Here at Flavorwire, we pride ourselves on not only writing some of the best content on the internet, but keeping an eye on all of the great writing that other folks on the ‘net are doing, too. Today we’ve got a survey of Trump’s supporters on Reddit, a silly interview with a Vanderpump Rules star, a breakdown of why people still flock to exhibits of dead bodies, and a key moment in the history of the internet — and watermelons.
Vanderpump Rules is, like most of Bravo’s reality lineup, an absurd mess of a show. One of the biggest, messiest absurdities is Tom Sandoval, a man who has great hair, great cheeks, and a great way with the ladies. Jezebel ran an interview with him earlier today. He starred in a video called “I Do Coke,” which is why he maybe agreed to this interview while thinking that Jezebel was unaware of Vanderpump. Most of the interview is insider-y, but Sandoval’s take on the reality of reality TV should be interesting to people who have no idea about the show.
One of my biggest things in life is that I’m a good person, you know? And when somebody tries to attack that, then most of the time, they’re fucking lying. I don’t do anything maliciously. So when somebody tries to say that I’m somebody that I’m not, I get really, really heated about it. You can say that I’m a douchebag, that I’m cheesy, vain, whatever, you can say all that stuff, I don’t care. But if you say I’m not a good person, that’s where I get really pissed.
Reddit is seen as one of the largest hubs for media sharing and commentary, but it’s also seen as a place where like-minded folks can get together and feel that they’re not alone. Some of those people happen to love Donald Trump. And by some, I mean like, close to 100,000.
At least 90,000 people on Reddit have subscribed to a community called “The Donald,” in a group known as a subreddit. Its members post material full of slang, insults and inside jokes. Users refer to each other as “centipedes” — a reference to a series of popular videos in which Mr. Trump is compared to the creature, which is a “nimble navigator” just like the candidate himself. (Mr. Trump has shared these videos as well.) Many usernames include the letters MAGA – for Make America Great Again.
Body Worlds is an exhibit that places the spotlight on dead human bodies in order to further our understanding of our own human mechanics. Or, maybe, for some morbid gawking. The exhibit sees constant attendance and has been ripped off countless times, but why? Why are we so fascinated by the human body — to the point that we’d want to go see it up close and deconstructed? Turns out, Body Works wasn’t the first of its kind, and there’s a long history that explains its appeal. For nearly as long as physicians and anatomists have attempted to understand the body, they have attempted to preserve, illustrate, and present it. Cabinets of curiosities displayed in the homes of European nobility in the sixteenth century frequently included human skulls. As civic museums emerged in cities throughout Europe and the United States, some began to formally organize collections around anatomical questions. Medical museums were often more interested in pathologies—abnormal medical conditions or disease. They also collected thousands of skulls and bones, attempting to address basic questions about race.Lastly, not so much an essay worth reading for any great reason and more a capsule of April 8, 2016: a little bit about the fact that nearly 1 million people watched live as two young human beings exploded a watermelon by constricting it with rubber bands. What does our future hold?
On Thursday, we learned that Facebook is deeply afraid users may have stopped sharing the deeply personal content that keeps people coming back to the site, jeopardizing their business model of monetizing our thoughts, feelings, and friendships. On Friday, nearly 800,000 people tuned into Facebook’s new live video feature towatch BuzzFeed explode a watermelon with hundreds of rubber bands.