Show notes
Happy Thursday, you pop culture junkies.
This week, we’re talking etiquette. Not which fork to use or whether you can wear white after Labor Day, but the increasingly complicated rules of existing among other humans — online, offline, at a job interview, at a bar, on a college campus and, God help us, in a comment section.
We start in Massachusetts with the lesbian bar story that swallowed the internet: masks, rules, reactions, counter-reactions and, yes, clown school. How did one local story become a national discourse? And what does the response say about the way we judge one another — and occasionally lose our collective minds — online?
Then we turn to Cornell and a story that is anything but funny: a young woman’s allegations that seven fraternity members drugged and sexually assaulted her over the course of seven hours two years ago, and the questions now being raised about how the university handled her case. We look at why the student newspaper’s reporting has ignited such outrage and how the story is reverberating across social media.
On the considerably lower-stakes end of the etiquette spectrum: Iced Coffee Interviewgate. Apparently we now need rules about whether arriving at a job interview carrying an iced coffee is a professional faux pas. Naturally, the internet has opinions. Many, many opinions.
And finally, some music: Taylor Swift has new music, which means Swifties have thoughts, theories and reactions. And we meet NeNe Royal, the latest America’s Got Talent winner, whose story may make you believe there are still some genuinely lovely corners of the internet left.
Boston Globe story:
https://tinyurl.com/3w8xzcaz
Cornell’s college paper:
https://tinyurl.com/ymct2ah6
Taylor Swift new video:
https://tinyurl.com/55kca2f2
This week’s newsletter:
https://tinyurl.com/ymv479ud
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