THIS WEEK ONLINE – DOs and DON’Ts

You’re reading This Week Online, VICE Australia’s runsheet of shit you probably missed, or should have seen, this week. Subscribe here to get it straight in your inbox, every week.

“Ari” here, welcoming you back to This Week Online.

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WHAT HAPPENED 

10/03 – 17/03

• TikTok IS the new Google
• Can smoking cigs help you quit vaping?
• “It took me nearly 40 years to stop resenting Ke Huy Quan”
• DOs and DON’Ts
• An Interview With Someone Who Uses a Timed Lockbox to Keep Their Vape Away From Them
• :^)

TIKTOK IS THE NEW GOOGLE

Maybe if Google didn’t want to be usurped as the omnipotent librarian of the internet, then it shouldn’t have strayed so far from its god, which it did when it chose to serve the marketing pawns rather than its core user base: Humans with Questions.

Now, tired of the SEO and Advertising that has become the Googling kerfuffle, Gen Z are turning the cheek. TikTok is slowly absorbing this hotly vied-for market with its offering of anecdotal, specific, yet relatable information and advice, from a human, and not from whichever faceless aggregators have bought the most SEO dollars. TikTok, Etsy, Ebay, Reddit – all can give us quick, specific answers to our most obscure questions, where Google wants us to finish all of our ads before we can have dessert.

But as we turn our backs on Google, so it does on us… It’s getting shitter and more annoying to use by the day.

And so Terry Nguyen asks the question: what even is the point of Google when we have to be our own librarian?

[ here ]

CAN SMOKING CIGS HELP YOU QUIT VAPING?

No.

Hahaha. Well. Yeah, no?

As Ron Borland, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Melbourne who has been studying the effects of nicotine and smoking for the past few decades, said, “Going back to smoking is absolutely the worst thing anybody could do. You can use cigarettes for quitting vaping but you’d be increasing your health risks.”

“It’ll be more difficult to quit cigarettes than to quit vaping. So, in fact, that’s a backward step.”

You are just swapping one device out for the other and, according to his research, cigarettes are the more addictive of the two.

[ here ]

“IT TOOK ME NEARLY 40 YEARS TO STOP RESENTING KE HUY QUAN”

Getty Images / Jeff Kravitz

Writes Walter Chaw, on his resentment for the actor that was borne out of a childhood spent knowing his friends would want him to do the accent.

Quan’s child actor characters – Data in Goonies and Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – amplified Chaw’s feelings of otherness, when assimilation was the goal.

For Chaw, being recognised as a reflection of the only Asian representation then-available in American pop-culture meant he had lived his life “in fear of being found out”.

“As Chinese, perhaps, but really as stupid and ugly and not good enough.”

“But here’s Quan,” Chaw writes, “The same as he was when he was a kid, embodying all of the qualities that actually matter in the pursuit of a life well-lived: love for and faith in the people in your life who see you, and the candid recollection of the journey it took to get you to a place where you can finally see yourself.”

[ here ]

DOS AND DON’TS

Festival edition. I went to Pitch Music & Arts festival on the weekend and when I got back I had a whole lot of bitching and moaning to do. To balance out all the gripes, I made up some good things and pretended I’d only just learned about them. Genius, right?

Ultimately, all I really want to say is this: No more doof sticks. No, no, no, no, no, no… You can’t find your friends and I can’t see the fucking stage because there are 12,000 of the same abysmal ketamine jokes bopping and weaving around, lighting up the air above the crowd like the hyper-nightmare version of Christmas in the wealthy suburbs.

[ here ]

AN INTERVIEW WITH SOMEONE WHO USES A TIMED LOCKBOX TO KEEP THER VAPE AWAY FROM THEM

Christine is better than all of us, really. She’s honest – admitting she’s reliant on this little lockbox that keeps her vape locked up from Sunday to Friday. She’s real – for using this box in the first place. And she’s smart. Where can I get one of these…

[ here ]

+ :^)

You’ve been reading This Week Online, VICE Australia’s runsheet of shit you probably missed, or should have seen, this week. Subscribe here to get it straight in your inbox, every week.

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