While You Were Offline: Boy, Interesting Week for Kanye, Huh?

If we're being honest, the undeniable highlight of the last week was the no-show that was the promised anti-Beyoncé rally, which only attracted two actual protestors. See, haters? This is what happens when you don't get in formation. Otherwise, the week belonged to the Grammys, with Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton acceptance speech, Kendrick Lamar's amazing performance, and Taylor Swift's winning response to Kanye West (below) dominating Internet water cooler talk the next day. But while you've undoubtedly already watched those repeatedly in between listens of The Life of Pablo, here's what else has been happening on the Internet in the last seven days.

What Happened: Kanye West needs $53 million to change the world. You know he's good for it.

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

What Really Happened: Given his utter ubiquity over the last few weeks (and the fact that everyone seems to be talking about him at all times), you'd be forgiven for thinking that things are looking pretty good for Kanye West. But apparently not, as a Twitter-stream-of-consciousness (of course) revealed earlier this week:

Why, you might be wondering, did Ye want Mark Zuckerberg's attention so badly? Did he want a playdate? Had he forgotten his Facebook password? Was he confused by actor Jesse Eisenberg and temporarily believed that the Facebook founder was actually evil scientist Lex Luthor, about the declare war on Batman Ben Affleck? Well, no:

But it wasn't just Zuckerberg that Kanye was interested in:

Realizing that perhaps fans might be concerned about his own finances reading this, West temporarily changed tactics:

That said, Kanye's definition of rich and poor is apparently different from most people's:

(For those not great with math, that works out as $96,200 a year.)

Such a surreal event was built to go viral, so of course, it quickly did, helped out by Stephen Colbert making light of the request and Zuckerberg liking a Facebook post pointing out the faux pas of asking the Facebook founder for investment on Twitter.

But even as Twitter went to town with the idea of asking Zuckerberg to invest $1 billion in their ideas ...

... one fan stood up to try and help Kanye out, creating a GoFundMe page to raise funds to repay the $53 million debt West claims he has. Sadly, it's only raised a little over $5,000 at time of writing. Come on, people. We can do this.

The Takeaway: Elsewhere in Kanye news, this also happened:

Who had "Kanye West/Edward Snowden Beef" on their 2016 to-do list?

What Happened: Jeb Bush has a strange definition of America. But the Internet is ready to help him with that.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs

What Really Happened: Where to start with this? Well, let's open with this unexpected, inexplicable tweet from Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush:

What was behind it? That remains unclear. Desperate attempt to seem macho and appeal to the gun lobby? Veiled threat to Donald Trump not to bully him in debates anymore? Subtle message that Jeb is so forgetful that he has to have his name written on everything he owns? No one knows. But it was a tweet that launched multiple forms of response, including other countries trying to explain themselves away in one image:

Other people tried to identify America, as well:

And then there were responses like this:

You do have to wonder if Jeb was trying to set himself up as an armed response to this, don't you?

The Takeaway: Presidential campaigns have always been about arguing different ideas of America, but this is just ridiculous.

What Happened: Not for the first time, a tech start-up dude has decided that San Francisco just doesn't reach his standards.

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

What Really Happened: It's a tale as old as time, but Justin Keller—founder of Commando.io, a server management start-up—took to the Internet this week to tell it again, writing an open letter to San Francisco mayor Ed Lee and police chief Greg Suhr complaining about the city's homeless problem. Did he address the issue with sensitivity and subtlety? You decide!

"Every day, on my way to, and from work, I see people sprawled across the sidewalk, tent cities, human feces, and the faces of addiction. The city is becoming a shanty town," he wrote. "I know people are frustrated about gentrification happening in the city, but the reality is, we live in a free market society. The wealthy working people have earned their right to live in the city. They went out, got an education, work hard, and earned it. I shouldn’t have to worry about being accosted. I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, and despair of homeless people to and from my way to work every day."

(And let's not get into his calling the homeless "riff raft," even though he later added the footnote, "I want to apologize for using the term riff raft. It was insensitive and counterproductive.")

As should only be expected, the Internet was unimpressed by Keller's complaints, dismissing him as a "tech bro."

Twitter was equally dismissive:

Keller's open letter also inspired a number of open letters in response, all with the same message: Check your privilege.

The Takeaway: The strangest thing about this wasn't Keller's concerns—homelessness is a very serious problem for San Francisco—but that it all felt so familiar. Start-up boss makes social media faux pas that shows him to be overly entitled and out of touch with the real world? Haven't we seen that so many times before? Clearly, the takeaway lesson from this for any start-up should be this: Don't let your boss near social media without someone checking what they're saying first.

What Happened: The Internet doesn't want writers to work for free.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Stephen Hull, editor-in-chief at Huffington Post UK, set off a social media firestorm Thursday after someone pointed out that during a radio interview Hull apparently defended not paying contributors in a very unexpected way. "If I was paying someone to write something because I want it to get advertising, that's not a real authentic way of presenting copy," he said. "When somebody writes something for us, we know it's real, we know they want to write it. It's not been forced or paid for. I think that's something to be proud of."

Proud of? Turns out, lots of people didn't think that was the right attitude for unpaid work.

But, wait. Maybe all is not as it seems. Let's check in with Hull on Twitter after the fact, shall we?

Well, that's better, right? Now it just feels like a storm in a tea cup... Wait a minute. What's this? An email from HuffPo UK sent to a freelance journalist? "Your angle sounds v interesting. However, unfortunately we don’t commission any freelance content on HuffPost, so not sure how you’d like to proceed. You are welcome to write a blog for us (uncommissioned, unpaid) or you could supply quotes and info and I could credit you?"

Oh dear.

The Takeaway: Caitlin Moran, fancy closing this one out for us?

What Happened: Just imagine a world where the luddites had won. And then share your vision in a world where the opposite was the case.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter

What Really Happened: Let's end on a less depressing note, shall we? Comedian Kenny Eichenberg had a question for Twitter this week:

It was, let's be honest, a meme just waiting to happen. And happen it did—it was even embraced by a number of corporations, a sure sign that something has gone so viral that everyone will be sick of it within a number of hours. But until that happens, enjoy these responses:

The most common answer, were you wondering, was that tweets would be sent by actual birds; the most amusing, arguably, was the auto-generated spam response that simply read "#lightisthenewblack #GRAMMYs #WorldPressPhoto #IfTechnologyNeverAdvanced #quote." Yeah, I feel you, auto-generator. #quote indeed.

The Takeaway: This, however, is the winner:

Oh, Left Shark. We've missed you so much.