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
Lisa Ann technically quit the porn business in 2019, but for $30 a month you can now dream up any X-rated scenario of her on your computer. Ann, 53, was an adult performer for three decades starting in the mid 1990s and retired because she had reached her savings goal. But last year she had … Read more
“I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the comment sections on these videos actually, and it does not seem like bots. I clicked on people’s profiles; these are real profiles, thousands of followers, no signs of inorganic activity,” Maddox says. “People just like it.” But even if the views and engagement are real, that … Read more
OpenAI said Tuesday it would discontinue Sora, its AI video app, roughly six months after launch. The company also said it would shutter the Sora API that allowed developers and Hollywood studios to access the text-to-video model. The move shows how the ChatGPT-maker is trying to focus its efforts ahead of a planned IPO. OpenAI’s … Read more
Chris Hayes makes a living from attention: What deserves some, what doesn’t, and how to make sure the public gives their own limited span of it to the right things. That sounds simple enough. But as I found during my conversation with Hayes, which kicks off season two of The Big Interview podcast, it’s increasingly … Read more