Astra Taylor began her career making documentaries about thinkers (Zizek! and Examined Life). Now she's doing the thinking herself. In her new book, The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, Taylor argues the Internet isn't as liberating a force as its initial boosters promised. She's…
The past week in hoaxes looked a lot like any other week: Strangers aren't doling out their lottery winnings online, alive celebrities aren't dead, photos that look fake probably are, and imminent doom is not so imminent after all.
Mark Gorton is a prominent financier and a respected entrepreneur. He founded the music sharing site Limewire, and he runs Tower Research, a famed high-frequency trading firm. Gorton also believes that the "ruthless" secret cabal that assassinated JFK and planned 9/11 could be coming to kill his family.
In the grand tradition of "American [Noun]" movies comes this new (and apparently real) documentary, American Blogger, the trailer for which is above. You will notice that its "American bloggers" are almost exclusively attractive, well-lit women.
A corruption case out of New Orleans has turned into a fight over an issue that might be of interest to certain users of this here website: Do commenters on a news website have an absolute right to anonymity? And it all traces back to a federal prosecutor with an out-of-control, borderline-rehab-requiring online…
Banksy's official verified Facebook page, with 2.4 million likes, has been unverified because it is a fake.
Who really believes an entire country has the same haircut? Or that you're going to suddenly be able to float for five minutes next week? Because it doesn't and you're not. Mix up a fresh wineshake. Let's look at the bullshit on the internet this week.
PornMD, a multi-site porn search engine, has created a terrifying and mesmerizing portal into our sad, sticky lives: a live feed of terms entered into its search engine.
This week's New Yorker contains an essay, currently available in the print edition only, by Roger Angell, about what his life is like at the age of 93. It is full of well-wrought observations about loss and mortality and sex and the abundance of existence but it also keeps an eye on the contemporary, as in this…
Yesterday, we commented upon an extremely earnest essay published in XOJane entitled, " There Are No Black People In My Yoga Classes And I'm Suddenly Feeling Uncomfortable With It." We told you the essay was written by "Jen Caron." In fact it was not!
Some people peak in high school. I wasn’t so lucky. I lost a lot of sleep as a teenager, lying in bed with my eyes glued to the stick-on glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, trying to figure out a way to dodge the assaults from older girls that plagued me each day at John Jay High School in…
Rap Genius, the lyric-explanation site, made a lot of money for three guys from Yale. It is not, however, universally popular among actual rappers. Some rappers would prefer that their lyrics be written down correctly.
Last week, a skydiver somehow survived a 12,000 foot plunge into a parked van. He was, of course, severely injured and required more than $33,000 worth of emergency transport and surgery, putting him into serious debt. Thankfully, the internet rallied and raised nearly $50,000 for the man and his family to pay for…
Internet historians will no doubt look back at 2013 as the year we finally reached peak hyperbole.
Here you will find an SEO expert's exhaustive case accusing Expedia of using the same sort of paid blog link scams that shady marketing firms sometimes try to sell us on.
Patch, AOL's national network of hyperlocal news sites, was born with a big idea: that local news can be profitable... somehow. That may be true. But Patch won't be the one to reap the rewards.
In 2011, I was approached by a shady online marketing firm that offered to pay me to quietly insert links to their clients' websites in Gawker posts. We imagined that exposing the practice might end it. Not at all! It's happened again.
New York magazine is considered one of the most prestigious magazines in America. New York magazine is no longer able to publish a weekly print edition. We were not joking when we told you thousands of times that print is dead.
It's not often that I post two videos from the same series, but, then again, it's not often that not posting a video could be considered a crime against humanity.
