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Selected work, 2020 - 2025.

The Daily Dot •

'It's like a Sims world': Edge of Las Vegas videos are TikTok's latest obsession

If you’ve been on TikTok lately, you might have noticed a new unexpected fascination taking over your feed: the “Edge Of Las Vegas.” It all started with a viral video showing how abruptly the city gives way to open desert, prompting comparisons to video games like The Sims, or movies like The Truman Show. Since then, TikTok creators living at the borders of Vegas have been posting their POVs, sparking both admiration for the landscape, as well as an eerie, existential dread over how surreal it a...
MediaCat •

Morbin’ time! When brands misread internet culture

Speaking the language of internet culture is crucial for any brand — something we’re all, hopefully, well aware of in today’s late-stage social media era. But something you might not know is that in 2020, the global meme industry was valued at an inconceivable $2.3 billion dollars, and this figure is projected to almost triple by 2025. Or, that businesses who use memes in their marketing are 60% more likely to land sales than those who opt for traditional graphics. It’s a no-brainer — meme marke
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
OFF CHANCE •

The Traitors is the Perfect Reality TV for our Era of Sleuthing and Performance

On this point—our idea of what constitutes reality TV, and how real it should be, has also changed over the years, and The Traitors knows this, using it expertly to its advantage. While Big Brother was so raw and unfiltered it bordered on unethical, and Love Island occupied a vital mid-way point between real social dynamics and fake plastic filler, The Traitors is so overtly fake that it becomes a performance. The entire show functions as an expertly crafted play—bursting with a colorful cast of
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
Mashed •

The British Chinese Food TikTok Controversy Explained

When you think of Chinese takeout, you might imagine a fold-up paper box overflowing with sweet and spicy kung pao chicken, beef and broccoli, or veggie-packed lo mein noodles. That is, if you're American. If you're British, your meal will look a little different. Your food will usually arrive in Tupperware containers, for starters, which you'll then decant onto your plate. You might have ordered crispy chili beef, fried chicken balls, egg fried rice, and, to the horror of everyone across the po
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
LADbible •

Salad Fingers creator never meant for the seriously creepy character to be scary

“It's weird to think how primitive the technology was,” David says of that era. “I think you might have had to copy the link from MSN Messenger into your browser. Before the days when you could even have multiple tabs.”

“I don't really think about that as being an appeal,” he says. “I don't think 'people are going to be scared by this', but kids are. It's hard to think like a little kid. Kids are scared, and they'll share something that's scary.”

Eighteen years on, David continues to expand th
Tagg Magazine •

Gay Garden Gnomes: Pandemic Protest Grows Thanks to TikTok

While some of us were baking banana bread or growing sourdough starters during the first quarantine, Maura Bennet-Martins was laying the groundwork for a different kind of hobby: turning straight garden gnomes into queer icons. Two years later, Super Gay Gnomes is a thriving small business selling hand-painted, glitter-coated garden gnomes in a rainbow of colors.

Bennet-Martins, who lives in Boston with her wife, explains that the business started out as a silent protest against a bigoted neigh
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