The man in the mask wants you to click the tally counter. So begins Strange Scaffold’s short, yet highly distressing new game, Clickolding—a very literal take on clicker games—released on Steam this week. The lore of how video games pitches are conceived is not always exciting. It’s often an obfuscated …
Read More »The Inevitability of Big Tech Backing Trump
It is true just about everywhere, but especially in America: Real power is having control over the flow of resources. Property. Money. Information. If you command the levers of production—who gets what, when, and how—you dictate what the future holds and who gets a say in it. Or in this …
Read More »Fortnite Has a Political Violence Problem
In the hours after former US president Donald Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, a new Fortnite game appeared: Donald Trump vs Assassin. The game was quickly removed, but several other games that include antisemitism and political violence remained on the gaming platform, according to a new report from the …
Read More »The Real Problem With TikTok’s ‘Fruity’ Boy Trend
Cruise around TikTok these days and you're bound to stumble on one: A young woman, standing next to a presumed beau, pointing out their “feminine, vintage-Levi’s-wearing, tote-bag-carrying, mustached little boyfriend.” If you haven't seen one of those, maybe it's the person saying “if my friends think you're a little bit …
Read More »The Real Reason Will Smith Broke Twitch’s Biggest Streaming Record
Every summer, the Spanish Twitch streamer Ibai Llanos hosts a livestreamed boxing tournament called La Velada del Año (The Evening of the Year). In just four years, it has gone from a relatively small event featuring matches between a few influencers from Spain to an enormous global phenomenon featuring over …
Read More »Q: Why Do We Love Online News Quizzes? A: Because They Make Us Smarter
What type of friend are you? Evergreen, Wallflower, Butterfly, or Firefly? If you’re not sure—and if you’re puzzled by how those categories are defined—then you can find out by taking this quiz published by The New York Times earlier this month. Answer the 10 questions and the interactive webpage will …
Read More »Elon Musk Couldn’t Beat Him. AI Just Might
A recent study published by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that rage is a lucrative business. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict last October, “accounts posting anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim content have seen a sharp rise in followers on X,” the study concluded, and the social media …
Read More »Everyone Is Trying to Make This TikTok Go Viral—and It Never Will
The most-liked video in TikTok history shows a dark-haired woman making funny faces to her front-facing camera as she lip-syncs to a popular song. It’s held its position since 2020, but recently it’s encountered competition from another video, featuring … a dark-haired woman making funny faces to her front-facing camera …
Read More »His Galaxy Wolf Art Kept Getting Ripped Off. So He Sued—and Bought a Home
It took Berlin artist Jonas Jödicke only a few hours to create the artwork that would change his life. He didn’t know it then, of course. He didn’t even know whether he wanted to post it online. “It was really just a test,” Jödicke says. It was a painting, made …
Read More »'Saturday Night Live’ Writer Alex English Thinks Social Media Ruined the Art of Comedy
Alex English should be on summer break when I ring him on a Thursday afternoon, unwinding from another hit season of SNL, but instead he’s fresh off of two stand-up sets in New York City, and is last-minute packing for a red-eye flight to London, where he will take the …
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