Smashing

Facebook was born from a website made for elite students to rank their classmates’ sexual attractiveness; Twitter was a watercooler where bored office workers could get attention by telling jokes in public. It’s as if 3M’s accidental invention of Post-It notes while failing to make space glue landed them a UN veto.

On Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, Facebook, and almost every other big social media platform, the link is deprioritized in favor of keeping your eyes on the platform at all costs. This has had disastrous consequences for journalism, art, and the fundamental connective nature of the web.

Smashing, a new app curating the best of the web from Goodreads co-founder Otis Chandler, is now available to the public.