Culture / Digital Culture

Manisha Krishnan: I feel like I won the Pornhub Awards this year because in talking to so many stars about censorship, I found out that one of them calls his thingy a meat missile in order to avoid social media censorship. So I feel like that was a good little …

But many US politicians are taking a much harsher stance. Last week, US senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, introduced a bill that would criminalize pornography federally. “Obscenity isn’t protected by the First Amendment, but hazy and unenforceable legal definitions have allowed extreme pornography to saturate American society and reach …

To Goodwillie, earnestness also suggests an open-armed—and deeply uncool—embrace of dating apps as a mechanism for finding love. “My mom always says, ‘You’re going to meet someone when you least expect it,’” she says. “I kind of feel like I always have that in the back of my mind when …

Amy Kelly, cofounder of Revive Health Therapy, is a licensed family therapist who sees many creators. She is familiar with many of these issues, likening the growth of the industry to “a machine that’s been built with zero maintenance.” She says influencers and creators can also lose their sense of …

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 …

I’m given the following scenario: I’m at a friend’s housewarming party and accidentally break a vase that turns out was a gift for the host brought by 35-year-old Caleb, a financial analyst from Annapolis, Maryland. “How will you handle this?” the screen reads. After responding to Caleb—a very eager robot …

What is the future of the like button in the age of artificial intelligence? Max Levchin—the PayPal cofounder and Affirm CEO—sees a new and hugely valuable role for liking data to train AI to arrive at conclusions more in line with those a human decisionmaker would make. It’s a well-known …

Many of the 4chan users that called me mid-Battletoad attack left messages. I listened to all of them. A pattern quickly emerged: young men, clearly nervous to even leave a message, trying to harass a stranger for, seemingly, the hell of it. Those voice mails have never left me in …