. The hashtag arrives (2007)

The strict 140-character limit for tweets set Twitter apart from rivals, including Facebook and Tumblr. But Twitter’s significance in the digital age was really defined by the hashtag, a symbol that has helped political organizers and average citizens mobilize, promote, and create awareness for critical (and not so critical) social issues.

Hashtags have also helped plant the seeds that sprouted movements such as #Occupy, #BlackLivesMatter, and #MeToo.

Also, timesucks like #SundayFunday, #YOLO and #Susanalbumparty.

As the story goes, during the summer of 2007, one of Twitter’s early adopters, Chris Messina, proposed the hashtag (inspired from his early days on internet relay chats) for organizing tweets. It wasn’t until a couple of months later, that the #SanDiegoFire hashtag was sparked to aggregate tweets and updates about the California wildfires.

Still, Twitter didn’t fully embrace the hashtag until 2009, realizing that it was more than just a useful way to group content, but a unique vernacular for expressing ideas and emotions online too. It invigorated the platform, and brought new users.

11. Welcome Weibo (2009)

While we’re on the topic of micro-blogging, we would be remiss not to mention China’s Sina Weibo, or simply Weibo. A Facebook and Twitter hybrid, the site launched in 2009—the same year Facebook and Twitter were banned in the country. Along with Qzone and QQ, Weibo remains one of the most popular social networks in China, with 340 million active monthly users.

12. Back to the land with FarmVille (2009)

Back over on the other side of the ocean, 2009 was the year your mom, granddad and Aunt Jenny joined Facebook and couldn’t (or wouldn’t) stop inviting you to join the new family pastime, FarmVille. Like you didn’t have enough chores to do IRL, wiling the day away on virtual animal husbandry added to the list.

The addictive social game eventually made TIME magazine’s list of the world’s worst inventions. (Of course, that didn’t stop Zynga from creating spinoffs like PetVille, FishVille and FarmVille 2 among others. PassVille.)

13. When your FourSquare “check in” ousted your FarmVille update (2009)

2009 also showed users how to acquire important-sounding-yet-meaningless titles from their daily travels. Location-based app Foursquare was one of the first that allowed users to “check in,” while sharing recommendations all about their favourite neighbourhoods and cities with friends and family …and earn virtual mayorships while they were at it.

14. Grindr revolutionizes the hookup (2009)

Tinder comes to mind as the app that changed online dating culture when it appeared in 2012. But Grindr, on the scene in 2009, was the first geosocial networking app for dating geared towards gay and bisexual men, helping them meet other men nearby. For better or worse, it revolutionized hookup culture for gay men, and paved the way for many others like Scruff, Jack’d, Hornet, Chappy, and Growlr (for bears).

15. Unicode adopts the emoji (2010)

There can be little doubt that digital culture changed in 1999 when the emoji first appeared on Japanese mobile photos, thanks to Shigetaka Kurita. Their popularity quickly ???? (uh, took off).

By the mid-2000s, emoji started appearing internationally on Apple and Google platforms.

Realizing writing online without access to a thumbs up emoji was nearly impossible, Unicode adopted the emoji in 2010. The move was the beginning of emojis being legitimized as a language. So essential was the “Face with Tears” (a.k.a. the laugh-cry emoji) that it was actually adopted as a word by the Oxford Dictionary in 2015.

And each country has their own favorite: for Americans it’s skulls, Canadians love the smiling pile of poo (WTF, Canada?), and for the French? Of course it’s the heart.

16. Introducing Instagram (2010)

Can you remember the pre-filter days of photo-sharing—back when there wasn’t the option to add the Gingham filter to make everything look “vintage”?

We have Instagram’s founders to thank for our inability to go a day without posting a filtered pic with polaroid corners to our highly curated feeds. On July 16, 2010, one of the first Instagram photos to be published by co-founder Mike Krieger (@mikeyk) was an uncaptioned, heavily filtered shot of a marina.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mike Krieger (@mikeyk) on Jul 16, 2010 at 10:26am PDT

The shot definitely set the tone for the billion users around the globe the today post upwards of 95 million shots a day (according to 2016 figures).

17. Pinterest has us pining to pin (2010)

Though it first went live in closed beta in 2010, it wasn’t until 2011 that “pinning” would become a favourite new hobby (and verb) for domestic gods and goddesses. Social bookmarking site Pinterest was once called “digital crack for women” and gave women’s lifestyle magazines and blogs a new raison d’etre.

A 2012 report about the site found that home, arts and crafts, and fashion were the most popular categories on Pinterest. That’s still true in 2018.

Recent stats show two million people post pins every day, and there are one billion pins living on the site!

18. #Jan25 Tahrir Square uprising (2011)

Jan. 25, 2011 was a fateful day for hundreds of thousands of Egyptians who took to the streets, gathering in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest 30 years of dictatorship under Hosni Mubarak. The uprising eventually forced Mubarak to step down—just as similar protests had ousted Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali days earlier.

Similar actions, which came collectively to be known as the “Arab Spring,” swept countries across the Middle East and North Africa, and were credited with bringing down governments and bringing about positive change for local populations. Reports found that social media networks were critical tools for organizers in mobilizing, publicizing and shaping opinion.

Popular hashtags on Twitter (#Egypt, #Jan25, #Libya, #Bahrain and #protest) were tweeted millions of times during the first three months of 2011. Facebook usage grew across the region, doubling in some countries.

Government attempts to block access to Facebook and Twitter were briefly successful, but quickly spurred activists to find other creative ways to organize, inspiring onlookers the world over.

19. Snapchat’s disappearing act (2011)

Launching almost exactly a year after Instagram, soon-to-be rival “Picaboo” launched …and then quickly rebranded to Snapchat following a lawsuit by a photobook company with the same name. (Probably for the best.)

The app’s early success tapped into the ephemeral nature of life’s moments, allowing users to post content that would vanish after 24 hours. (Not to mention giving us all the ability to puke rainbows.)

The disappearing snaps appealed to the teen demographic the app first attracted. Snapchat was also the perfect alternative for teens to find their friends—and flee family on Facebook.

20. Google Plus wants in on the party (2011)

2011 was also the year Google attempted to roll out another answer to Facebook and Twitter—following previous failed attempts like Google Buzz and Orkut. Google+ or Google Plus began with an invitation-only system in 2011. That summer, new users got access to 150 invitations they could send out before the site’s official opening in September. Demand was so high that Google eventually had to suspend them.

Google Plus differentiated itself from Facebook with its “circles” for organizing friends and acquaintances that could be done easily without having to send a friend request.

By the end of 2011, Google Plus was fully integrated into related services like Gmail and Google Hangout. Unfortunately, timing of the social network’s launch following Facebook and Twitter meant that the social network struggled to accrue the staggering usage numbers its competitors had. (Clearly there are some parties you just don’t want to be late to.)

21. Facebook celebrates one billion (2012)

Just eight years after launching in Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room, Facebook announced its user base had reached a significant milestone—and now shared a population nearly the size of India.

“If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you. Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life,” Zuckerberg said.

Looking back, now that Facebook has two billion users and three other billion-user platforms—WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram—his quote sounds all the more quaint.

22. Year of the selfie (2014)

Twitter proclaimed 2014 as the “Year of the Selfie” following Ellen DeGeneres’s Oscar photo. You know the one. Or, you should. Because that selfie has been retweeted more than three million times—setting a Twitter record and winning Twitter’s award for “Golden tweet” of the year.

If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014

The debate about who invented the selfie has yet to be resolved. Paris Hilton said she did in 2006. Others say it was actually a guy named Robert Cornelius in 1839. (He wasn’t available for comment.)

23. Meerkat, Periscope: the streaming wars begin (2015)

Meerkat was the first app to start the live streaming craze (RIP). Then, Twitter developed Periscope and won the first streaming wars (there’s another one coming, I’m sure).

Periscope became everyone’s favorite, easy-to-use app for streaming and watching live events. Getting showered with “hearts” anytime you hit the record button was pretty much all the incentive anyone needed to try it out. It was so popular that Apple awarded the app the iOS app of the year in 2015.

Three years on, the video app is rumoured to be struggling. But it’s also integrated with the Twitter mobile app, so there are still ways to become a Periscope celeb.

24. Facebook LIVE (2016)

Facebook was slow to slide into the live stream game, first rolling out live streaming features on its platform in 2016. But the company has worked to ensure its success in the space with extra resources and partnerships with mainstream media like Buzzfeed, the Guardian and the New York Times.

Special attention from Zuckerberg and its massive user base have also ensured its dominance.

25. Instagram launches Stories (2016)

Taking a page from Snapchat’s playbook, Instagram introduced “Stories” allowing users to post photo and video sequences that disappear within 24 hours (although they can now be saved and archived). Filters, stickers, polls, hashtags, and highlights to enhance Stories have succeeded in making the app even more addictive, as if that was even possible.

26. The U.S. election and social media’s fake news crisis (2016)

You could argue that 2016 was a no good very bad year for social media—and by extension democracy.

It was the year a sophisticated information warfare was waged using “troll factories” on social media used to spread disinformation—including false claims and conspiracy theories—during the U.S. presidential election. Mainstream influencers like journalists, pundits and politicians—even Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—were found to be spreading content that bots had shared online.

Facebook has since revealed that 126 million Americans were exposed to content by Russian agents during the election.

In 2018, Facebook, Twitter, and Google representatives appeared before the U.S. Congress to testify as part of ongoing investigations into Russia’s attempts to influence the elections.

27. Twitter doubles the character limit (2017)

In an effort to attract more users, Twitter doubled its signature character limit from 140 to 280 characters. The move was widely panned by more than a few users (and had critics hoping Trump wouldn’t find out).

Of course, it was @Jack who tweeted out the first super-sized tweet:

This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence! https://t.co/TuHj51MsTu

— jack (@jack) September 26, 2017

The major change along with the introduction of “threads” (aka Twitterstorms) now means tweets that will make you go WTF are increasingly unavoidable as everyone makes the most of their 280 characters.

28. Cambridge Analytica and #DeleteFacebook (2018)

In early 2018, it was revealed that Facebook allowed a researcher from Cambridge Analytica—who had worked on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—to harvest data from 50 million users without their consent. A campaign to #DeleteFacebook swept the internet as users protested by deleting their profiles on the site en masse. Despite this, Facebook’s user numbers continue to climb.

Facing mounting pressure to address data privacy, Zuckerberg participated in five days of hearings before the U.S. Congress.

29. Instagram launches IGTV app (2018)

If you thought Boomerang was the only video app Instagram had up its sleeve you would be wrong. Instagram is now ready to compete with YouTube: the company increased its one-minute video limit to one-hour and launched a whole new app, IGTV, dedicated to long-form video.

Up next 2019

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What Do You Assume The Goth Movement Was About? Style Or Philosophy?

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