In June, This is True celebrates 21 years online — a pioneer in online publishing that predates Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the vast majority of other web sites you can find online today.
Online Life
Facebook: What Are They Selling?
To answer the very important question of the title, you need a little background, which is illustrated by a question from reader Steve in Texas:
Some time ago, I “Liked” the This is True Facebook page, but almost never see any posts. I figured you weren’t active until I went back to the page, and saw a ton of stuff I thought was great! How come I’m not seeing it regularly? I see most posts from my friends.
The Taylor Swift Cop Video:
Call Me a Contrarian
OK: Call Me a Contrarian. Sure the lip-synching cop was entertaining! The song is fun, and who can’t like the earnest and drop-dead gorgeous (and cute!) Taylor Swift?
The Pomplamoose Problem
An Interesting Article on the site Artist Empathy (yeah, I hadn’t heard of it before either) discusses “The Pomplamoose Problem”…
NASA Outreach on Social Media
As a life-long NASA geek (and former employee of a NASA center), I pay reasonably close attention to the goings on at NASA. I spotted something in my Facebook feed, though, that made me roll my eyes about how not to inform the public about something that should be of great interest.
20 Years …and Counting
This Week Marks a Huge Milestone for This is True: the end of its 20th year. It started as a bulletin board item outside my office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The first one, dated 26 June 1994, was written to go into my business plan — I hadn’t actually gotten distribution set up. As I was working on the tech, I kept writing a new column each week and, when it went online in July 1994, it was an instant hit, quickly ramping up in circulation.
Facebook: Starting to Circle the Drain?
Facebook is about to get worse — a lot worse — and I think my days there are numbered. I can’t be the only publisher getting ready to give up.
Band of Brothers
A story in this week’s True absolutely demands that I include the video mentioned in the story, so it’s being published here (with the video) rather than in the newsletter. From True’s 29 September 2013 issue:
Bashing the “Lamestream Media”
A good friend “shared” something on social media not too long ago that really made me roll my eyes.
Keep Your Head Up
On Sunday I saw my wife had posted something on Facebook that really struck me. It was a “Share” of another friend’s “meme” graphic, and here it is:
Keep the X in Xmas
This week on Facebook, I’ve posted several provocative graphics — funny visual puns that lead up to …what? Today was the Big Reveal: the point.
Let’s start with the visual puns.
Sorry You Weren’t Offended
This is True has tackled the issue of people choosing to be offended on a number of occasions (such as in the tagline of this story).
Most times, of course, the offended are complaining about a story, not embracing it. On most of those occasions, when someone is writing to complain how they’ve chosen to be offended by something I said (or, often, didn’t say!), I’ll often get an amusing response from other readers — the ones who don’t unsubscribe in protest.
Click Millionaires
YAIBB — Yet Another Internet Business Book — arrived here on Friday, sent to me because it’s YAIBB that mentions me, This is True, and the GOOHF cards.
Looking at its Amazon reviews elicited a chuckle.
A Cautionary Tale
I made a little graphic which I posted on Facebook earlier this week, and it seems to have hit a chord with the crowd there:
The Nigerian “419” Scam
If someone — probably a friend — sent you to this page, read it carefully! This is a true story, from This is True’s 15 January 2012 issue.
Rural Electrification, Meet the Rural Internet
Back in the early years of the 20th century, as cities were starting to get electrical power, that was the problem: only cities were getting electrical power.
Reader Survey: Should True emails Be HTML?
Both the Premium (paid) subscribers and the Free edition subscribers were asked:
Take-Down Show-Down
I noted in Friday’s free edition that I received a “take-down” demand from an attorney about an article. The letter was dated August 4, but I didn’t get it until Thursday, August 18.
Don’t Forward That Warning!
Old jokes clogging your inbox are bad enough. Stupid “warnings” about the most unlikely hazards are worse: they irritate the smart people and panic the dumb ones. Now and then, when someone forwards an urban legend to a bunch of people, they really pay a big price.
This is True List Break-in
From True’s 17 October 2010 issue.
On the whole, This is True readers are a pretty technically savvy bunch: many of you use “tracking” email addresses — addresses which readers have used only to subscribe to my newsletter(s) — and I’ve had a number of reports this week from readers who have received spam to those unique addresses. That’s obviously a big concern to me.