The Content Mines

Remember Periscope? It was a quirky little livestreaming app that either was or wasn’t part of Twitter depending on the day? There were hearts. There were riots. People streamed their fridges. It was a simpler time. We’re on vacation for the next few weeks, but we’ll be releasing a little miniseries called Dead Platform Summer. The first one is all about Periscope. Stay tuned to see which weird ol...

We’re on vacation! So this week we’re putting our usually paywalled episode out for free for everyone. Hope you enjoy! We’re talking about the frustrating mess that was Thor: Love And Thunder. We really really wanted to like this movie but boy was it hard to watch. Don’t worry we did try and make this a bit more interesting and talked about the current state of streaming content as a whole in case...

This week TikTok is full of videos of Gen Z guys dressing up in suits to watch Minions: The Rise of Gru . The trend is called #Gentleminions. Is it irony? Is it nostalgia? Is it boredom? Why does Gen Z love doing stuff like this so much? And how does it connect to the Binley Mega Chippy and the Summer of Morbius ? As you can see, we have a lot of questions. Press play and find out if we end up wit...

This week we went deep into a network of news accounts on Twitter called BNN. It turned out to be an insanely confusing rabbit hole and we still have a lot of questions about exactly why the BNN accounts were created and what they’re actually meant to do. But, excitingly, right when we were about to finish this episode a big update happened! So listen to the end to get at least some closure about...

We’re back with one more installment about NFT scammers and hijacked Twitter accounts. We learned a heck of a lot over the last week. We heard from all kinds of people who have lost access to their social media accounts this way and have a few more answers about what’s actually going on here. Also, Ryan has a tense email conversation with a source. SHOW NOTES The crone video The @conspirator0 thre...

Full disclosure: We had a whole plan for this episode and then things went insanely off the rails when we discovered something kind of shocking? What it looks like has happened is that several South American E-sports players, a professional soccer player, and a Welsh arts correspondent are either all shilling random NFTs in the exact same way or all had their accounts taken over? We have a lot of...

This week we finally got to play around with TikTok’s Creative Center. It’s a tool for marketers, but also has some really powerful tools for looking at what’s trending globally on the app. We spent some time this week playing around with it. What did we learn? Well, a couple weird things. TikTok users love Sundays, the top videos on the app are mostly ads, and TikTok is offering marketers a tool...

This week, we kick off the episode with a big long discussion about weird stuff European people do. The Brits are obsessed with a random restaurant near Coventry. The Swedes are feeding people who stay over for dinner. And the Finnish appear to have constructed an elaborate years-long joke about their love of buckets. But our main topic for the week is Instagram Reels. It’s Zuckerberg’s last chanc...

We’ve had a crazy week. But we’re back with a heap of upsetting updates from the world of crypto. And then we dive into our main topic of the week: What if the weirdos making memes and fancams and supercuts of the Depp v. Heard trial don’t disappear after the trial is over? What if the trial doesn’t end the way these very sad Disney adults want? What if it morphs into something like QAnon, where t...

It’s that time again! Facebook has new Widely Viewed Content Report and it’s just as weird and bizarre as the previous one. This time we’re talking about a Vietnamese content farm, relatable Netflix memes, and an impossibly viral Eminem video. This episode also features an exciting cameo!! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus epi...

WARNING: This episode does contain spoilers. This week, as a way to celebrate 100 episodes of The Content Mines, we’re sending out our bonus minisode to all our listeners for free. As long-time listeners of the show know, we love arguing about Marvel movies. So we decided to go see the new Doctor Strange and, boy, do we have lots of thoughts about it. TL;DR - Ryan really liked it at first and now...

It’s our 100th episode! That’s crazy! In that time we’ve gone through two names for the show, three versions of our theme song, and, just, so many stories about magicians on Facebook. This week is all about the big crypto crash of May 2022. We have to call it that because there’s a very good chance that there could be more this year. Or this one ends up spiraling so far out of control that the who...

This week Ryan and Luke are recording from the same place! They’ve left their respective Zoom screens to sit in the same room. It’s a whole different vibe. This week’s big topic is Piers Morgan, the British tabloid journalist who tweets absolute garbage all day. He has a new show on a new channel and, according to Luke, the metrics they’re bragging about don’t make any sense. Weird, right? This is...

This week we’re talking about Netflix’s very bad week. The stock has plummeted. Employee morale has cratered. Layoffs have started. It seems like a real mess. We look into how years of relying on an algorithm led the company to start making real weird decisions that actually remind us a lot of another company… Facebook. Also, Luke talks about the greatest British art project of maybe all time. SHO...

This week, Luke goes through the various petty beefs that he’s been following on the internet and attempts to explain why he doesn’t really care about them. Though, it kinda sounds like he cares about them. And Ryan spent some time watching Tucker Carlson’s weird — and kinda homoerotic — documentaries on the Fox Nation streaming platform. There was a surprising amount of stuff on there about alien...

This week caps off our final installment from the Miami Bitcoin convention. We also talk about Elon Musk trying to takeover Twitter. Hilariously, we recorded this on Tuesday of this week, before the news that he wanted to do a big takeover of the company. We were worried that this would be dated but the news on Thursday, but actually we think we kind of nailed it. So that's pretty cool! If you wan...

Ryan just landed in Miami for Bitcoin 2022, the huge crypto conference. And Luke surprised him by telling him mid-recording this week that he has COVID. So, yeah, this episode has some weird vibes to it. We’re talking about why Miami is trying to become the Bitcoin capital of the United States and what it would mean if that actually happened. SHOW NOTES “The Tech Bros Take Miami” “Miami Is Hosting...

What does The Oscars Slap mean for content? What does it say about personal brands in 2k22? R buzzy viral topics still relevant?? Can u b alt and also online? Has the vibe shifted and, if so, how effed is it rn? We’re talking about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars and why it’s the end of the current era of the internet and why Grimes allegedly hacking and extorting Hipster Runoff may h...

We’re going long on NFTs this week. Particularly the confusing and murky world of NFT copyright. Who owns an NFT? And what can you do with it? We’re exploring the Web3 concept of a “ headless brand ”. Turns out it’s really confusing and also kind of dumb! But also kind of interesting! SHOW NOTES The “Headless Brands” white paper The Egregore Wikipedia article “Prolific restaurant developer Andy Ng...

This week we’re going deep on a term Luke coined a few episodes ago: “structural dissonance”. It’s that feeling you get seeing images of the invasion of Ukraine in the same content feed as memes, viral animals, lifestyle influencers, or video game playthroughs. It defines the internet, but it also defines kind of our entire current existence. It’s confusing and weird and is breaking our brains and...

We went deep into the weird and uncanny world of Facebook again. We promise we’re moving one after this lol. But we couldn’t ignore Facebook’s massive transparency report. We discovered some absolutely wild stuff. Most importantly, bingo livestreams are a thing and, damn, they are popular. Also, we spend a little while talking about why sanctions against Russia do not mean that Russian dark money...

This week is probably our weirdest and most confusing rabbit hole ever. We looked into why Facebook is full of posts claiming that Katie Couric has met some kind of “tragic end” and why they’re all advertising CBD gummies. We think we figured out how it happened, but it was a real rats nest. We also continue to analyze the info war surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. SHOW NOTES The Zelensky...

This week, we're talking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Obviously, this is a fast-moving situation. We recorded this mid-day on Thursday, February 24, 2022. We're looking at the torrent of content around the invasion and trying to wrap our heads around whether or not, when the boots hit the ground, if memes or online content matters at all. SHOW NOTES https://twitter.com/rizviuzair/status/...

This week we are, once again, talking about another real bad week for Facebook, a company that appears to be having more bad weeks at a higher frequency than ever before. We also peer into the metaverse which is even dumber than we ever could have imagined. Is being a "metamate" the future? SHOW NOTES https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/14/22932824/hmrc-nft-seizure-fraud-investigation https://knowyour...

Netflix is the biggest streamer in the whole world. They are, effectively, the streaming entertainment standard. So why are they launching a news site and poaching journalists from places like Condé Nast? In 2022, why would you want to run a digital media website? We speculate wildly about why that might be! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get...