TOP 10 THE SPIN

10 TOP THE SPIN

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1“Urgent action required,” pleaded the header of an email in October. The sender explained: “The signing image that was sent to you was faulty, there was a glitch during editing the picture and the governor appears twice in the original image.” The Spin pleased to present the original to see if you can spot the governor (twice).

2As a rule, The Spin sees gender reveals as vulgar and attentionseeking, and perfectly aligned with infl uencer culture. But then we found one we can really get behind. Green Planet in Dubai is home to what is believed to be the fi rst baby sloth to be born in the region, and at the end of January they planned to fi nd out if it was a boy or a girl. In good sloth tradition, the reveal wasn’t rushed. The baby was born in October, but had been clamped to its mum for the past few months, making it a little hard to see the bits of sloth that tell us if it prefers pink or blue. We are pleased to hear that Sloth Jr is a girl, who has been named Lime. Congratulations.

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3When it comes to presents from Cannes, what do you get for the friends who have everything? One attendee delighted (and only slightly unnerved) the Spin’s colleagues with this gift of personalised… bibs. To be fair, they are among the most unique presents we’ve received. And have already saved two shirts and a blouse from stained ignominy, so thank you.

4Ah, Valentine’s day, that most romantic time of the year. And a great time for brands to slap a heart on their product and jump on the bandwagon of love. One of our favourite off ers this year was the Dubai supermarket off ering ‘Beef Love Sausages’. Yummy.

5“Looking for a freelance copywriter,” read the ad on Facebook’s UAE Journalists group. That’ not an unusual request. But The Spin was not alone in raising an eyebrow at the next line of the gig description: “Must dominate the English language.”

As one reply put it, “Ironically, you’re looking for a sub.”

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6Over the festive season at the start of 2022, we checked our email while on leave and found an auto-reply (“this is an automated reply to acknowledge your email…”) from the press offi ce of UAE-based airline fl ydubai. We didn’t remember sending them any emails so we were confused. But then we saw the heading: “Automatic reply: Season’s Greetings from fl ydubai # 10303547”. It looks like the nice press people had sent us a Christmas email, to which our out-of-offi ce had automatically replied. Then fl ydubai’s email had automatically replied to the automatic reply… Somewhere in cyberspace our Outlooks are now locked in an eternal clinch of politeness, wishing each other Happy New Year for eternity.

7The Spin does like it when we get a little attention. And we are pretty sure our offi ce coff ee machine is fl irting with us.

8The Spin loves a good record being broken, so imagine our delight when we got a release about “the world’s largest fusion dance by doctors to pay tribute to the UAE for being a home away from home for Indian expats” being recognised as a world record. The question is, though: How long will it be before a larger fusion dance by doctors to pay tribute to the UAE for being a home away from home for Indian expats comes along to usurp this?

9New York-based science writer Benjamin Ryan probably wishes he’d proofread his post on Twitter before he tweeted in August about the monkeypox outbreak. To his credit, when he realised his mistake he didn’t delete and deny but owned his error by tweeting: “I would once again like to apologize for inadvertently causing the entire global #monkeypox outbreak by typing too fast and leaving out a crucial consonant.”

10 Now, The Spin loves a bit of self-mutilation as much as the next person, but we feel that perhaps ‘Build your own brand’ or ‘Market yourself’ might have conjured up fewer images of searing fl esh, blisters and trips to the burns unit than Kelly Lundberg’s latest seminar title.

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