The Verge’s Internet Culture section is the home for daily coverage of how our online lives influence and are influenced by pop culture and the world around us. The ways in which we communicate, create, and live with each other have been radically altered by the internet’s powerful connective tissues, from the platforms we inhabit, like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram; to the policies, laws and guidelines that govern them (or don’t); to the subcultures, communities, and memes that bring us together there — for better or worse. Here you’ll find our coverage of life on the web, with an eye on what’s next.
Activist investors are circling Match, including the terror machines at Elliott Management. But 79 percent of women say they don’t want to use apps ever again. The shift away from dating apps is happening as Match is trying to squeeze more money from its users.
[kyla.substack.com]
Someone go get David Hume — we’re trying to figure out what blue is. I scored 174, true neutral.
[ismy.blue]
The creator of “One Million Checkboxes” has shared some heartwarming stories about the creative ways that teens interacted with the now-shuttered website. Check out the below video, this X thread, or Eieio’s blog for some feel-good Friday vibes about concealing URLs in binary and creating pixelated Rick-Rolls.
Help. Help help help.
But for those of us doomed to remember what the Obama years were like the first time around — the turbo-pop, the undercuts, the novelty Twitter accounts, the Internet Boyfriends, the girlbosses, the hashtags, the precise shades of pink — there is one last bracing thought. For better or worse, these were our ’60s, and we’re all just going to have to come to terms with that.
You can pay to see if your partner will respond to a stranger’s flirty DM — and TikTok has turned this into a thriving subculture.
“On one hand, it’s like, fuck yeah, we got this guy,” Monzon told me. “But on the other hand, it’s like, ‘Fuck.’ This girl’s life is…she’s heartbroken now.”
A placard at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture used the internet-speak term “un-alive” to describe Cobain’s suicide, according to Billboard. The museum elsewhere reportedly said it used it as a “gesture of respect.”
People use terms like “un-alive” online to try to get around moderation algorithms that they believe may suppress or remove their content. MoPOP didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.
One of the greatest debates of our time — is Hello Kitty a cat? — continues to rage on, with Sanrio once again affirming the negative. But we’ve been here before.
[New York Post]
Though Kurzweil still can’t explain precisely how he’s going to “merge” with a machine, he’s out here telling The New York Times he expects it to happen before he dies.
For the realists out there, I recommend Seneca.
[The New York Times]
While old-school scams usually target retirees, the people getting catfished are young. So maybe one way to keep your friends from being vulnerable to bad actors is just to give them a call?
How about you remain competitive by fixing your shit? I’ve met a lead data scientist with access to hundreds of thousands of sensitive customer records who is allowed to keep their password in a text file on their desktop, and you’re worried that customers are best served by using AI to improve security through some mechanism that you haven’t even come up with yet?
[ludic.mataroa.blog]
Following on the reporting earlier this year from The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal profiles a teen influencer — whose mom is aware the account’s biggest fans are adult men.
Illinois has passed a law to protect child influencers, and more legislation is almost certainly forthcoming.
A remarkable essay on how an AI-generated video on kung fu led one family to order actual, physical encyclopedias.
Knowledge is not a market commodity. Moreover, “justified true belief” does not result from an optimization function. Knowledge may be refined through questioning or falsification, but it does not improve from competition with purposeful nonknowledge. If anything, in the face of nonknowledge, knowledge loses.
Inaccurate AI-generated stories were an important part of the BNN business model — “churning out hundreds, even thousands, of stories a day.” Some of BNN’s stories were republished by MSN.com or linked by reputable outlets.
[The New York Times]
What happens when remote villages get Starlink and all the good and bad that comes with unfettered internet access? The New York Times traveled deep into the Amazon rainforest to find out:
Modern society has dealt with these issues over decades as the internet continued its relentless march. The Marubo and other Indigenous tribes, who have resisted modernity for generations, are now confronting the internet’s potential and peril all at once, while debating what it will mean for their identity and culture.
The contrast and familiarity of the NYT’s photography is striking, seeing people hunched over their brightly lit rectangles hoping for just one more hit of dopamine.
It debuted on June 1st, 1999, and shut down two years later.
Its name lived on as a Best Buy brand, a re-named Rhapsody streaming service, and an attempt to cash in on NFT hype. But in my heart, it will always be a search engine for poorly-labeled, low-quality MP3s that take hours to download over AOL dial-up internet.
And yet, Matty Benedetto has amassed millions of subscribers with his Unnecessary Inventions. Tune into my new video series, Full Frame: Creators, where I spend a day with a creator to see how they have found success on the internet.
Despite Google’s AI expertise, it drastically overestimates how good its tech is — as anyone can see in its search results. And that’s with expertise. This doesn’t bode well for everyone else’s use of AI!
[Intelligencer]
FTX lieutenant Ryan Salame, sentenced to 7.5 years in jail earlier today, has logged on to yell at people online. That’s some real poster game, folks. You might not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like. (via Molly White)
