Welcome back to the Aftermath newsletter, your weekly roundup of everything that happened at the site by me, Riley. If you missed the announcement, we've got merch now; head over to our store to check out some cool gear with our logo on it, and what people tell me is a Very Big Mug. (I drink a lot of coffee, so in my mind, no mug is too big.) But the coolest swag of all is a mind full of blogs; if you'd like to get ours, and support worker-owned journalism in the process, please consider becoming a subscriber. |
How Many Gokus Are In Dragon Ball Sparking Zero, Exactly?
Listen, I don't know why Nathan did this either, but here you go.
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Tengo Project Is A Miracle
Chris explores what's so cool about the team behind Shadow of the Ninja Reborn.
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God Help Me, I Watched The Entire "Geeks And Nerds For Harris" Fundraiser
I report back from Lynda Carter's star-studded online fundraiser, and think about what it means to leverage fandom for politics.
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What Was TV Doing In The 90s?
This week I watched the latest installment of Monsters, a Netflix crime anthology that fictionalizes the story of the Menendez brothers, who--if you're too young to remember--stood trial for killing their parents in the early 90s, and were ultimately convicted in 1996. I don't know if I'd recommend the show, but it got me re-learning what had happened in the trial, and it was shocking how different my recollection of the events was from what actually went on.
There were Menendez brothers jokes on SNL and late night shows, where the brothers were mocked for crying about the abuse they alleged to have experienced. There were acerbic writeups that feel in terrible taste today. Digging into all this led me to a documentary that features a movement on TikTok to exonerate the brothers, which is a whole other arm of media coverage that's too big for this newsletter. That documentary also touched on the place of the Menendez trial in the rise of televised trials, a media ecosystem that was surely invested in amping up drama and personalities for views.
This all got me thinking about how other big events from my childhood were covered in the media: jokes about Waco on SNL, how hideously the media treated Monica Lewinsky. I'm not going to claim TV news is "less biased" today--we've still got Fox, and we can see the way other networks are covering what's happening in Gaza--but the callous, widespread free-for-alls I remember around major events feels like a relic of the past now.
I was born in 1982, so I was pretty young when all this happened, with my impressions of these major events surely shaped by how the adults around me talked about them. But I can't pinpoint a moment when TV coverage actively changed. When I asked the question on Twitter, someone suggested it had to do with 9/11. I think it's also possible that culture broadly changed, and so TV changed with it. But it's a question I've been thinking about a lot this week, especially since I work in the news as an adult.
So I'm throwing the question out to the newsletter in the odds that one of you is a media scholar and will send me the perfect answer or writeup. What were we doing back then, and why--if we truly did--did we stop? |
Here's some good stuff from around the internet:
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Aftermath has two podcasts: Aftermath Hours, where we discuss the week's biggest gaming news, and 52 Pickup, where Gita Jackson and Alex Jaffe take you through the world of the greatest DC Comics series you've never heard of. Check them out on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
And that's the week. This weekend I'm going to a book fair and then the most old man concert you can imagine, so I'm pretty psyched! |
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