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Welcome to ITBest of the Week, a look at the most important events of the last week. It’s like if an e-mail newsletter and Buzzfeed (who follows me on Twitter) had a baby at Rex Hospital.
Twitter is lit over Taco Bell Cantina news
Fyre Festival Still Burns
Chrissy Teigen follows me on Twitter
Grandma tries to sell 30+ years of Playboys on Facebook
UNC System spends $250,000 on a new logo
Dogs of ITB of the Week
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Inside Taco Bell Insider
When James Borden covered the Taco Bell Cantina in this week’s ITB Insider Development Beat I figured we’d get the standard replies of “Ugh, Hillsborough Street is losing its character.” While that reaction was shared by many, it was heavily outweighed by people who were ecstatic over this news. Exhibit A: the engagement stats for my Taco Bell tweet.
That’s a lot. The blog post had over 12,000 pageviews in less than a week. As a result, ITB Insider will now be known as “Inside Taco Bell Insider” and will cover everything Taco Bell related. I was going to put all the Twitter reactions here, but there were too many. Here are the ITBest.
*Drunkenly Uber's to Taco Bell to get food, accidentally gets more drunk* https://t.co/TSs1yexMKp
— parkerannpowell ♔ (@parkerapowell) January 24, 2018
Question is will the margarita machines be more reliable than McDoanald's milkshake machines? https://t.co/Sy6iKZqxg6
— Raleigh City Sports (@RCitySports) January 24, 2018
Me: stop gentrifying Hillsborough
Taco Bell: we're opening a bar
Me: nvm, carry on https://t.co/xxZKWsuehw— Katie Hylton (@HyltonHotel) January 24, 2018
I’d like to thank not only god but Jesus https://t.co/bJWaMaycX9
— Mark Vincent (@mdvince97) January 24, 2018
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Fyre Festival Still Burns
Earlier this week, Vice published a story about how Fyre Festival attendees were getting e-mails that could potentially be scams. Vice and a few others had seen my Tweets about these emails that I posted in December.
Just got an email from someone wanting to give me VIP passes to the Masters next year. My friends from Fyre Festival got the same email. I replied that I wanted them. Could this be Fyre Festival II? Stay tuned.
— William Needham Finley IV (@WNFIV) December 15, 2017
Since I have a PhD in Fyre Festival, I was quoted in the story: Fyre Festival attendees are worried they’re getting scammed again.
The e-mails we received were offering things like dinner with LeBron James, meet and greets with Taylor Swift, and tickets to The Masters, Burning Man, the Met Gala, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion show, and other events that I’m sure will be lit, fam. I’m just speculating, but I assume the guy/company sending these e-mails probably bought the Fyre Festival email list from Billy McFarland, the founder of Fyre Media, and is now using it to offer Fyre attendees tickets to these events. I don’t know if these offers are actually legit, so I’ll probably just buy tickets to each event and see how things go.
The Vice story brought Fyre Festival up in the news again, which resulted in this:
I will never be able to stop laughing and making fun of all of my friends who were held hostage and fed cheese sandwiches on a tropical island I’m sorry I can’t help it I love you all so much https://t.co/sTLBMTR4Mp
— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) January 23, 2018
Which leads to my next topic…
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Chrissy Teigen Is My Best Friend
When I saw Chrissy Teigen’s tweet about the Fyre Festival e-mail story, I assumed it meant that she now thought of me as a friend. I figured this was as good a time as any to see if she would help ITBlake the intern get a date to Broughton’s upcoming Queen of Hearts formal. So I tweeted the following:
I followed up by Tweeting a link to a video of ITBlake the intern.
ITBlake the intern doesn’t actually need any help getting a date to Queen of Hearts, but I knew it would be great for him if he could put “Chrissy Teigen knows of my existence” on his college applications.
And now, he can.
Grandma Tries to Sell Playboys in My Facebook Group
This is not a joke. The title says it all, but there’s so much more to the story.
Grandmother Attempts to Sell Three Decades’ Worth of Playboys In Facebook Group
UNC System Logo Unites All
The UNC System paid $250,000 for a new logo that has now unified all 17 of its academic institutions. From Appalachian State to UNC-Wilmington, fans of every school were united over the fact that spending $250,000 on a new logo and rebranding is absurd. Yes, I realize that includes research, branding, marketing and so on, but it’s still an absurd number for a logo that no one even cares about to begin with. That didn’t stop me from throwing my hat in the ring for the next time they need a new logo.
Here is our first submission. You can Paypal me at wnfiv@itbinsider.com. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/61fzwy2pco
— William Needham Finley IV (@WNFIV) January 25, 2018
Full disclosure: I am red/green colorblind. But it looks like that won’t be a problem based on their approval of the new logo.
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