Pop Culture Dad's Guide to the Internet
After spending most of my nights throughout 2020 bathing my eyeballs in sweet, sweet blue light as I doomscrolled well past my bedtime, I decided to shake things up. I made a conscious decision to refocus on soaking up the things that inspired me to do better work and the things that inspired me to be more proactive about… well… trying to make the world a better place, I guess, even if my sad attempt at doing that was by way of sporadic $7 dollar donations or forwarding (probably way too many) articles to friends and family. So here is my list of pop culture (or pop culture-adjacent) resource for general life/art inspiration.
Hands down my favorite website. Perfectly curated art, photos and more that veers away from clinical art theory and edgy experimentalism in favor of internet culture pop iconography. I am constantly bookmarking images for moodboards and pitch documents or scouring the site for interesting lighting set-ups. The interviews are also full of positive vibes and bristling with creative energy. And I religiously watch every single thing posted on Booooooooom’s sister site (booooooooom.tv) which is devoted to video content (short films, music videos, experimental, dance, animation and beyond). Two endless wells of creative inspiration for the price of one! And their Secret Newsletter is the best thing I get in my email every week.
Important Not Important newsletter
My go-to, non-entertainment-focused weekly newsletter to help me become a better person. Science-oriented and conversational, Important Not Important focuses on a few key issues (Climate change, cancer research, Covid) and highlights a slew of articles from across the interwebs. This newsletter allows me to pretend I’m a really low key superhero gently going about saving the world one emphatic Facebook post or forwarded email at a time. This is the information we all need to be putting into our brains and giving to other people to put into their brains so you are welcome.
We need independent journalists kicking butt while still making a decent living now more than ever and I’m obsessed with journalist Emily Atkin’s “newsletter for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis.” Atkin delivers in-depth climate journalism for newbies and hardcore climate activists alike and her personal story – ditching a stable, salaried position to take on some powerful forces of evil and also adopt a dog and then take a lot of pictures of that dog – is downright inspiring. Again, this is a newsletter that makes me feel like a better, more proactive version of myself and you can also support Heated by buying a subscription for additional content and access (and to keep Atkin doing what she does best!).
My new favorite podcast and that, my friends, is saying something. The only negative to no longer having a soul-crushing commute, is that I now have 90 minutes or so less every week day to binge podcasts. That being said, I’ve managed to (mostly) keep up with this new-ish slice of awesomeness from the Gimlet Media team that also makes one of my all-time favorite podcasts, Reply All. How To Save A Planet is as focused on positivity and proactivity as it is on bringing you hard-hitting information on the single most pressing issue we’re all going to be dealing with (at least until the oceans begin to boil and or freeze and or evaporate and we’re enslaved by an angry army of anthropomorphized pistol shrimp). And hosts Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and journalist Alex Blumberg are so chill and relatable in the face of existential crisis that I’ve seen a serious decrease in the amount of late-night, climate-disaster-induced panic attacks.
A beautifully simple website for film and animation nerds. An algorithm gathers that day’s most popular animated videos from the furthest reaches of the web and then the Good Moves team picks a favorite and features it. One video each day. It’s like the internet on shuffle mode and a great place to visit when you’re feeling a bit stuck or unfocused or like you need to scrub all your shoes with toothbrushes even though you have never actually done that before and don’t really care all that much about having clean shoes anyway because you’re stuck inside all day every day but need something, anything to give your life a little purpose. So yeah, fun website!
Wildly varied, educational videos expertly curated to be entertaining and informative for both kiddos and their parents. This was my secret weapon when I was self-home-preschooling my daughter and it single-handedly got her excited about stop motion animation, capybaras, art made from pumpkins and the weird history of fire trucks. There is also a ton of nostalgic clips from retro edutainment shows and classic Sesame Street episodes so you can’t go wrong with this one.
Happy surfing!
- Chris AKA “Pop Culture Dad”
