While You Were Offline: Sean Spicer, Everyone. Round of Applause for Sean Spicer
In the past seven days, Nintendo abandoned its past, America's relationship with North Korea got appreciably worse (so did the country's relationship with Russia), and the internet had a lot of feelings about a Star Wars video. It's been quite the week. Do you have a sinking feeling that something escaped your notice during those precious hours you closed your laptop and slept? Read on to see you what you might've missed last week on the world wide web.
Sean Spicer's History Lesson
What Happened: The media asked White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer why the US fired missiles at a Syrian military airfield. His response was maybe not the best.
Where It Blew Up: Twitter, media reports
What Really Happened: In a press briefing Monday, Spicer continued to display a firm grasp of the issues while explaining why President Donald Trump ordered a missile strike in Syria.
Wait, what? Adolf Hitler definitely used chemical weapons. It's one of the most infamous things he did, and one of the most horrendous things in human history. Surely Spicer misspoke, and the press should have given him the chance to clarify his comments. Right?
Spicer's comments were, of course, picked up by everyone. Then, as if seemingly forgetting about Hitler's treatment of the Jews in Nazi Germany wasn't bad enough, Spicer's attempts to clarify his comments only got worse when he decided that "concentration camp" should be replaced with "Holocaust center":
While Twitter was busy calling out what Spicer said—
—the press secretary was putting out statements to apologize for his comments. Only problem was, those apologies didn't really go so well, either.
By the time he tried to ask forgiveness on TV, it seemed as if he had finally gotten things under control. Kind of.
Impressively (or, perhaps, exactly the opposite), Spicer still has his job.
The Takeaway: Sure, Godwin's Law might be an obvious go-to, but that doesn't mean it's the wrong destination…
Did You Hear the One About the Guy Who Says He's Over Dating Hot Women?
What Happened: Finally, someone used an interview as a longform humblebrag.
Where It Blew Up: Twitter, media reports
What Really Happened: Think every newspaper is just filled with tragedy and destruction lately? You haven't been reading the New York Post.
Sure enough, there is indeed an article where a man boasts about the fact that he got over dating hot women. "Beautiful women who get a fair amount of attention get full of themselves," 40-year-old Dan Rochkind says at one point in the article, adding, "Eventually, I was dreading getting dinner with them because they couldn't carry a conversation." Instead, he said, he prefers his current fiancee, who is "a softer beauty, someone you can take home and cuddle with… she's 5-foot-2, so she can't be a runway model." Amazingly, his fiancee is OK with this, saying "Looks fade." Twitter was having none of it.
As it turns out, this might have been part of an ongoing campaign by the Post to seriously mess with New York singles.
The Takeaway: Is it OK to declare this "fake news," or has that been overplayed by now?
The Mother of All Bombs
What Happened: A week after launching missiles against Syria, the US dropped something that is literally called the "Mother of All Bombs" on Afghanistan.
Where It Blew Up: Twitter, media reports
What Really Happened: So, uh… turns out the US dropped a really big bomb on Afghanistan's Nangarhar province last week. News of the MOAB broke on Thursday, as the phrase "Mother of All Bombs" quickly entered everyone's vocabulary.
The US claimed the target of the MOAB—which actually stands for Massive Ordnance Air Blast—was a series of suspected ISIS tunnels in the region. People on Twitter, however, had varying opinions about what using the bomb could mean.
Outside of Twitter chatter, though, it's still hard to decipher what the long-term effects of dropping the MOAB could be. Then again, despite all the headlines and boasts, it might not even be the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal.
Does that make those excited about the MOAB slightly less so?
The Takeaway: Well, there's this:
What Was That About Friendly Skies?
What Happened: Turns out, there's someone whose "bad flight" story is definitely worse than yours.
Where It Blew Up: Twitter, media reports
What Really Happened: At a time when seemingly everything can upset someone, it nonetheless seems increasingly difficult to find an event that seems to shock the internet en masse. Which brings us to the subject of David Dao's experience with United Airlines.
The story was quickly picked up and shared by mainstream media outlets, but it was Twitter that had the most immediate reaction.
The response even spawned a hashtag: #NewUnitedAirlinesMottos.
Meanwhile, other airlines were coming up with their own new slogans.
The backlash against United didn't just spawn the by-now-traditional online petition; it also caused a massive drop in the value of United stock, not helped by an insincere apology of sorts from the company's CEO that was eventually followed by something slightly more meaningful.
The Takeaway: United probably won't have an overbooking problem again for a while.
The Enemy of My Enemy Is… It's Complicated
What Happened: It had to happen: The love affair between the Trump administration and WikiLeaks is over. But surely the break-up won't be that ugly, right?
Where It Blew Up: Twtter, media reports
What Really Happened: It's been a while since people have talked about WikiLeaks, but that changed on Thursday when newly installed CIA director Mike Pompeo labeled it a "non-state hostile intelligence service." Twitter's response proved once again that WikiLeaks, more than almost anything else online, is a Rorschach test.
The Takeaway: But, wait. How was Pompeo's comment taken by WikiLeaks itself?
Yeah, that doesn't seem too bothered, really.