Men yell in cars at me

Are they trying to motivate me, or dominate me?

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.

There should be congestion pricing for making content in your car. —Kate

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TikTok has a new deployable phrase, but what is the “let them theory” really about?

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some cools guys I met recently

I’m often told that if I see this video, it’s meant for me. It’s one of many narrative techniques creators on TikTok and Instagram use in order to approximate a one-on-one relationship between themselves and the viewer. They want you to feel uniquely validated by their advice, their life hack, their tarot pull, even though the video itself is likely being viewed by many people at once.

But there’s another, less subtle technique certain creators employ. They’re not luring viewers in by claiming a cosmic connection, but instead, taking them by surprise. In fact, it’s often an all-out, all-caps scream and it keeps scaring the shit out of me.