Pretty much every online lurker knows the image: A man gawks at a passing woman making the kind of “How you doin’?” face that would make Joey Tribbiani blush. Ever since it landed in 2017, the “distracted boyfriend” meme, which took that stock photo and projected scenarios onto it, has …
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Sarah Southerland calls herself a “Covid baby.” After graduating from the University of Central Oklahoma, she started working for the NBA. She worked as a podcast producer for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Then, in 2020, Covid-19 shut down the league and she “saw that as an opportunity to go and …
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A month after Hamas militants from Gaza attacked an Israeli music festival last October, the Hebrew rap duo Ness & Stilla premiered “HarbuDarbu” on YouTube. The military hype song celebrates Israeli forces waging war in Gaza and has drawn over 25 million views; its critics have termed the song a …
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In case you thought Instagram influencers couldn't get anymore online, they're soon going to have the ability to make AI versions of themselves that you can interact with at all times. The announcement came from the mouth of a chain-clad Mark Zuckerberg, who shared his thoughts about AI and who …
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Anna Kai believes in self-gaslighting. On TikTok, as @itsmaybeboth, she markets beauty products for Garnier, Nivea, and Nexxus Hair Care while dispensing relationship advice to her 1.3 million followers. “If you can gaslight yourself into believing the man that doesn’t love you actually loves you, then why can’t you gaslight …
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In 2012, the al-Qaeda–linked jihadist group Ansar Eddine swept through Timbuktu, taking control of the Malian city. As part of the group’s imposition of sharia law over the residents, it created an Islamic police force, led by Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz. Ansar Eddine controlled the city until 2013, when …
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Today, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6–3 decision that the plaintiffs who'd sued the US government for allegedly violating the First Amendment—by communicating with social media companies about misleading and harmful content on their platforms—did not present enough evidence to prove that they had standing to sue. The case …
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On Wednesday, Juneteenth, Kendrick Lamar threw himself a party. Dubbed “the Pop Out: Ken and Friends,” the concert—held at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles—served as a celebration of West Coast hip-hop, and a “victory lap” for Lamar after he ostensibly won his beef with Drake following the release of …
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In R. C. Sherriff’s novel The Hopkins Manuscript, readers are transported to a world 800 years after a cataclysmic event ended Western civilization. In pursuit of clues about a blank spot in their planet’s history, scientists belonging to a new world order discover diary entries in a swamp-infested wasteland formerly …
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Extremists across the US have weaponized artificial intelligence tools to help them spread hate speech more efficiently, recruit new members, and radicalize online supporters at an unprecedented speed and scale, according to a new report from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an American non-profit press monitoring organization. The …
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