While You Were Offline: The Supreme Court Does Good, and Chevy Does...Just…Yikes

You might have been forgiven for thinking, earlier this week, that the biggest thing to happen would be Gmail allowing you to unsend messages, but it turned out there were far more important things on the way. Important enough to make America forget that the women's soccer World Cup is still going on in Canada, and America is still in it (well, as of this writing). Yes, that's right: this week was so exciting America forgot to care about women's soccer. Here's what the World Wide Web Hivemind was thinking about instead.

What Happened: Chevy embraces emojis as part of a new promotion, because apparently that's still a thing. Or is it?

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: You can just imagine the meeting that birthed the new Chevy ad campaign: A group of people sitting around a table, saying "How do we convince people that this new car is better than all the other cars? What if we say it's so good, words aren't enough to explain it? Wait, what if we write a press release just in emojis?"

And so it happened.

To be fair, the release did get a lot of attention, but the release was just the beginning. There were also explainer videos.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5QmNwy62NW0

https://www.youtube.com/embed/rKW09Sp_JV0

https://www.youtube.com/embed/y_ur-h8EHPA

I'm pretty sure there's got to be some kind of law that when a car manufacturer hires Norm Macdonald to learn about a particular thing, then that means that said thing is over. If there isn't, then let's invent one for this.

The Takeaway: Crying face emoji. Lots and lots of crying face emojis.

What Happened: Taylor Swift took on Apple and, to the surprise of almost everyone with the exception of the most ardent Swifties, won.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: It started with a letter. Well, really, a Tumblr post by Taylor Swift, but one that took the form of an open letter to Apple over its plans for its new streaming service, Apple Music. Specifically, the fact that Apple wasn't planning on paying artists during the three month free trial period, something that T. Swift wasn't in favor of.

"This is not about me," she wrote. "Thankfully I am on my fifth album and can support myself, my band, crew, and entire management team by playing live shows. This is about the new artist or band that has just released their first single and will not be paid for its success. This is about the young songwriter who just got his or her first cut and thought that the royalties from that would get them out of debt. This is about the producer who works tirelessly to innovate and create, just like the innovators and creators at Apple are pioneering in their field ... but will not get paid for a quarter of a year's worth of plays on his or her songs."

The letter got a lot of attention, despite it appearing on a Sunday—so much so, in fact, that by the end of the day, Apple had remarkably done an about-face on the policy, as announced on Twitter by the company's senior vice president of Internet software and services Eddy Cue:

It was the backdown that launched a million think pieces (and some conspiracy theorists, as well). The myth of Taylor Swift's power and kindness grew several sizes that day... as did the idea that Apple was responsive to criticism and not really the bad guys after all. And, in the end?

Everyone wins, right?

The Takeaway: Someone needs to convince Taylor to take on other hot button media issues. Can she start complaining that CBS shows aren't on Hulu? Or that Star Wars isn't on Netflix? That'd be great.

What Happened: The Supreme Court came through not once, but twice in two days.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: As the week drew to a close, the Supreme Court ruled on two important cases, deciding on Thursday that Obamacare was sticking around and on Friday that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry. Of course, both decisions unleashed a wave of coverage online, both in terms of news reporting and explainer pieces (paging SCOTUSblog!), but with such massive social implications for both cases, it's unsurprising that Twitter found itself more than a little interested in what happened, as well—especially when it came to Justice Scalia's dissent to the Affordable Care Act ruling:

Things were more upbeat when it came to the same-sex marriage ruling, however:

The Takeaway: Of course, this just means that electioneering over the next year-plus is going to be particularly nuts, let's be honest.

What Happened: The women of the Internet decide to demystify basic biological functions for clueless men.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Let's talk menstruation. No, wait, come back.

In a piece for the New Statesman, writer June Eric-Udorie complained about the silence surrounding periods in pop culture. "We don't talk about periods. Or perhaps we do, but it's always in a hushed whisper, as if talking about your period is a crime," she wrote, and pointed to the Twitter hashtag #LivetweetYourPeriod as a way of breaking the taboo. It was enough to make the hashtag go mainstream (an earlier mention in the New York Times helped, too), bringing many, many more true life experiences to light. Like, for example:

The hashtag has been around for a few months, quietly explaining what it's like to men who know no better:

Thanks, Tracy Clayton:

The Takeaway: If even one man read these tweets and realized what it was actually like for women every month instead of making "She's in a bad mood? Must be that time of the month!" jokes, then I think we can all agree this was a job well done, right?

What Happened: More proof that Jurassic World is a bona fide hit comes in the form of Chris Pratt's zoo keeping practices becoming a viral meme.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Congratulations, Chris Pratt. Your inventive techniques regarding the care of dinosaurs has been adopted around the world... or, at least, around the Internet.

[[#twitter: https://twitter.com/CincinnatiZoo/status/611616375572983808]

The winner, however, might have been the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, which used real dinosaurs for its photo. Well, kind of:

The Takeaway: OK, so it's gone viral. But I'm not going to call it a fad until someone's written a special Prattkeeping song. Yes, consider that a challenge, Internet.

What Happened: A confluence of events surrounding Rose McGowan caught people's attention—but perhaps for the wrong reason.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Rose McGowan's been active on Twitter lately—well, she's often active on Twitter, but a couple of tweets in particular caught everyone's attention this week. First, she called out a note that she received with an Adam Sandler script:

And then, seven days later, she shared this:

Immediately, everyone got appropriately angry that she'd been fired for speaking her mind. The agent in question quit her own job in response to the outcry, even. Except... maybe not?

As the furor grew online, McGowan tweeted the following:

So, was it an entirely different agent who was wussy? And if so, who?

The Takeaway: Consider this a lesson in the strange drip feed of information that is breaking almost-news on the Internet. Or, perhaps, just McGowan saving the blushes of her former agent. We may never know which.](http://feminerds.tumblr.com/post/121709534819/my-bestie-is-a-zoo-keeper-and-she-told-me-that)