This weekend, the Times TV section broke the news: "Sidelined by the Strike, Comedy Goes Online." The paper then pointed to several good comedy sites that, during the writers' strike, have continued to publish the same stream of comedy that they published before the strike, except now with Fred Armisen. The SNL star…

On this, the eve of the first state primary in years where the outcome is not already a horrifically boring given, rest assured the fate of the country is finally in the hands of the wise and wonderful people who search for stuff on the Internets. Some of the hottest Google search terms today?

Is this generation of teens the first to grow up completely online? Hardly. Highbrow TV critic Virginia Heffernan was a MySpace teen before Myspace teens even existed, she reveals in this week's NYT mag. The year was 1983. The nascent online world: "primitive computer network" XCaliber.

"The Rough-and-Tumble Online Universe Traversed by Young Cybernauts" is not the most promising headline for a NY Times trend piece. Nor is the lede, which reads like rejected copy for Season 1 of "To Catch a Predator." The Times is reporting on a documentary on PBS's Frontline, which dregs up the fears about the…

There's a hot new "video game" on the internet that all the kids are talking about in which you play as a presidential candidate and shoot the other presidential candidates! With paint-ball guns. It seems to have upset Drudge? Will Kucinich sue to be included in the assassination game? [TSG, Wonkette]

Tom Cruise has personally, PERSONALLY, been pwned. This weekend, an anonymous Internet group (named Anonymous — these are not masters of subtlety) started a war with the Church of Scientology by hammering the group's web site; Scientology.org is down after a brief traffic spike. This isn't the only group of Internet…

Kids! They know how to use computers! Actually no. Young students are as likely as older users to enter plain-English phrases as search terms, according to a study by the British Library (summarized here). They're also more likely to make research mistakes (like ignoring relevant information because it doesn't fit…

As I've mentioned, LOLcats is just a cuter version of Caturday, an old forum tradition of posting cat pictures with captions in broken English on Saturdays. Caturday itself is just a more formal version of the image macros that have floated around ever since the Internet found pictures. Every popular Internet meme is…

Time was, a camgirl had to turn on a 24-hour webcam to get some attention and maybe some gifts from her Amazon wishlist. Now this adorable little Japanese-American (or white girl who speaks fluent Japanese?) girl (woman? She lists herself as 21) named MRirian gets hundreds of thousands of viewers for each of her…

"Please run a post explaining 4chan, /b/, the Encyclopedia Dramatica, etc.," asks reader Gabe Roth. "I just have no idea what that stuff is about, and it makes me feel old." While Gawker commenters know every obscure web site or at least can fake it, regular readers may want an explanation of some of the Internet's…

Christine Griffin is 26, lives in New York, and works at Cosmopolitan magazine—every girl's dream! But living said dream is not all it's cracked up to be, even if you are working for the publication that pioneered a sex position called the Wanton Wheelbarrow. In fact, she thinks she might actually be "going on 36."

The New Yorker has a new daily "cultural happenings" blog, Goings On. Today includes: Amy Winehouse news, something about author Henry Roth and Hollywood, and a post that begins, "Lunch in Midtown tends to extremes."
[Goings On]

Much like bloggers, Stalin "rewrote history, made anonymous accusations, hired and elevated hacks and phonies, ruined reputations at will, and airbrushed suddenly unwanted associates out of documents and photographs," explains New Republic editor Lee Siegel. And that's only one choice bit from the Times' review of his…

The Internet has a successor to the classic Fensler Film G.I. Joe parodies. "Fatal Farm," creators of the series of remixed TV theme videos that got kinda popular last year, have finally produced a winner. It's Lasagna Cat, a series of live reenactments of Garfield cartoon strips with canned laughter followed by…

Hasbro and Mattel, co-owners of Scrabble, asked Facebook to remove its one good app, "Scrabulous." So far the online game's method of distinguishing itself from the board game with the exact same rules (which has its own free web version) has been a disclaimer on the app saying that it's not Scrabble. (Which reminds…

Lately I've been watching Web Drifter, an online show that takes the Daily Show's practice of interviewing yokels and crackpots with a straight face, and applies it to the weirdest people on the Internet. Host Martin Sargent visits people like the infamous Peter Pan cosplayer, Hollow Earth believers, and a wizard.…

"There needs to be a [late, influential New Yorker film critic] Pauline Kael of the Internet. People need to write critically about this thing," says New Republic editor Lee Siegel. (As you might remember, he was once suspended for a little stunt where he commented anonymously on his own essays, via the Internet).…

Seriously, does everybody in the world have to be blogging? Pulitzer-winning playwright David Mamet will blog as the character from his latest play, November, for the duration of its run. Charles H.P. Smith is played by Nathan Lane and is a president in danger of not getting re-elected. So far, he has blogged exactly…