Digg Editors' Favorite Writing And Internet Culture Of 2019
TAKE US TO 2020
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Well, that was certainly a year. A weird year capping a weird decade made all that much stranger by the fact that we watched much of it play out through the funhouse mirror of the internet.

But as ever, the team of editors that keep Digg chugging along every day have read thousands and thousands of stories (many good, some bad), watched hundreds of videos (some good, many bad), laughed at countless memes and generally consumed way too much of the internet. In the spirit of giving, we collected our favorite pieces of writing and internet culture from 2019 below.

Dan Fallon, Editorial Director


The Best Articles Of The Year

Dan Fallon

The Day the Dinosaurs Died

Douglas Preston — The New Yorker

Douglas Preston's in-depth profile of paleontology's kid wonder/bad boy Robert DePalma for The New Yorker has literally everything you could ask from it: intrigue, brilliant writing and, most importantly, a scientific hook that absolutely delivers. The irony of working at Digg is that I read short parts of tons of longform pieces, but rarely have time to read the whole thing — Preston's piece is one I immediately made the time for.

Pang-Chieh Ho

A Million People Are Jailed At China's Gulags. I Managed To Escape. Here's What Really Goes On Inside

David Stavrou — Haaretz

2019 was the year when the atrocities happening in the internment camps in Xinjiang, China really began to receive wider Western media coverage. Last month, hundreds of pages of leaked documents offered us an unprecedented look into the bureaucratic machinations behind the crackdown of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities by Chinese authorities. But earlier than that, an article written by David Stavrou offered us the chilling first-hand testimony of Sayragul Sauytbay, a teacher who escaped from the camps in Xinjiang, about what really goes on in the "re-education camps" in China. It's heartbreaking to read this article, which recounts the torture, assualts and medical experiments that have transpired and likely continue to exist in the camps, but it's also an essential read.

Molly Bradley

My Rapist Apologized. I Still Needed An Abortion

Michelle Alexander — The New York Times

This piece by Michelle Alexander is a moving story about how she finally talked to her daughter about her abortion. It captures the nuances inherent in so many such stories: that women's rapists are more often than not someone they know; that saying no doesn't mean she will feel free of the complex guilt around her victimhood; that having said no doesn't even mean she will be believed as a victim of rape. Most importantly, just as women feel differently about rape and abortion, they heal differently. For Alexander, her rapist apologizing to her — something so few women get following sexual assault of any kind — allowed her to process what happened to her and move on, but a huge part of what was necessary for her to heal was the abortion itself. A woman can't choose whether or not she's assaulted, and she can't choose how it will affect her, but in this one significant way, she can choose whether or not it will change her life.

James Crugnale

Is Bruce Hay the Most Gullible Man in Cambridge? 

Kera Bolonik — The Cut

Kera Bolonik's bonkers 7,000-word exposé on a paternity scam involving Harvard Law School professor Bruce Hay, described as a hapless patsy taken advantage of by two women who subsequently briefly took away his house(!) and got him placed on indefinite suspension at the university, is an incredibly bizarre and jaw-dropping rollercoaster ride from beginning to end. A triumph in reporting, Bolonik tells the astonishing tale of how Hay, who taught a course on "Judgment & Decision-Making," had an unbelievable lapse in (*a-hem*) judgment in falling for a random woman who approached him at a hardware store and told him he was attractive.

Adwait Patil

The Crisis In Kashmir Has Started A Conversation I Don't Know How To Have

I'm usually a hater when it comes to personal essays; but this one did a number on me. I share a similar upbringing to the author, Scaachi Koul. I too learned about India's complicated history through friends, and books, rather than it being taught in school or told to by my parents. Most of adulthood is about unlearning the biases we inherit along the way and this essay is a beautiful story of the emotional toll it adds as we undertake that journey.

Our Favorite Articles Of The Year

These aren't necessarily the "best" pieces (though they are very good!), but they are the articles that have stayed stuck in our minds after reading thousands and thousands of headlines this year.

The 2010s Have Broken Our Sense Of Time

Katherine Miller — BuzzFeed

As my coworkers and friends could tell you, I've recently been harping on the fact that my brain has lost all sense of what happened when in the last 10 years. The moment that made me realize how broken my sense of time is came in August, when I came across, in quick succession, a 5-year retrospective of that U2 album that appeared on everyone's iTunes, and a 10-year retrospective of Kanye interrupting Taylor Swift at the VMAs. Had you asked me beforehand, I would have sworn on my life that the timing of each was reversed. Which brings me to Katherine Miller's piece for BuzzFeed, an incisive assessment of how the 2010s have broken not just my brain but all of our brains when it comes to keeping track of the passage of time. The internet has warped everything about the way we live and experience the world, so that "we operate inside a technological experience that moves forward and back, and pulls you with it." It would be great to get my sense of time back, but I'm not sure that will ever happen.

Pleasing

Mary Milstead — Gay Mag

When Mary Milstead's mother was 19 years old, she was kidnapped by an escaped convict who murdered her boyfriend and abducted her for several hours before letting her go. Milstead's essay "Pleasing" recounts those excruciating hours and how her mother managed to endure. "She didn't fight him, or try to jump up and wave down a car. She did exactly what he said," Milstead writes, all the while pondering whether or not the impulse to be pleasing, even to one's abductor, is a feminine strength or weakness. It's an article that packs a punch emotionally: not only because we're reading a tale about a killing and abduction, but also because Mistead offers thoughtful musings into the fact of how women are often socialized to please and how that socialization is connected to the very real issue of survival.

I Think About This A Lot: The Time Robert Pattinson Blatantly Lied On The Today Show

Dana Schwartz — The Cut

This year, I thought a lot about the installment of The Cut's "I Think About This A Lot" series about Robert Pattinson lying to Matt Lauer about having seen a clown die in a clown car explosion at the circus when he was a child. That's it, that's the whole story of this piece. But as writer Dana Schwartz points out, there are no casualties as a result of Pattinson's lie: it is nothing more than a baffling (and darkly sort of hilarious) thing to have lied about. "All Pattinson really did was trivialize being interviewed by Matt Lauer," Schwartz writes, which is true — but the fact that Pattinson told the lie not as a troll but in a moment of genuine flusteredness is so human as to have endeared Pattinson to me as a celebrity and simply as a person, capable of both sublime acting (see: The Lighthouse) and of putting his foot wholly in his mouth. Who among us, indeed?

Birding Like It's 1899: Inside A Blockbuster American West Video Game

Nicholas Lund — Audubon

Back in January, Nicholas Lund wrote a delightful story for Audubon magazine about the extraordinary level of attention to detail given in the video game "Red Dead Redemption 2" to the simulated natural environment circa 1899. Lund explores the game's hyper-realistic pixelated birds of the Wild Wild West in the "pre-conservation era," which he describes as "exist(ing) in a time where humans mainly viewed birds—and all of the natural world—as ripe for exploitation rather than appreciation." It's a wonderful examination of how advanced video game technology has gotten to present gamers such a comprehensive virtual ecosystem that you can inhibit, giving you the freedom to enjoy a historical snapshot of nature through the lens of the game.

2019 Sportsperson Of The Year: Megan Rapinoe

Jenny Vrentas — Sports Illustrated

Two cool things happened this year. The US Women's national soccer team cemented its GOAT status in American soccer history and I experienced a World Cup winning parade for the first time. I started playing soccer nearly two decades ago because of Mia Hamm (shoutout to AYSO) and to see this team become World Champs was special because along the way they fought for equal-pay, the right to play on grass; not turf, and stood by other athletes, like Colin Kaepernick, all while dominating the tournament in France.

Our Favorite Scams Of The Year

The summer of scam may have been in 2018, but the grifts never stopped. We've rounded up a bunch of scams this year, but we each have one that's near and dear to our heart — here are our favorites:

The Hollywood Con Queen

Last year, The Hollywood Reporter published an article about a "crazy evil genius" who was impersonating prominent women working in Hollywood, including producer Amy Pascal and Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy, to financially and sexually exploit industry workers. In 2019, the schemes of the con queen have only seemed to grow larger and more bizarre, even as the FBI has set up a hunt to try to catch the scammer, dubbed the "Con Queen of Hollywood" by The Hollywood Reporter. In July this year, reports came out the Con Queen was now targeting Marvel and was luring people into sexually explicit telephone auditions by pretending to be a female executive vice president at the company. To add an extra wrinkle to the case, recent investigations have revealed that the Con Queen is likely to be a man. The case of the Con Queen remains strange, largely because it remains unsolved. I would suggest reading The Hollywood Reporter's exposé first and then capping it with Vanity Fair's article, which offers a few clues to the imposter's identity and why it has taken such a long time for investigators to catch him.

A Novelist's Many, Many Lies

Let's face it: scams are highly enjoyable, as long as you're not involved in them. There's something deeply satisfying about the fact that no matter how smart or powerful someone is, they could still be tricked by a skilled con artist. But it's especially delicious when (otherwise) smart, powerful people get scammed by someone who isn't even especially skilled — someone who crashes onto the scene waving so many red flags he could make a superhero cape out of them. This is why reading about Daniel Mallory, the author of the bestselling novel "The Woman in the Window" (coming out soon as a feature film), is so much more thrilling than anything even he could write: everyone he duped should have known better, could have seen through him, but didn't. Who could have foreseen that an entitled teenager who wrote to the admissions office at Princeton with the opening address "You heartless bastard" to protest his rejection — on the basis that they should have accepted him because his mother had cancer — would become such a manipulative adult? Much to think about.

Caroline Calloway's Wild Year

The long, strange saga of Instagram influencer Caroline Calloway initially began as an alleged scam and evolved into a messy public drama.

Calloway, who rose to prominence through her seeming command of the social media platform with her excessively intricate captions, first gained notoriety for launching what she characterized as "Creativity Workshops" earlier this year — an event described in a viral series of scathing tweets by Kayleigh Donaldson as "charging $165 for a 4 hour 'seminar' on how to be yourself." It turns out, in much the same spirit as the Fyre Festival, Calloway's event was extremely disorganized and under-delivered on many of the promises she gave to attendees. Case in point, she wasn't prepared for the 1,200 mason jars that she ordered for guests and they completely overwhelmed her apartment.

These antics deeply fascinated a niche pocket of the internet and Calloway was first taken to the woodshed by New York Magazine's Madison Malone Kircher, who decreed her workshops as "failed influencer-event heaven."

Several months later, Natalie Beach, the ghostwriter of Calloway's celebrated Instagram captions, came out of the woodwork in an epic 7,000 word personal essay for The Cut to reveal she helped author her ill-fated book proposal, that much of the influencer's clout was attained through buying followers and described in clinical detail the nature of their bizarre friendship.

Jacob Wohl's Never-Ending Hoaxes

I admire persistence, but not stupidity. It's hard for me to guess if Wohl is delusional — for the multiple political smear exposés — or simply a master troll. I'm going to go with delusional because everything he has done in the public eye has been a joke. From his Nathan-esque escapades, to his stoop "press-conferences," I want to think he's cosplaying some kind of heel character from Veep; but in reality he's going to end up becoming the inspiration for a future satirical quasi-political show.  

Adam Neumann's WeWork Grift

WeWork always sort of seemed like a house of cards — the Digg team worked out of a WeWork location in New York for a year, during which time it seemed to be mostly empty. It was tough to predict just how quickly it would all come crashing down for CEO Adam Neumann and the company's slate of investors, but crash down it did.

But really, the writing was on the wall when one of the most audacious corporate grifts ever was revealed in January — that Neumann was banking millions of dollars by buying properties, and then renting them back to WeWork. Somehow this wasn't enough for Softbank to stop pouring money into the company, a choice the firm is very much regretting now.

We Can't Believe That Happened This Year

So many things have happened this year. In fact, we could have sworn that most of them happened last year. But nope, they happened this year. Our brains have no sense of time, but it is what it is:

The Instagram Egg

You'll be forgiven if you don't remember this, since it did happen very early in January this year, but remember the time when a simple picture of an egg set a world record for having the most likes on an Instagram post? The post, which comprises a picture of an egg and the caption "Let's set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram" ended up getting more than 54 million likes and beat the previous record-holder, Kylie Jenner's picture of her newborn baby. It's a simple, whimsical thing that doesn't have any coherent logic behind it — and that's perhaps why I like it.

Howard Schultz Ran For President

Remember that? We had to go through that entire, dumb news cycle over the summer because Howard had nothing better to do with himself. At least we got Connor O'Malley's deranged Twitter video series out of it.

Pete Davidson And Kate Beckinsale's Gross Kiss

That cursed picture of Pete Davidson and Kate Beckinsale kissing was taken in March this year. This seems unfathomable. There is not enough distance we could put between us and that photograph that would make me feel comfortable. I can't talk about this anymore, please move on.

Michael Cohen Went To Prison

Michael Cohen, longtime lawyer for Donald Trump and brief star of his election effort with his famous "says who?" interview, reported to prison for "tax, bank and campaign finance crimes" in May.

The Return of Jai Paul

Jai Paul was an enigma. Two songs and a cheesy introduction on MySpace; that's all it took for him to become a superstar. First G-Eazy sampled him. Then Drake. Even Beyonce. The world had no idea who he was. Only tidbits of information. He was of South Asian heritage. He had a brother, who also made music. He was from London, signed to XL Records, but had no plans of releasing an album. Then in 2013, the world skipped a beat. Someone stole and leaked a bunch of his music. Six years later, Jai resurfaced. He addressed the leaks, said how much it hurt him, and blessed us with two brand new songs and officially released the 2013 batch of stolen material. Would I in my wildest dreams think that I'd listen to two new Jai Paul songs in 2019? No. But I'm glad we all could.

Our Favorite Videos Of The Year

This 10-Second Video Of A Mom Embarrassing Her Daughter Is Internet Perfection

Let me admit this right here: I'm very partial to videos of parents embarrassing their children. I love how easily parents can make their children groan and wince and regret their whole existence with the simplest of antics. Last year, one of my favorite videos was watching a teenage boy be embarrassingly sandwiched between his dancing parents on the jumbotron. This year, we've been blessed with a mom dancing with an oven door that's set to the music of Usher's "Yeah!". The video is funny enough just with the dancing, but it's the part where we see the teenage daughter's perfectly horrified reaction to all of this that really takes the cake.

A Kiss From Daddy ('Succession' Theme)

In videos of the year, second only to the TV show "Succession" itself is, in my opinion, Demi Adejuyigbe's "rejected lyrics" video for its theme song (ed. note: the lyrics were neither actually submitted nor rejected to or from anywhere). Not only do the lyrics perfectly, pithily capture the theme and spirit of the show, but the video, in which Demi intersperses the clips of himself singing each instrumental part of the theme, is goofy and delightful and hilarious. I can no longer hear the "Succession" theme without hearing these lyrics in the melody, and all I want is for that to be the case for the rest of the world. (Also, go check out more of Demi's equally funny "rejected lyrics" videos and his other work; in my book he also wins comedian of the year.)

The Teddy Bear TikTok

Vine still holds a very special place in my heart, but TikTok has managed to take up a lot of the slack this year. TikTok has more time to play with than a 6-second Vine and it has music integrated into the app and this clip makes perfect use of it. Each of the cuts by itself would have been worth a chuckle, but strung all together they make a perfect internet video.

Paul Rudd And Jimmy Fallon Do A Shot-For-Shot Remake Of The 'You Spin Me Right Round'

Paul Rudd, who has an outstanding gift for being effortlessly charming in every talk show he appears on, with his instantly memeable shenangians, made perhaps his magnum opus contribution to pop culture this year with an uproarious shot-for-shot remake of Dead or Alive's synth-pop classic "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" music video. The attention to detail is mind-boggling after watching Rudd's version side-by-side with the original. Rudd proved once again why he's the hardest working man in showbusiness.

Where Are All the Bob Ross Paintings? We Found Them

Bob Ross was my first, unofficial, baby-sitter. I'd spent hours watching him on television, while my parents went about their day. They knew I'd be safe under Bob's watch. To this day, watching Ross paint is a cathartic experience. For someone who has trouble drawing a straight line, Ross's calm voice gave me hope that one day I could paint, and made me forget about the outside world.  

"We don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents." 

Our Favorite Tweets Of The Year

We spend… too much time on Twitter. Most of what we read on their makes us unhappy (such is the world in 2019), but every so often a truly good tweet crosses our feeds.

What is "Law and Order: Criminal Intent" star Vincent D'Onofrio trying to tell us? Should we laugh? Should we cry? I went with both.

Runner up:

2019, more than anything, was the year when TikTok really blew wide open. So my favorite tweet of the year is a bit of a cheat for it is a TweetTok, a combination of both worlds. There was already a meme trend going on on TikTok which combined "Mr. Sandman" with the nine camera split filter, but this one featuring a cat clapping along to the song is truly the best one of them all. There's already plenty of ugly stuff on the internet, and I don't really need to remind myself of that — what I really need is good, evergreen cat content for the sake of my sanity.

Runner up:

(Ed. note: All the brand social media accounts are bad except SparkNotes's Twitter.)

After Disney announced they were remaking "Home Alone" on their Disney+ streaming service, Macaulay Culkin, the now 39-year-old star of the original movies, had a very amusing response to the news.

Runner up:

Beto O'Rourke had a bit of a rough year in 2019. His campaign for president tanked and then when he did a noble thing in getting his flu shot, which he shared on his Instagram stories, it became a meme and I don't think I've enjoyed anything more this year than this caption by Justin Whang.

The American gun-violence epidemic is no joke. However Mr Mcnabb's question — how to keep his children safe during an animal emergency — was an absurd yet serious glimpse into the lives of Americans who do not live among the "coastal-elites." How did he come up with the number of feral-hogs? Or the exact time-frame in which his children would face danger? Speaking on the Reply All podcast, Mcnabb said his tweet was "ripe to be ridiculed," and laughed at some of the jokes and memes it spawned. I salute his unabashed take and hope his children can play in the backyard without the fear of being attacked by feral-hogs. 

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