Full Halloween decoration

One of my cats is going viral on Threads right now. Every time I open the app, I have a new notification. Someone else has liked a tossed off reply I shared to another woman's twisty, multi-post, true crime story with a lighthearted twist. To set it up, she describes waking at 5 a.m. to meowing from the kitchen. Not her cat's standard "breakfast time" meow, something "different, sharp, angry, urgent." She enters the room to find the cat's tail puffed "like a Halloween decoration."

This is a story that anyone who has ever cohabitated with a pet knows all to well. If said pet alerts you to an intrusion, especially during the wee hours between very late at night and very early in the morning, you prepare for the worst possible outcome. This is it, you think, I'm either about to live my worst home invasion nightmare or there's a new ghost in the house and they're ready inflict severe bodily harm.

Fortunately, the Threads story, as is the case in most real life "my pet is doing something weird in the middle of the night" stories eventually reveals an overblown antagonist. In this case, it's another cat being aggro at the kitchen window. In the case of my reply, using the author's phrase "like a Halloween decoration" as my prompt, it's a headband.

I've had a handful of things blow up on Threads over the years, only ever on Threads, the liminal space between late at night and early in the morning of social media platforms. Nothing happening on there feels particularly real. It's not the hub for journalists that old Twitter was, or that Bluesky is becoming. It presents as overwhelmingly earnest, but not like 2010s Tumblr earnest. There are good jokes, many of which have been upcycled without credit so likes must be doled out with extreme caution. Same goes for pet photos (cat tax in comments) and (auto?)fiction via routine multi-thread missives. Read something on there that you enjoy, check the author's profile and they are bound to have ~300 followers and a pinned Thread explaining their whole deal. Often it's a whole deal that I wouldn't mind claiming for myself, but is any of it ever really true? Are they stating their vocation or their aspirations? Do these distinctions even matter in Mark Zuckerberg's Meta-wasteland? Stay too long and you'll feel like you're lost forever on the floor of the Uncanny Valley.

But it'll be dope if Daria's Halloween cat pic clears 1k likes 💀

P.S. No newsletter next week as I'll be wandering the cobblestoned streets of Charleston, SC. I will return the following week. I will try to resist the urge that I can already feel coming over me to go full Southern Goth, but I make no promises.