🎯Serious Tech News #9: Shooting Your Shot In Da Club(house)

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Why Am I Crying In The Clubhouse RN

Imagine The Bachelorette, but online, all the participants are tech guys, and you have a 50% chance of getting savagely roasted in front of 2,200+ people. That’s “Shoot your Shot”, one of the hottest Clubhouse rooms right now and where tech millenials can find love on Clubhouse..

In this room run by NYU grads, anyone can raise their hand, and if the moderator picks you, you’ll have the opportunity to “shoot your shot” with any of the attendees in the room, by introducing yourself and then asking the person if you can slide in his or her DMs.

Last week, the room theme is "nyu girls roast tech guys” and tech Twitter is all over it. It’s a level of enthusiasm never been seen since *checks note* two weeks ago.

Inevitably, shooting your shot in public would leave some victims in the trail.

Whatchu Gonna Do When Zuck Comes For You?

Four things in tech you can’t avoid: death, taxes, bugs in production, and  Facebook copying another product.

Five days after Mark Zuckerberg had his first session in Clubhouse, the Harvard drop-out now wants to have it on Facebook. Once again, the world’s largest social network stays true to their vision: “Anything you can do I can do better, or maybe slightly worse but we have 2.8 billion users so f*ck you.”

Per Serious Tech News source, the new Facebook’s audio feature aims to strengthen the bond between you and your friends by using “themed rooms.”

For example: the “Family Dinner Room” which will emulate the delighting experience of debating your conservatice uncle about politics,  “High School Nostalgia Room” where you’ll be put in a room with high school classmates who are financially better off than you, and “Remember Me? Room” where you’ll be paired with the last person you ghosted on Facebook Messenger.

On The Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Cat

Texan attorney Rod Ponton accidentally turned on a sad cat Zoom filter in during an online court case proceeding. We’ve heard about the emotional tricks lawyers would do to tug at somebody’s hearstrings, but this one is a whole another level.

As the judge was trying to help him turn off the cat filter, Ponton continuously states “"I'm here, live, I'm not a cat,” - upon further investigation, Serious Tech News can confirm that is stament is accurate.

A visual filter mishap also happened in the congress, when Congressman Tom Emmer appeared to be upside-down during a House Financial Services Committee hearing. It’s also worth noting this is not the first time a politician tried to present facts upside-down.

Super Bowl Was a Bit Awkward

Last week was also the Super Bowl LV, the day where American families and friends gather, have fun, and in the end a California guy named Tom Brady wins the title.

It’s also a day where companies spend millions of dollars on advertisements only for marketers to sh*t on it. This year, two particular ads stood out because of the recent GameStop debacle: Robinhood and Reddit.

The stock-trading app commercial was titled “We are all investors,” which is especially ironic since the startup were at the receiving end of internet rage after they blocked users from buying GameStop stocks. Imagine if Subway running a Superbowl ad saying “The best place to bring your kids for lunch” just two weeks after Jared from Subway got arrested.

On the other hand, Reddit used the GameStop shenanigans to their advantage. The 5-second meta ad was reported to cost their whole marketing budget of almost a million dollars. It was the second most expensive five seconds after Jeff Bezos alien cameo on Star Trek.

The commercial also referenced the GameStop incident, because if there’s a company that can monetize a sh*tshow, it’s Reddit.

In Other News…

• Floridaman hacked and poisoned water system, because the alligators in Florida waters are not dangerous enough.
• Google is working on dark mode, exactly the #1 problem Google should work on.
• Apple’s next big project: a car. To enforce Apple’s privacy-focused policies, the car will be equipped dark-tinted glasses and no turn signals, because other people don’t need to know where you are going.

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