Internet Friends

Drew and Jon invent a new type of podcasting because the internet at the camp where Jon was working was too bad for a call. So they recorded while sending audio iMessages back and forth, and it was a perfect opportunity to talk about the state of messaging apps. The fragmentation among so many apps is getting old, but we can’t just all use iMessage, because we don’t all have iPhones. How is all this going to play out? Is Facebook domination inevitable?

Want to be internet friends? Write to Drew and Jon or find us on Twitter at @_NetFriends.

Drew tweeted a video he found of a camera on a conveyor belt at a sushi restaurant, and it went viral. Like, really viral. Jon and Drew discuss what that was like. It made for a fascinating juxtaposition with a #BadFaithTwitter thread that went viral at the same time about a guy who found a brick of heroin in his van and successfully re-stole it from a gang member, or something… it doesn’t matter, because the dude made it up. As a tweet Drew saw recently said, every day, the internet picks a hero and a villain. You just have to hope that neither one’s you. Having been the hero now, though, Drew thinks it’s worth it for the #GoodFaithTwitter cause.

Want to be internet friends? Write to Drew and Jon or find us on Twitter at @_NetFriends.

Drew and Jon consider the implications of Apple’s new augmented reality initiatives and SwiftUI, both announced at the end of the very long keynote after the stuff discussed in Part I. What do these two things have to do with each other? They’re both telling us all to get ready for the future — especially app developers.

Want to be internet friends? Write to Drew and Jon or find us on Twitter at @_NetFriends.

Apple blew all the minds in its annual Worldwide Developers Conference Keynote in San Jose on June 3. Jon and Drew cover the announcements for tvOS, watchOS, iOS, iPadOS (which is a separate thing now!), and macOS, and they save all the heady future-y AR stuff for a second WWDC special. Maybe Apple should have done that for the keynote, too — two and a half hours was a lot!

Want to be internet friends? Write to Drew and Jon or find us on Twitter at @_NetFriends.

Drew’s longest Twitter break ever has ended, so both he and Jon are back! (That’s @DrewCoffman and @ablaze, by the way.) They both thought they were permanently over it… and they were wrong. It’s going to be different this time, though. Drew and Jon are only here for the use of Twitter in good faith. In this episode, they recap their ongoing discussion of what went wrong on Twitter, but now they’ve got a plan to fix it.

Want to be internet friends? Write to Drew and Jon or find us on Twitter at @_NetFriends.

Drew is intrigued by Craig Mod’s SMS-powered publishing. It’s both old-school and utterly new and strange. Likewise, the ascendancy of email newsletters is baffling, given how we’ve all come to feel about our email inboxes, but it also makes total sense. What technologies should one use to publish things anymore? Where is the line between communication and publishing?

Want to be internet friends? Write to Drew and Jon or find us on Micro.blog at @InternetFriends.

Why do people try so hard on social media? Is it just for validation, or is it calculating? Is the motivator fame? Fortune? Is there a difference? Jon and Drew have tended to talk about the responsibilities of the platforms and their designers to promote community, but this time they want to talk about the part that’s the users’ (read: our own) fault. The desire to get rich and famous is like a pyramid scheme into which humanity has tricked itself. How could public-facing social media not play into it?

Want to be internet friends? Write to Drew and Jon or find us on Micro.blog at @InternetFriends.

Apple unveiled a whole new direction for its services at its on-campus Steve Jobs Theater on Monday. Drew and Jon discuss Apple’s “It’s Show Time” event, announcing Apple News+, Apple Card, Apple Arcade, Apple TV Channels, and Apple TV+.

Want to be internet friends? Write to Drew and Jon or find us on Micro.blog at @InternetFriends.

Jon has some explaining to do. He’s back on Twitter a couple years after deleting his account and saying he was never coming back. What!? Why?? Even though Drew and Jon met on Twitter, these days it seems like they can’t be on there at the same time for whatever reason. Drew stopped logging into Twitter a month or so ago. It’s going well. Jaron Lanier’s new book, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, was what convinced him. It’s Instagram Drew is wrestling with. Oh, the twists and turns of figuring out how to be happy on social media in 2019!

Want to be internet friends? Write to Drew and Jon or find us on Micro.blog at @InternetFriends.

Jon and Drew discuss the way they spend their time, as far as being online is concerned. The way things work now, going on and offline happens chaotically, in bursts, in reaction to whatever’s happening. Could it be more deliberate than that, and would that help us use our online and offline time better? They discuss ways the hardware and software tools they use could be redesigned to help with this, as well as ways we users could deliberately work towards it.

Want to be internet friends? Write to Drew and Jon or find us on Micro.blog at @InternetFriends.