A Day in the Life of One Strategist's Scroll

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  • Text Clara Malley
  • Design Keya Shah

Here’s what a day in news, memes and social looks like for me (on August 2, 2022 at least).

7ish AM

Looked at Instagram. The app update just rolled back for me so I was excited to resume my scrolling as usual. My friend DMd me this IG carousel…

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…which reminded me to reply to a separate text about going to see Carnal Knowledge at Film Forum. I decided to send this friend some *new content* in the form of a Spotify release to make up for the fact I hadn’t responded earlier. Content mends all bridges!

I use both Apple Music and Spotify. Admittedly, it gets a little annoying and chaotic. But I find that especially for older music, sometimes they have different albums available. I also think the algorithmic recommendations on Spotify are a little better, but I prefer making playlists on Apple Music. Anyway… listening to Lee Hazlewood reminded me of the Ann-Margret/Lee Hazlewood duet album, which brought the conversation full circle. (This album, for instance, is only on Spotify, not Apple Music.)

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8ish AM

I was bored on the train to work and played Wordle. I don’t think I finished it. But I felt like I was the only person on the train still playing Wordle and was self-conscious about this.

A Google of “wordle august 2” indicates that there’s still at least SEO incentive to write about it, which feels reassuring.

A hypothesis: could the number of SEO-optimized articles be an objective-ish gauge of whether a trend or phenomenon has truly “died” vs. just less frequently discussed?

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9ish-10ish AM

Not much content in this period. Deleted some newsletters with headlines like below.

And discussed *not* loving the new Gmail view

And saw this tweet and listened to some Fiona Apple.

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11ish AM

Had a call with a coworker in which we discussed the following content:

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12ish PM

I saw this post from a restaurant in Spain I follow on Instagram called Clara, because I love things with my name on them.

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Which reminded me about how I got left on un-read a few weeks back. Checked back to confirm that I was still on un-read and weighed maybe double messaging them.

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1ish PM

A lunchtime distraction and the web it wove…

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The process of putting this together makes me think about all the other deep dives I’ve been on during lunch (hear me out!) and how much space vaguely remembered incidents and skimmed articles take up in my brain.

But overtly or beneath the surface, murky memories—mine and others’—drive a lot of the content I look for, engage with and revisit. How long might I have been ignorant to the André-Hogan rivalry without that prompting question? And how might that knowledge change what content I consume in the future? For instance, throwing “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough” on repeat (which I did).

It also makes me think about how little of the content I consume on a daily basis is intentionally sought and consumed as opposed to “happens to me” because of conversations with friends, forwarded emails and link drops. How much of my news diet is informed by desire to learn versus serendipity, or the influence of those around me? Is that a meaningful or even worthwhile distinction?

But I digress. I’m done with lunch and critical thinking about André the Giant.

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2ish-4ishPM

I’m sure I consumed content at some point in this period but…

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5ish PM

In this span, I was trying to write copy about trapezoids, circles and the color orange.

Here are some fun highlights from my Chrome session as I looked for inspo.

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(A small interlude to weigh in on some breaking news…)

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7ish PM

Looked at some Tweets on the train...

And realized I screenshotted this photo off IG over a year ago... Which brought me to this photo...

Can't remember my own opinions. But I can't forget a cute pair of clogs. <3

"Goldfish brain Gen Z"... I think not!

ALSO finally got to the bottom of today's mystery!

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7ish PM (still on train)

Added some new inspo to my “Hair” IG saves.

I recently caught some criticism from a friend about being a multiple-album “IG Saves-er”—something I didn’t know people had opinions about.

I use the folders to track articles I hear about, trends I see on social, ads I don’t like, and most importantly, inspiration for roots touch-ups.

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8ish PM

Was “real” and went to dinner.

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Well, that's all for now—until tomorrow’s rabbit hole. Looking back on the day’s content, I’m struck again by how little of it was deliberate and how much was happenstance: clicked hyperlinks, forwarded emails, stray Brad Pitt sightings in Slack. But today, and all days, I’m grateful for the journey—and eager to put my Andre the Giant fun facts to use.