I was having coffee this week with The MERL’s Joe Vaughan and we were talking about clowning. Specifically, how one school of clowning relentlessly drills into you the importance of failing repeatedly. You’re given a task, and if nobody laughs then you do it again. And again. And again until you get that laughter.

So, at the risk of sounding like I’m on LinkedIn, what this taught me about social media isn’t just the importance of being open to failing but the importance of trying, and trying to get that laugh. So not trying without a purpose, but writing every post like you’re stepping out from behind a screen in front of 30 strangers (also dressed as clowns) and trying like hell to get that laugh.

Content of this week

• I posted a video about a painting that only gets revealed once a month and I remember saying that the Sir John Soane’s Museum should do it for their Rake’s Progress. Well Bloomberg Connects/Artdrunk did it instead. It’s a good video but museums should be posting these things! Don’t let other people take your engagement! For the love of god!

• As a millennial I’m glad someone turned this trend on its head.

• This TikTok of literally just loads of pictures of Florentine coats of arms has 64K likes. Probably because the fast pace and song hit the dopamine button, but also because it brings the people who are just accountants in Salt Lake City out of the woodwork commenting ‘that’s my family coat of arms’.

• Another classic of the ‘any cultural organisation could do this’ trend.

• Another classic of the ‘thank fuck I have something to link that isn’t on TikTok or Instagram but it’s still a video’ genre, Buckinghamshire Archives have done another great video on local urban myths involving tunnels.

• Please find the little kissing men in your paintings.

The bullet point bit

• People are saying you should stop using Hootsuite because they’re being used by ICE in the USA. You should also stop using it because it is bad and overpriced.

• They closed the TikTok deal, which now means users of the app in the USA will have their own version of the algorithm and their data held in the USA. I still have no real idea how this crosses over with the global app, and I can’t find anything that tells me. Will it be harder to reach USA audiences? Will weird American stuff bleed over from their version? Who knows.

• Meta have basically given up on the Metaverse, which is like if you changed your name to Hotdog, spent your life savings on hotdogs and told everyone you know to start eating hotdogs, and then realised that people don’t like hotdogs.

Personal stuff I do for me and you can just skip this if you like

🎮📖 what I’m consuming as a consumer

I’m reading Chain-Gang All-Stars which is basically the Hunger Games if it had a more important message about privatised prison systems, the ethics of the death penalty and systemic racism. It manages to push your ‘I like battle royale’ button while making you also feel bad about having that button pressed.

🐕 Keith

Last night he kept getting surprised by his own farts and walking around the bedroom for two whole hours