The polar bear video has millions of views. Set to a haunting piano score that’s become ubiquitous on TikTok, it shows a lone bear swimming between increasingly distant ice floe. The comments section overflows with teenage grief, rage, and helplessness. Beside my laptop screen lies the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Same … Read more
The California-based reggae The band Stick Figure has been around for 20 years, eight albums, and countless hours on the road, but lead vocalist and guitarist Scott Woodruff has never seen a track take off like “Angels Above Me” did this past week. The six-year-old song hit number one on the iTunes sales charts in … Read more
Hasan Piker spends seven to eight hours a day, seven days a week, streaming on Twitch. The far-left political commentator got his start in 2013 interning for (and sometimes hosting) the Young Turks. More than a decade later, he’s a powerhouse newsfluencer with the number-one channel in Twitch’s Politics and Commentary category. More than 3 … Read more
Last week, Taylor Swift filed a trio of trademark applications to protect her image and voice. One is meant to cover a well-known photograph of the pop singer holding a pink guitar during a concert on her record-breaking Eras tour, while the two sound trademarks are for simple identifying phrases: “Hey, it’s Taylor Swift” and … Read more
With his deep brown eyes, wide grin, and almost comically chiseled body, Jae Young Joon is the platonic ideal of a hunky male influencer. On Instagram, where he has more than 320,000 followers, he regularly posts himself trying on sheet masks at home, enjoying soju and karaoke with his friends, or posing in front of … Read more
On Monday, a brand-new Reddit account popped up on the widely read forum r/AmItheAsshole, where users have their personal disputes arbitrated by strangers. This particular user asked if they had crossed a line by “refusing to babysit my stepmother’s kids because I have my own job and responsibilities.” The post itself was succinct, straightforward, and … Read more
Like many medical school students, Sam was broke. The 22-year-old aspiring orthopedic surgeon from northern India got some money from his parents, but he says he spent most of it subsidizing his licensing exams, and he’s still saving up to hopefully emigrate to the US after graduation. So he started searching for ways to make … Read more
“It’s soft propaganda,” says Mandii B, cohost of the sex and lifestyle podcast Decisions, Decisions. The videos, and the rhetoric they spew, are trained on toxic gender tropes. “It subtly shapes beliefs and expectations without offering depth or accountability. It reminds me of how the American Dream was packaged and sold for decades: a clean, … Read more
Minutes after President Donald Trump announced that he would not wipe out “a whole civilization” on Tuesday evening, a team of self-described young Iranian activists jumped into action. Members of the group known as Explosive Media were putting the finishing touches on their latest AI-generated, Lego-inspired Trump video. The video features a Trump mini-figure colluding … Read more
There are a few ways to wrap your head around watching a seven-and-a-half-hour movie. When I was a kid I used to mark time in “Roseannes,” where 30 minutes would equal one. roseanne—the run time of the sitcom. My junior hockey games were two Roseannes. The drive to my uncle’s was 12. A seven-and-a-half-hour movie … Read more