Anyone ever tell younger you that if you pee in the pool, your pee will react with a chemical in the water and turn blue? As a former D1 aquatic athlete, I remember it coming up once or twice. It was the kind of thing that, if you were in the pool every day for hours like I was, you didn’t believe, but you didn’t challenge on the off-chance it was true, either.
But as I long suspected, chemicals that turn the pool blue when you piss in it are total horseshit, like summer vacation’s answer to Santa. In retrospect, it’s amazing we ever fell for the myth, considering how poorly it stands up to scrutiny.
Must Read
“Growing Up on the Radical Hate Internet”
With every new shooting, the media paints toxic message boards like 4chan and its counterpart 8chan as the place to “brainwash” reasonable people. But 4chan didn’t start out as a hotbed of mass radicalization — it began as an anime forum. So what happened? Hussein Kesvani, who spent much of his teen years on the chans, investigates how this echochamber fills users with hate via his own experience of being desensitized on the platform. READ MORE
The Problem With Free Speech
8chan, which recently went dark in the wake of its role in amplifying the hateful manifesto of the El Paso mass shooter, was designed from inception as a safe haven for all forms of speech, no matter how disturbing. Nevertheless, the shutdown by the site’s service providers was cheered by many as a win in the fight against online hate speech and the brutal violence that trails it. But subsequently, the move has only added fuel to a fiery debate about what freedom of speech means on the internet, especially within the political context of 2019.
Don’t @ Me
Reply Guys are a well-known internet trope at this point, with their constant fact-checking, sexual innuendo and “debate me” screeds in women’s mentions — or basically, anything they can do for attention. But, for Desi Jedeikin, it was the oft-theorized but rarely seen “Reply Gal” who ended up being one of her scarier social media interactions.
Coming Out As Non-Binary
Coming out as genderqueer adds even more complexity to an already difficult experience — take it from Melo, a 26-year-old economics student from L.A., who found that opening up about her gender to her family and friends created more questions than answers.
The Jerk in Beef Jerky
There you are, munching on a bag of beef jerky and patting yourself on the back for finding the perfect little keto snack. But then you turn the bag over and read the ingredients:
DAAAAAMMN. Six grams of sugar per serving? That’s a lot of the sweet stuff. Unfortunately, that’s not even the half of it — there’s something else lurking in the heart of your jerky that makes this a snack worth passing on.
The Cost to Be the Boss
Most people are turned off by the idea of paying sometimes exorbitant annual fees to credit card companies just for the privilege of being able to use their card. But under the right circumstances — i.e., if you’re a high-spend individual — when it comes to fees, you get what you pay for.
Jeff Gross
Jeff Gross is MEL’s senior editor for social media and content marketing. His daily ICYMI column, which chronicles all things meta on the site, is the quickest way to catch up on MEL, and the funniest thing you’ll read all day. Follow him on Twitter.
