No words come close to the horror and sadness the events in France this week. I don’t have an explanation for it. However, I do think that what the team at Charlie Hebdo and other satirists around the world do is important. They hold up a mirror to ourselves and force us to look at us from a different perspective. As horrible as the events this week in France were, it is heartening and inspiring to see how the French and international community reacted to these acts of terrorism.

From the marches of solidarity, to people holding up pens and the now ubiquitous ‘Je suis Charlie’ posters – to the millions of Tweets voicing their support and condemnation.

Here are some that really struck me – because they fought back with humour, wit and determination:

The irony of it all: the murderers of journalists end at a printers.

Arab newspapers react to the Charlie Hebdo massacre – my favourite below, more through the link

And the reactions from the Western world, again in cartoon form (via Buzzfeed).

While not directly linked to the attack, this cartoon hits the nail on the head for me

Shortly after the attack, the New York Times published this short documentary filmed at Charlie Hebdo in 2006, where cartoonists and editors design a satirical front page image of Muhammad – in reaction to the cartoons that had appeared in Denmark.

Bits and bytes

T’interwebs went a gaga over a post this week over a post by an actual teenager about social media. Some points to note:

• Facebook isn’t as dead as we all thought it was – teens use the Groups and Chat features, but completely shun the newsfeed
• Instagram has such an engaged community because it is just about the images and you’re not constantly being marketed to
• Even the kids don’t get Twitter
• Snapchat is where “we can really be ourselves while being attached to our social identity”

It is a genuinely good piece that provides a fresh/actual perspective on how the kids are using all these new-fangled platforms to express themselves and their identity.

Skelli’s fabulous Instagram dedicated to the sentiment most 13-year-old girls can relate to: “Like, OMG I cannot literally even so I’m literally dead.”

US Airline Jet Blue‘s new campaign is all about in-flight etiquette. You know: not hogging the shared arm rest, not scoffing a chicken korma before boarding a long haul flight, not sleep/drooling onto your neighbour. In a series of short films, the airline is posting these and other examples of obnoxious behaviour. As a former frequent flyer, all these clips tell me is that Jet Blue planes are cramped, their passengers inconsiderate bastards and that I’m better off flying with another airline.

A fabulous deck by Brian Solis about the 25 disruptive tech trends for 2015-2016. 37 slides filled with cyber security, mobile payments, drones, bitcoin, social media, digital, music, movies and Hollywood. This is a good’n – enjoy!

Ryanair didn’t quite read the Tweet below before responding to this comedian about problems with his emotional baggage. The airline did redeem themselves a little bit with their statement to the gleeful media that jumped on the story: “We apologise for temporary technical difficulties with our sarcasm detector today.”

An interesting article about whether the social media department has a future by @tomball1985. The TL;DR version can be boiled down to the following: social media departments should likely not have existed in the first place. To start off with, it made sense to have social media expertise segregated into teams, but in future this expertise will become part of the tool-kit.

I tend to agree: whether you work in PR, marketing, HR, internal comms, etc – ignore social media at your peril. The young’ens coming into your teams live and breathe this stuff and will run rings around you. Especially if you’ve outsourced that kind of thinking to a different team so that you can happily concentrate on your comfortable silo.

Videos of the week

You finally got that drone you always wanted for Christmas. You’re super-excited and head outside to give it a spin. You’re buzzing around for a long time. And then you realise that the battery has just run out and your brand new drone is spluttering towards a body of water. A body of water with enough of the wet stuff to seriously destroy your new baby… To see what happens next, watch this clip that has already racked up over 2 million views.

Hybebeast’s documentary about the Hipster’s chilli sauce of choice, Sriracha, is really quite lovely (ed note: I totally had it way before it was cool).

German supermarket Edeka are back with another YouTube campaign, this time featuring former Scooter frontman HP Baxter. With HP doing the weekly shop in his local Edeka, he’s spotted by some shoppers. “Isn’t that the guy from Scooter?” “How’s the voice”, they snicker. To which HP responds in his trademark bellow and title of one of their biggest selling tracks “How much iss ze fish?!” Before anyone can answer, an Edeka employee pops up and answers the question that has been plaging dance floors all over Germany since 1998: €1.59. There follow a few more pricing Q&A before the whole debacle descends into the kind of umts-umts-umts-umts techno that you thought had died. Unlike their previous effort ‘Supergeil‘, this one probably falls into the ‘so bad, it’s bad’ category.

And finally

This is what happens when you try to file a report standing downwind from a massive pile of burning narcotics.