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Internet culture features and more investigative reporting on online communities and folklore, viral aesthetics, internet nostalgia, digital true crime. 

As seen in Wired, Vice & more.

WIRED •

Dozens of YouTube Channels Are Showing AI-Generated Cartoon Gore and Fetish Content

Somewhere in an animated New York, a minion slips and tumbles down a sewer. As a wave of radioactive green slime envelops him, his body begins to transform—limbs mutating, rows of bloody fangs emerging—his globular, wormlike form, slithering menacingly across the screen.“Beware the minion in the night, a shadow soul no end in sight,” an AI-sounding narrator sings, as the monstrous creature, now lurking in a swimming pool, sneaks up behind a screaming child before crunching them, mercilessly, bet...
Dazed Digital •

Lostwave: how the internet became obsessed with lost songs

On Reddit, internet sleuths are desperately searching for the artist behind a mysterious 80s-sounding track, ‘Everyone Knows That’ – the latest in a long line of

It’s late at night and you’re searching. For what exactly, you’re not sure, but perhaps something ASMR-infused – a video equal parts soothing and strange that’ll lull you gently to sleep, while reminding you of the vast expanse of the internet. As you navigate YouTube’s complex warrens of ‘dark’ and ‘unsettling’ video essays, you see a
The Daily Beast •

YouTube’s Comments Are an Internet Treasure We Must Protect

At first glance, the video ‘BRODYQUEST’ looks like nothing more than standard YouTube fodder from 2010. The jaunty, electronic track—which features an image of actor Adrien Brody journeying through oceans, famous landmarks, and into space—has all the trimmings of the epic bacon internet it was uploaded onto. It was a viral sensation—even the actor himself has seen it. But it’s not the sort of video you’d imagine, 13 years later, would be hosting anything other than a partially animated graveyard
Dazed •

What is frutiger aero, the aesthetic taking over from Y2K?

Shiny globules, green fields, tropical fish – memories of an era dominated by glossy, naturalistic design are taking over

It’s 2008 and the sweet smell of plastic fills the air, as you unwrap your first-ever touchscreen phone. You boot it up, and are greeted with a melodic chime, before being lulled into stock images of sunflower-filled fields and oversaturated blue skies. In the next room, your parents are taking their first intrepid steps towards becoming technologically literate by trading t

Ethical Porn: What It Is and Sites to Check Out

“The term ethical porn, unfortunately, brings up the same connotations as corporate social responsibility,” says Cindy Gallop, founder of MakeLoveNotPorn, a user-generated adult video platform that runs on a paid subscription model. (She prefers to use the term “social sex” to describe her platform.) But while the name might sound pretty drab, ethical porn in reality is far more exciting – and all-encompassing – than it sounds, covering everything from BDSM to blockchain-enabled porn. Here’s wha
Dazed •

Why you so obsessed? The online safe space for the infatuated

On r/limerence, members gather to share advice on how to manage their overwhelming feelings of obsessive longing – but is it

“It’s a longing. It’s like a pining. The dopamine hit is insane. Nothing else, no substance can give me that same euphoric feeling.” Ashley* isn’t addicted to alcohol, drugs or gambling, though she’s seen people compare her own affliction to these things in the past. Instead, she’s been working hard to overcome a lifelong reliance on something – or rather someone – else.

A Teenager Has Remade Myspace and Everyone Is Loving It

Your best friend had one. Your older sister had one. Most of the bands clogging up your iTunes library had one. Even enduring teen icon Effy Stonem had a Myspace page — her Top 8 placements hinting at a preference for Cook over Freddie (we knew it!). By the end of the 00s, just about everyone you ever met was on Myspace, backcombing and spraying the shit out of their hair for that all-important upside-down profile pic.

Myspace was most closely associated with the alt scene, functioning as a hea

FarmVille Is Closing Forever and Hardcore Fans Are Devasted

In case you’ve forgotten, FarmVille was a browser-based game accessible via Facebook that was hot shit from around 2009 – when it launched – to around 2011. The game had a simple premise: you’d create a farm, plant crops and raise animals. The more products you harvested, the more “Farm Coins” you would earn to once again repeat the dopamine-inducing cycle, this time with an extra cow. Everything happened in real-time, earning FarmVille a reputation for being mindless and repetitive, but also we
WIRED UK •

Bloody crime scene cleanups are going viral on TikTok

Grace*, a 17 year old from Arkansas, has also recently made the jump to TikTok, after following a crime scene cleanup account on Instagram for three years. For her, the appeal of the videos is a mixture of fascination with the macabre, and a genuine desire to learn about the practicalities of the job.

“It’s something I’m drawn to because of the morbidity of it, I guess,” she says. “I’ve always been really obsessed with death and understanding what happens to us physically when we do pass, so it