Truths About Weddings

Melissa Lafsky lays down some harsh truths about what it means to commit to spend the rest of your life with a single person (and how weddings bring it all out):

Everything you don’t absolutely adore about this magical human you’ve pledged yourself to is going to now manifest itself in wild screechy detail. You will fight about things you didn’t even register during those blissful days of moonlit walks and Sunday afternoon sex. Eventually, you will have to face a stunning reality: The person you are marrying is exactly who she/he is, and will never be anyone else. Not now, and not once you’re married. Whether that’s a beatific thing or a source of night terrors all depends on you. (Note that I didn’t say it depends on your partner. If you don’t like what you’re marrying, then it’s on you to either get over it or call it off. Sorry!!)

All your interactions will be weighed with a new gravity. When you do fight, it’s fighting as a COUPLE THAT WILL BE MARRIED. Those things that were mere annoyances are now albatrosses draping your shoulders for eternity. (Seriously, it’s no coincidence that Coleridge’s Mariner ranted to a wedding guest).

Google Grouping

Fascinating analysis of the necessity of putting friends into groups, and in particular, Google+’s cool Circles feature:

When I first started using Google+, I had a sense of déjà vu as I categorized my friends. I’d done this before… on Flickr, on Facebook, on Twitter, on my instant messenger contact list, and in my address book. Shortly thereafter, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth the effort to rigorously group everyone. Then I started thinking about whether it was ever worth the effort to do so…[T]here are some human subtleties we’re missing in the digital world.

Love Fraud

Tracy Clark-Flory wrote a piece reporting on “love fraud,” where scammers convince marks to fall in love and send them money. It’s a fine piece, but I was really hit by this last paragraph:

It’s easy to hear these stories and think, “What dupes.” But who isn’t looking for some form of connection and understanding online, whether it’s on Facebook or OKCupid? We broadcast so much of ourselves — sometimes unwittingly revealing our greatest hopes and fears — and romance scammers use those personal details to target a collective craving. That’s the real enabler in these cons, and its one most of us are vulnerable to: The desire for love. As one user wrote to a troubled poster who expressed still finding enjoyment in talking to her scammer despite having found out the truth about them, “Stay strong – someone will eventually come that will be honest and not wanting to play with your feelings.”

Psychoanalyzing Conan O’Brien

Scott Tobias has a great summary of some recent Conan O’Brien-related pop culture paraphernalia, including the recent War for Late Night book by Bill Carter and Rodman Flender’s disappointing documentary, Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop:

All the attributes on display in Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop—the ceaseless drive to perform, the ability to connect broadly with audiences and improvise on the fly, and, yes, the need for constant gratification—underlines a point made in Carter’s The War For Late Night: Very few people can do what Conan does. Greater and lesser lights have tried and failed, from Magic Johnson to Pat Sajak to Chevy Chase to Dana Carvey, but only a handful can capably manage the various moving parts that go into the show—the monologue, the interviews, the remote segments and bits of sketch-comedy business—and get it done every night, in a marathon run with a finish line that keeps receding into the horizon. It takes a special kind of versatility and brilliance to pull it off (and I wouldn’t exclude Leno from that, however determinedly mediocre his show), and Conan, after a famously rough start, has logged the thousands upon thousands of hours to prove it. He’s a comic entertainer with very specific qualities: He’s not a stand-up, but he can get through monologues. He’s not an actor, but he can goof his way around desk and sketch bits. He’s a talk show host, a rare fusion of diverse attributes.

Massachusetts Implements Strict Health Rules for Public School Food

Sometimes, it feels good to be a Massachusetts resident:

The state Public Health Council this morning unanimously approved new rules aimed to improve the nutrition of food served in Massachusetts public schools. The nutrition standards, which take effect in the 2012-13 school year and are believed to be the strictest in the country, prohibit fried foods, sugary and artificially sweetened beverages, and foods high in sodium. The rules apply to food sold in vending machines, snack bars, and a la carte offerings in cafeterias.

Traffic

Interest in the unreleased teaser trailer for The Dark Knight Rises is at a fevered pitch. Yesterday, /Film took the unorthodox step of posting a description of the trailer. Sure, people might think such a posting goes too far in the world of fandom, but the interest has gotten so insane that every time we post ANYTHING related to The Dark Knight Rises, our servers stutter as thousands of film fans simultaneously click through the front page to see us eat of the scraps from Christopher Nolan’s table.

You could cluck your tongue and furrow your brow at this behavior. But above all others, Dustin Rowles from Pajiba totally gets it:

A movie like The Dark Knight Rises generates a ton of web traffic. For instance, that description of The Dark Knight Rises trailer on Slashfilm was retweeted over 100 times and Liked on Facebook nearly 300 times. It probably generated thousands of page views. So, while we were all making fun of Peter over at Slashfilm for posting it, he was probably laughing his ass off as his wallet grew three sizes because that one post generated more traffic than a lot of movie blogs put up in a week, a notion that makes some of the more high-minded assholes weep in their Ramen noodles. The economy is in the tank, but he just paid a writer for a week. He’s got an audience; he caters to it, and honestly — as TK so eloquently put it — the rest of us can go f*ck ourselves. After all, in the 100 or so comments underneath the description, what I didn’t see from his readers was, “You asshole. I can’t believe you posted this.” It’s taken for what it’s worth, and the world moves on. It’s not like we’re dealing with the debt crisis, like Emily Miller — a political reporter for the Washington Times — who actually tweeted in the midst of debt negotiations: “Forget debt ceiling … hello tan Clooney. RT @popsugar: Wow! Newly single #GeorgeClooney is lookin’ good in Cancun!”