Adam Bumas

I'm pleased to announce my new position as Head of Research at @garbageday.email! Making sense of the internet is only becoming more important, and I'm proud (mostly) to do it for a living.

I’m uncommonly proud of today’s @panicworld.com podcast on how the Bronies now run all culture. Huge credit especially to @grantirving.bsky.social, who made an episode out of a research doc from me that was more or less a book proposal. youtu.be/-AXzSDvM3mw?...

When The Social Reckoning comes out on streaming, I'm gonna make a supercut of every time someone dramatically says a percentage.

Finally got the chic book screenshot...

Looking back at “Live grilling in my backyard” ten years later, feat. @bumas.bsky.social of @garbageday.email Fri 7pm theater.jacobford.com

Ten years ago this week, Mark Zuckerberg revealed his darkest secret: He likes smoking meats. Celebrate the anniversary with me on Friday! partiful.com/e/gM2eOaRwZt...

@dmmaus.bsky.social congratulations (a little belated) on finishing Darths and Droids! I'm an internet culture journalist, would you be interested in talking about it?

Of the 14 songs that broke the same record "Choosin' Texas" just broke, nine of them were this century and six were in the last decade. Is a hit song still a hit if it climbs to the top of streaming charts and gets algorithmically stuck there for sixth months?

hey "nice" manbun haha it fucking sucks you hipster asshole (he turns around to reveal he is a parautilitarian from the federal bureau of control) oh fuck

What is Verity, and are your children safe from him? I explain the algorithm's latest creation behind the paywall in today's @garbageday.email. www.garbageday.email/p/how-verity...

We’re independent, baybee! www.garbageday.email/p/an-update-...

Judges in Mega-City One don’t even say they are the law anymore, they just look at you like this

When you're dead, you can't post, meaning the algorithm has no interest in you, meaning it's a lot harder for anyone to mourn your passing. My latest for @garbageday.email: www.garbageday.email/p/you-have-t...

There's a lot more to the memes about Niu Lai than you might think. Behind the paywall today, I'm talking about everything from the stock market to The Shawshank Redemption, and throwing a little cold water on the idea that this is our anti-AI rallying point. www.garbageday.email/p/can-chines...

Got interviewed by @walthickey.bsky.social for the weekend edition of his excellent newsletter Numlock! I'm there to talk fanfic, but the interview got, shall we say, wide-ranging. www.numlock.com/p/numlock-su...

Fans of this might be interested to see the Minecraft Mamdani which was on display this past spring at the NYC Video Game Festival.

I'm in your ears! Thankful to @slate.com and Kate Lindsay for the chance to talk about the existential questions raised by Jimothy the Raccoon on today's ICYMI podcast. slate.com/podcasts/icy...

The definitive story of how a little raccoon dominated our feeds in the span of just five days. www.garbageday.email/p/how-to-go-...

Nixonmaxxing is as overstated as many rightward trends. The Nixon Foundation, which started this all off earlier this year, has been getting way less engagement since then compared to both the JFK Foundation and Reagan Foundation. www.garbageday.email/p/the-piggie...

My ring Atreides, my sietch Fremen, my ghola from Ix, let's go Knicks. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndvq...

I wrote about betting on social media engagement for Bloomberg Businessweek a couple weeks ago, for anyone who missed it: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

I wrote about FreddyLA7, the apex predator of World Cup tourists. Is he some kind of fake? Complicated question! More behind the paywall in today's @garbageday.email - link here: www.garbageday.email/p/the-intern...

Lisa's contributions to digital news couldn't fit in a Bluesky post. So I'll just say how excited I am to be working with her!

Congratulations to canonical Knicks fan Homestar Runner (cc @strongbadnofoolin.bsky.social)

Excited to make my debut for @bloomberg.com Businessweek! I'm writing about some hyper-online crypto communities and the effect they're having on the rest of finance. Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

YouTube's autodubbing is now so universal that the algorithm served me a @claireforny.bsky.social ad dubbed into Russian. Only recorded the last few seconds for all of Comrade Valdez's fans out there:

Russia has ruled a K-pop omegaverse fic to be illegal, sentencing its author to 18 months in a labor camp. So is it worth reading? Get the link I tracked down in today's @garbageday.email and decide for yourself! www.garbageday.email/p/everything...

Another day, another concept I first learned from The Simpsons.

My first ever scoop, such as it is: The DHS is treating a random shitposter X account like a legit news source, giving it exclusive info about foreign relations. www.garbageday.email/p/exclusive-...

I unfortunately have meme news regarding the Saudi blockbuster: boxd.it/ee11qT

What’s your “Smilin’ Stan” editorial voice sobriquet?

Mets game on one bar TV, Artemis II splashdown on the other. I believe they call this a happy place.

We did it, JUICE. We did it.

Today I'm talking bimbo politics. See more behind the paywall, if you dare. www.garbageday.email/p/bimbos-in-...

The Epic layoffs today are another sign of the same reason we're all talking about DLSS 5. The video game industry is showing signs of a mass extinction - a death stranding, so to speak. I wrote about it last week: www.garbageday.email/p/the-death-...

It is with some regret that I report Paul Leonard-Morgan did a first-rate original score for the new Louis Theroux manosphere doc. Imagine blasting this and then having to say its name out loud: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxqn...

"Can you ironically use Halo fancams to inspire a draft? Can you entertain your CHUD followers with fashwave Agartha edits when gas is $10 a gallon?" www.garbageday.email/p/waging-war... @bumas.bsky.social @garbageday.email

The rare almost uniformly good comment section, on Paul McCartney's personal Letterboxd (yes, really) letterboxd.com/pmccartney/f...

WAGE! FUWY! CAWNAGE! THWOOD! Follow youw instincts! Aheheheheh - Elmer Fudd 2077

Here's @bumas.bsky.social on dark woke. www.garbageday.email/p/an-edgelor...

Discord has already quietly broken its promise that its new age verification tools will keep your data on your device. Here's the basics - read more behind the paywall in today's Garbage Day. www.garbageday.email/p/clavicular...

Hey, @nyt-first-said.bsky.social, you've got your work cut out for you with this profile of Clavicular. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/s...

Thanks for the ping! This video gets at least one thing wrong: There ARE separate apps for TikTok outside the US on both Android and iOS. This isn't just Douyin, it's two apps both called TikTok. Anything I say about the algorithm would be speculation, but that I know for sure.

"For the good of upholding family values, men should be empowered by medical science to carry a mixed species baby to term!" -Scott Adams (RIP) & Larry Charles

Dilbert mpreg update (thanks to @synnviks.bsky.social) - this is both Dilbert mpreg and Dilbert forcefem.

I, for one, didn't know the short-lived Dilbert animated series ended with an mpreg two-parter.