Top all-time · #1180
Garbage Day
Personal blog · garbageday.email/pcultureaiwriting
Garbage Day is a personal blog at garbageday.email about culture, ai and writing. Since 2021, 58 different Hacker News readers have linked it 73 times, most often “I remembered how awful it is to go viral”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (16) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Ryan Broderick's newsletter on internet culture, viral engagement farms, online misinformation and AI chatbots, which commenters point to as a daily read.
- Recommended for · 6 comments
- Called "worth reading" (AI therapy piece), "coverage" recommended (Meta retraction), "can't recommend highly enough", "pretty interesting" (Scooby-Doo post), an
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 16 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A newsletter about having fun online
Most-linked posts?
- I remembered how awful it is to go viral3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-02-27
- Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-11-22
- The “Scooby Doo” Psyop2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-01-22
- Right-clickers vs. the monkey JPG owners2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-11-16
- The only taboo left is copyright infringement2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-18
- The AI boyfriend ticking time bomb2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-08-13
- The End of the Metaverse Hopefully2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-02-04
- The AI demands more habanero salsa2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-05-18
- Am I too stupid to vibe code?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-01-20
- Epstein Broke the Internet2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-04
What Hacker News says?
With every update the WSJ’s original article, which largely informs people right now, has fallen apart. It’s so riddled with errors at this point that it should be retracted. I’d go so far as to say it’s deliberate misinformation at this stage. Any attempts to neatly slot this into “he was left” or “he was right” are a waste of time. He doesn’t fit into that paradigm: https://www.garbageday.email/p/charlie-kirk-was-…
Comment linking /p/charlie-kirk-was-killed-by-a-meme
on “Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah”Submitted Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook as a story · 346 points
HN discussionRyan Broderick just wrote about the bind OpenAI is in with the sycophancy knob: https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-ai-boyfriend-ticking-time...
Comment linking /p/the-ai-boyfriend-ticking-time-bomb-a404028a5c2de843
on “Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything”Submitted No one cares about your redesign as a story · 206 points
HN discussionRequiring validated identity is anti free speech. There's been so many words spilled online about how terrible of an idea it is to require confirmed identities for online. Recently, see https://twitter.com/mmasnick/status/1576274615231401984 or more casually https://www.garbageday.email/p/oh-cool-were-talking-about-an... > Generally, if your solution is virtually indistinguishable from one of the systems the Chines…
Comment linking /p/oh-cool-were-talking-about-anonymity
on “Kanye West is buying Parler”Submitted The Facebook Text Prompt Zombie Land as a story · 134 points
HN discussionPossibly hugged right now. There are two links in the about page that include screen shots of it working. https://www.emergingtechbrew.com/stories/2022/04/19/fan-of-r... https://www.garbageday.email/p/this-ai-will-tell-you-if-your...
Comment linking /p/this-ai-will-tell-you-if-youre-being?s=r
on “Are you the asshole? – AI powered answer bot”Submitted Right-clickers vs. the monkey JPG owners as a story · 60 points
HN discussionA recent Garbage Day newsletter spoke about this as well, worth reading: https://www.garbageday.email/p/this-is-what-chatgpt-is-actua...
Comment linking /p/this-is-what-chatgpt-is-actually-for
on “'It cannot provide nuance': UK experts warn AI therapy chatbots are not safe”Submitted AI search is a doomsday cult as a story · 21 points
HN discussionHow much does it matter here tho? I think it gatters likes/follows and baits enough people to check the profile, but the conversion rate seems extremely low (tho I guess that may be good enough with these numbers). In OP's blog previous post [0] on "Thinkarette Lifestyle" [1], their engagement baits gather hundreds to thousands (to millions with homeruns) of comments while the dropshipping posts gather 0 to 5 likes…
Comment linking /p/when-the-traffic-firehose-is-pointed
on “The Facebook Text Prompt Zombie Land”Submitted We're all just content for ICE as a story · 15 points
HN discussionThey mention investigating another viral post farm back in November, which was discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29309201 Link to the November post: https://www.garbageday.email/p/when-the-traffic-firehose-is-... All roads to monetization require engagement, so you just end up with groups that churn out "bait" like this.
Comment linking /p/when-the-traffic-firehose-is-pointed
on “The Facebook Text Prompt Zombie Land”Submitted TikTok Doesn't Need America as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI would recommend Garbage Day’s coverage of this: https://www.garbageday.email/p/a-big-confusing-game-of-inter... Also, for contextualizing the social media reactions (including on HN) I would recommend this recent New Yorker article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/17/when-the-hindu...
Comment linking /p/a-big-confusing-game-of-internet
on “The Wire retracts its Meta stories”Submitted Content Moderation Is a Failed Project as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThere's a link after the main article's content to "The most interesting thing I read this week[1]," which was also pretty interesting: [1]: https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-scooby-doo-psyop
Comment linking /p/the-scooby-doo-psyop
on “The contagious visual blandness of Netflix”Submitted Right-clickers vs. the monkey JPG owners as a story · 7 points
HN discussionIf you like this article, it's written by Ryan Broderick the guy behind Garbage Day, a newsletter I can't recommend highly enough if you spend rather too much time online: https://www.garbageday.email/
Comment linking /
on “How to Renovate Your Home for a Billion Children”Submitted The AI boyfriend ticking time bomb as a story · 6 points
HN discussionIt doesn't hit my inbox but my feedreader but I usually read https://www.garbageday.email/ first thing in my reading time
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Which substacks do you read as soon as it hits your inbox?”Submitted The End of the Metaverse Hopefully as a story · 6 points
HN discussionMostly through Steve Bannon as far as I'm aware, yes. Though apparently there were connections through moot, and later Peter Thiel adjacency as well. https://www.garbageday.email/p/here-s-how-epstein-broke-the-...
Comment linking /p/here-s-how-epstein-broke-the-internet
on “The Internet I Grew Up with Doesn't Exist Anymore”Submitted Epstein Broke the Internet as a story · 5 points
HN discussionDo what I do: have someone else spend their day surfing the web and then have them tell you about it. I subscribe the the "Garbage Day" substack by author Ryan Broadrick. Through this I recently discovered what many consider the first major Gen-Alpha meme: Skibidi toilet [1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KrlkXOxlvCk [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skibidi_Toilet#Reception_and_i... [3]: https://garbageday.email/…
Comment linking /about
on “Nobody Knows What's Happening Online Anymore”Submitted Anti-Crypto Media Personality as a story · 5 points
HN discussionRyan Broderick of Garbage Day recently wrote about the Geese ‘Psyop’ and is very skeptical that the PR firm actually accomplished anything to boost their profile: https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-wild-geese-chase (ironically, until now with these articles, I guess!)
Comment linking /p/the-wild-geese-chase
on “Everything we like is a psyop”Submitted The End of the Metaverse Hopefully as a story · 5 points
HN discussionHN would probably hate it but I've been digging Panic World. They investigate mostly modern media or internet-driven moral panics and discuss how they've led us to our current moment. Lots of 90s/2000s internet deep dives, but I mostly appreciate how well the host connects the dots between cultural/political zeitgeist (of any recent era) with some seemingly minor niche movement or idea seeded years prior. https://ww…
Comment linking /panic-world
on “Ask HN: Best Podcasts of 2025?”Submitted Am I too boring to need an AI Agent as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
