Sunday Reads: Narcan’s Fentanyl Problem, A.P. Memes and Why YouTube’s Hate Ban Is Too Little, Too Late

Last year for Christmas, my mom thought it would be cute to buy everyone in the family an AncestryDNA kit. I was against the idea, mostly because I’m paranoid. But being as it was a thoughtful gift from my mother, I spit in a little tube and shipped my precious sequences off to the lab. When the results came back, I was floored. According to the test, my genetic makeup matches that of my mother’s Northern English family, and not my father’s Armenian roots. I admit, I was distraught. Distraught, at least, until this week, when I learned that these tests are far from perfect science. Because rather than tell you where your ancestors came from, they merely match you with where other people in the world have similar-looking DNA. Personally, I’m just glad I never had to have the “where were you 22 years ago?!?!” convo with dear ol’ dad.

Must Read

“Fentanyl Is So Powerful, Not Even the Doctor Who Invented Narcan Thinks It’s Enough to Save Us”
In recent years, opioid addiction in the U.S. has gone from “bad” to a full-blown epidemic. The challenge, it seems, is that the opioids being used are getting stronger, and thus, more deadly. While Narcan used to be the quickest and most effective way to reverse a heroin overdose, medical professionals, and most distressingly, addicts, are finding that its efficacy decreases severely when treating users who have OD’d on Fentanyl, a synthetic opiate 50 times more powerful than black-tar heroin. C. Brian Smith spent an afternoon in the company of two fentanyl addicts, and spoke to the creator of Narcan about the changes he will need to make in order to continue saving lives. READ MORE

More From The Week That Was

A.P. Meme Ethics
The College Board, the company responsible for creating and administering Advanced Placement tests, has a rule: Do not talk about the content of your exam with your peers — or else. This, of course, was much more “bark” than “bite,” and high schoolers would rarely heed the warning when discussing tests with peers IRL after they finished their tests. Today, though, the preferred mode of communication is the meme — and A.P. test questions and answers make for great memes. Unfortunately, the College Board is hip to this new groove, frequently asking students making A.P. test memes and disseminating them via Twitter to delete their creations (a possible consequence if they don’t — the voiding of their test score). Not everyone is backing down, though.

#HimToo
Men are taught from a young age that they should have sex as much as they can, and that real men never turn down an opportunity to get laid. Unfortunately, that societal pressure is often all the gaslighting men who have been sexually assaulted by a woman need to ignore what they know deep down is actually very, very wrong.

Making the Honda Civic Cool
Millennials like cars — and collecting cars — just as much as their parents do. Millennials are also poor af. Sad! But instead of letting that get in the way of the perfect collector’s car, they’re simply redefining what a “collectable” is. So instead of collecting classic old cars that cost a fortune to purchase and maintain, trusty hand-me-downs like the Honda Civic are becoming the new vintage Porsche.

Porn Don’t Pay The Bills
For female porn stars, shooting studio scenes is only half the job. The rest of their income is made selling private Snapchat subscriptions, used panties, custom videos and maintaining Patreon or OnlyFans accounts for their dedicated followers. For men in the industry, however, money-making gigs like those aren’t readily available, or nearly as lucrative. Thus, male porn stars have to find even more creative ways to make ends meet.

Sorry, Rocketman Is Just Okay
Surely there are folks who are not just moved, but deeply moved by Elton John’s music, but Tim Grierson isn’t one of them. In his opinion, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with John’s music, there’s just not much depth to it either. In a case of art imitating life, Rocketman feels like a similar experience: It’s fun, theatrical and gaudy, but at the same time, it’s an inch deep.

No Hope for YouTube
YouTube has finally announced that it will remove thousands of channels and videos promoting neo-Nazism, white supremacy and “other bigoted ideologies.” A good move, no doubt, but considering how long YouTube has been around, it’s coming at a strange time. For years, bad actors on the site have spread conspiracy theories, encouraged harassment of minorities and LGBTQ groups and even promoted pedophilia. So while it’s an improvement that some of this content has been removed, the years of impact it’s had can’t be erased.

Three New Life Hacks Worth Giving A Try

1. How to have a stocked pantry without buying a bunch of processed crap.
2. How to smoke weed in a hotel room without everyone else on your floor knowing that you’ve been smoking that dank.
3. How to save money on food by furtively ordering from the kids menu on Uber Eats.

Quote of the Week

Quinn Myers spoke to the people who frequent r/SmallDickProblems, a 17,000-subscriber-strong subreddit full of small-dick men struggling with how they come up short in life. Because even in an increasingly body-positive world, when it comes to dicks, size still matters.

But Don’t Just Take Our Word For It…

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Magdalene Taylor

Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.