Every Monday on Global Comment, we share the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need but that it’s easy to miss in our busy world. We distil the best of the web and recommend just three links every week that you absolutely must see.
No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads. Here are this week’s recommendations:
Moral Panics Come and Go. Sex Bracelet Hysteria Is Forever. (Claire McNear / The Ringer)
Nearly two decades on from the jelly bracelet hysteria, the frenzy of school bans, media coverage, and parental outrage in 2003 and 2004 stands as a testament to what can happen when grown-ups misunderstand jokes made by young people—especially ones that take root online. Jelly bracelets weren’t the first time that adult misunderstanding of youth behavior precipitated a full-blown moral panic, but years before dubious TikTok challenges would become fodder for the evening news, they represented one of the first cases in which a fad fed by the internet gave rise to a mainstream freakout wildly disproportionate to what was actually going on.
Welcome to Alphaland, the Disney World for Bodybuilders (Emily McCullar / Texas Monthly)
Bodybuilding Reddit remains unsure. Haters gonna hate, as the saying goes, and plenty of commenters are doubtful that anyone other than the most die-hard Christian Guzman superfans would be willing to make the trek. There is, it seems, some judgment from those who just like to work out toward their counterparts who like to document themselves doing so. But the fitness influencers are winning, I think. Because every time somebody watches a workout video and is inspired by it, then applies what they have learned and witnesses a change in themselves, they’re gonna want somewhere to show it off. And wouldn’t it be nice if that were a place with good lighting? A place where everybody knows your username? You might even see James Harden there.
The Dark Side of Rich Kids Volunteering Abroad (Informer / VICE)
Image: Andrew Kow