Long live the Blue Screen of Death
Plus, how zines and social media have intertwined.
In today’s issue of PHONE TIME: the end of the Blue Screen of Death, the overlapping of social media and zines, and the memes about the OceanGate Titan submersible are still going strong.
Microsoft announced in a blog post today that it is “streamlining the unexpected restart experience” with a new black unexpected restart screen on Windows. That means the iconic Blue Screen of Death is dead—or will be, later this summer.
In July 2024, when a CrowdStrike update caused the BSOD to show up on millions of computers worldwide, I collected a few examples of how it has cemented itself within more than just computer nerd culture, including in fashion and memes.
The intertwining of social media and zines
I wrote a piece five years ago on this day—back when I was writing about the internet as a pandemic hobby after my senior year of high school—about the zine community that was popping up on Instagram in the summer of 2020. Looking back now, I don’t love my overly trendy framing (“Zines Are Back. And Now They’re On Instagram” was my title—did zines ever really go away?), but I do think that summer 2020 was a key time for the growth of new infrastructure for zines and publications, especially those by young people. The zine creators I spoke to also emphasized how the medium enabled coverage of topics sidelined or ignored by mainstream publications.
“Almost all have an Instagram where they post updates and shorter posts. Most also have some form of a website, where full issues, blog posts, videos, expanded pieces, etc. are posted. But many are also active on other platforms—for example, on Spotify, where they will create collaborative playlists that match their content or the theme of a specific issue,” I wrote.
I’ve also been thinking about how zine culture has grown within both offline and online spaces in the context of this story in WIRED, titled “Social Media Replaced Zines. Now Zines Are Taking the Power Back” by C. Brandon Ogbunu. The story includes reporting on this year’s Black Zine Fair, attended by around 1,200 people:
“Many zines bridged the gap between analog and digital. An independent publisher called Haters Cafe presented ‘10 Anarchist Theses on Palestine Solidarity in the United States,’ one of several works also hosted on the publisher’s website. One of its creators, who asked not to be identified, tells WIRED that while the internet has allowed Haters’ zines to spread far, their somewhat untraceable physical forms appeal to people who are concerned about repression,” Ogbunu writes.
I think this point about zines being both in digital and analog contexts is important. The Black Zine Fair itself has an active Instagram presence with over 10,000 followers.
This past winter, I reported on the role of both social media and print publications in campus activism. In reporting on the 2024 NYC Feminist Zinefest, Barnard Zine Library Director Jenna Freedman spoke with me about how zine-makers have always had an element of online community.
“Freedman also noted that the zine community has always had an element of online community, with people using message boards in the ’90s to connect with each other. Now, Instagram is the dominant social media of zinemakers, she said. At the zinefest, many tablers had written their Instagram accounts on zines or business cards.”
Around town
The Brooklyn Summer Zine Fest was this past Sunday. I took the train down to go, but, being a bit foggy from the heat, went to the completely wrong location, which I’m very sad about. The fest was co-organized by Secret Riso Club and Brooklyn Art Book Fair, and hosted at Other People’s Clothes’ Williamsburg location.
Elsewhere online
Last week, I watched “Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster.” The documentary focuses on the internal decisions that led to the Titan submersible’s implosion on June 18, 2023. I was especially curious if, and how, it would address the widespread online reaction in the days following its disappearance, when social media users and news outlets meticulously tracked the oxygen levels on the Titan, assuming at the time it was still intact.
I named the Titan submersible event as an example of a “Twitter holiday,” which I loosely defined earlier this month as a “really good day on the platform,” usually prompted by an unexpected event. But I also see posts about the Titan pop up from time to time on Instagram meme pages. Morbid as they are, these posts act as an artifact of a very specific time online and seem to become funnier the more time passes.
“Ice cream, you scream: SoHo’s Museum of Ice Cream neighborhood drama, explained” — Jessica Formoso, Fox 5 NY
“AI is ruining houseplant communities online” — Nicole Froio, The Verge
“While online retailers have often scammed less-knowledgeable consumers, the rise of online stores using AI-generated photos of fake, usually vibrant, and otherworldly-looking plants to fool consumers into buying seeds for plants that do not exist has been remarked upon by multiple plant-specific blogs, podcasts, and communities in the last three years,” Froio writes.
My first PHONE TIME post was about identification subreddits like r/whatisthisthing, r/whatsthisbug, and r/whatsthisbird. While they aren’t completely free of AI submissions or answers, these communities stand out as a unique place online due to their emphasis on human expertise.
The first issue of the New York Daily News, then called the Illustrated Daily News, was printed on June 26, 1919.
The internet is rallying around Tiny Chef after creators of “The Tiny Chef Show” announced its cancelation at Nickelodeon after three seasons, via a heartbreaking video of the small herbivore chef receiving the news. The post went viral, with many saying they would fight for Tiny Chef despite having never seen or heard of the show before. “Many of you have said that you would die for Tiny Chef, we don’t need all that (!!!) but we do need crowdfunding to keep going,” reads an announcement on the Tiny Chef website.
In an interview with TheWrap, co-creator Rachel Larsen said Nickelodeon gave them the news about a month ago. A post from a few days ago showed the Chef eager to get a call from Nickelodeon: “Chef thinks this is the green light call so he’s deep cleaning the tree stump for good energy!”
The Tiny Chef does have a newsletter, though not on Substack.
