#internetculture — Public Fediverse posts

Gothamist: TikTok is the new 311: New Yorkers tag Mayor Mamdani on social media for help. “Mamdani is being inundated with online requests for IRL fixes. The videos, which have become a meme on TikTok, show people begging Mamdani to take action on everything from mundane nuisances — like potholes and leaky subway stations — to more existential challenges like finding love. The requests have […]

youtube is quietly becoming the weirdest streaming service

https://tacobout.online/2026/09/02/youtube-quietly-becoming-weirdest-streaming-service/

I sometimes think that some executive came up with the idea of getting perfectly reasonable people to behave like imbeciles as a wager — and then everyone forgot to remove the requirement.

#YouTube #Clickbait #YouTubeCreators #ContentCreators #CreatorEconomy #SocialMedia #DigitalMedia #OnlineContent #MediaCriticism #InternetCulture #YouTubeThumbnails #ContentMarketing #Humour #Satire #TTMO

Government not planning import ban for smart glasses, attorney-general says
By Erin Handley

The federal government unveils a draft of sweeping new privacy laws designed to bolster protections including the "right to erasure" as well as address risks related to artificial intelligence.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-31/attorney-general-says-no-ban-on-smart-glasses-draft-privacy-laws/107097852

#GovernmentandPolitics #FederalGovernment #FederalParliament #Internet #InformationandCommunication #ScienceandTechnology #InternetCulture #ErinHandley

Google changes US maps to Lake America from Lake Ontario

After US President Donald Trump signed an executive order changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, Google updates its US-based maps.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-31/google-changes-us-maps-from-lake-ontario-to-lake-america/107097292

#WorldPolitics #ScienceandTechnology #InternetCulture #CommunityandSociety

ABC News (Australia): The manosphere continues to suck young men in as study reveals troubling findings. “Flynn Martin is one who says he was radicalised by the manosphere. He was 20 years old. A uni student. A self-professed doomscroller. But once the anti-women algorithm infiltrated his social media, it took just months for the hobby content creator to become another online prophet of […]

ABC News (Australia): The manosphere continues to suck young men in as study reveals troubling findings. “Flynn Martin is one who says he was radicalised by the manosphere. He was 20 years old. A uni student. A self-professed doomscroller. But once the anti-women algorithm infiltrated his social media, it took just months for the hobby content creator to become another online prophet of […]

ABC News (Australia): The manosphere continues to suck young men in as study reveals troubling findings. “Flynn Martin is one who says he was radicalised by the manosphere. He was 20 years old. A uni student. A self-professed doomscroller. But once the anti-women algorithm infiltrated his social media, it took just months for the hobby content creator to become another online prophet of […]

ABC News (Australia): The manosphere continues to suck young men in as study reveals troubling findings. “Flynn Martin is one who says he was radicalised by the manosphere. He was 20 years old. A uni student. A self-professed doomscroller. But once the anti-women algorithm infiltrated his social media, it took just months for the hobby content creator to become another online prophet of […]

ABC News (Australia): The manosphere continues to suck young men in as study reveals troubling findings. “Flynn Martin is one who says he was radicalised by the manosphere. He was 20 years old. A uni student. A self-professed doomscroller. But once the anti-women algorithm infiltrated his social media, it took just months for the hobby content creator to become another online prophet of […]

Associated Press: YouTube sensation Ms. Rachel announces debut album with Mr. Aron, ‘I’m So Happy’. “Parents of toddlers everywhere, prepare yourselves. YouTube sensation and music teacher Ms. Rachel and her husband, Aron Accurso, will release their debut album, the 23-track ‘I’m So Happy,’ on Sept. 25…. Ms. Rachel launched her mega popular YouTube channel in 2019 with her husband, […]

Associated Press: As AI grips world, the thrill of collecting vintage computers is growing. “While Silicon Valley has since moved on to shaping the future of artificial intelligence, these hardware enthusiasts are intent on saving the Atari, Commodore and IBM machines that are ancestors to today’s laptops, wearable devices and smart phones. Where others see junk, people like [Josh] Dersch see […]

Ars Technica: Remembering the pre-Google web, when search was an experiment. “In the mid-’90s, the web was exploding, but finding anything of actual value on it felt like an elaborate negotiation with whatever proto-search engine happened to be standing closest to the door. Unlike now, when Google is widely seen as both portal and gatekeeper, sites like AltaVista, Lycos, Excite, HotBot, and […]

Gizmodo: People Are Generating a Flood of Fake News About Trump That Does No Reputational Damage Whatsoever. “President Donald Trump regularly posts some of the most bizarre content on the internet, from images of himself as Jesus Christ to AI videos of diarrhea being dumped on liberal protesters. But there’s been a weird trend over the past year: social media users take Trump’s strange […]

The Weeknd Wins Over Persona 3 Baddie After Fumbling Persona 5’s Hot Doctor

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://kotaku.com/weeknd-persona-3-reload-mitsuru-kirijo-romance-5-tae-2000712825

TechCrunch: The ‘Father of the Internet’ is finally retiring. “Vinton Cerf will step down from his role as Google’s chief internet evangelist next week, marking the conclusion of one of the most influential careers in technology history.”

Hollywood Reporter: ‘Backrooms’ Sends Hollywood Running to Reddit for New Ideas. “As Hollywood appears poised to pivot to digitally native creatives like Parsons and Obsession director Curry Barker, Reddit is emerging as a focus point (alongside obvious suspects like YouTube and TikTok) for agents and execs seeking the Next Big Thing.”

Hey, Dumbass — You’re Supposed to Be Paying Attention

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — June 6, 2026, 07:00 PHST

This Is Not Subtle, and It Isn’t New

Let’s dispense with politeness. What’s happening right now is not complicated, mysterious, or “algorithmic fate.” It is willful inattention trained into people over years.

For more than two years, WPS News has published sustained, sourced, historically grounded analysis on authoritarian drift, economic precarity, geopolitics, and institutional failure. The work is not fringe. It is not speculative. It is not vibes. And yet it is routinely ignored—across the United States, the EU, and even here in the Philippines.

That isn’t an accident. It’s learned behavior.

The Internet Trained You to Stop Thinking

The modern internet does not exist to inform you. It exists to manage you.

Platforms reward:

• emotional reflex instead of judgment
• speed instead of accuracy
• tribal signaling instead of synthesis
• repetition instead of memory

Anything that requires sustained attention, historical context, or second-order thinking is quietly pushed aside. Not banned. Not censored. Just ignored.

That’s worse.

Silence Is Not Neutral — It’s Cowardice with a UX

When peers, professionals, or “informed” readers say nothing, it’s tempting to assume disagreement. Most of the time, it’s simpler than that: they don’t want the responsibility that comes with understanding.

Engaging seriously with analysis means:

• admitting prior assumptions were wrong
• acknowledging complicity
• accepting that problems are structural, not personal
• recognizing that fixes are costly and uncomfortable

So people scroll. Silence becomes a lifestyle choice.

Younger Generations Aren’t Stupid — They’re Drowned

This is not a generational insult. It’s an observation.

Many younger readers are trapped in survival mode: debt, insecure work, housing stress, constant alerts, infinite feeds. When life feels unstable, long-range analysis feels abstract—even when it directly explains why life is unstable.

That doesn’t make the analysis wrong. It means the system is hostile to understanding.

The Death of Judgment as a Social Skill

Once upon a time, judgment was learned—through mentorship, institutions, and consequence. That pipeline is gone.

The internet flattened authority but replaced it with volatility. Experience is treated as irrelevance. Memory is framed as nostalgia. Long-view thinking is labeled elitism.

The result is a culture that reacts constantly and understands nothing.

This Isn’t an American Problem. It’s a Human One.

The same disengagement appears everywhere: the U.S., Europe, Southeast Asia, the Philippines. Different politics, same pattern.

If information doesn’t flatter, reassure, or entertain, it is filtered out—not by governments alone, but by habits cultivated over years of platform design.

People will later claim they “never saw this coming.” The archive will prove otherwise.

Being Ignored Does Not Mean Being Wrong

History is unkind to the argument that relevance equals immediacy.

Work that documents corruption, names power honestly, and refuses spectacle is often ignored until events force recognition. Archives exist for that reason.

WPS News is not built for dopamine. It is built for record.

Read or Don’t — But Stop Pretending This Is Invisible

The information is there. The connections are there. The patterns are obvious to anyone willing to look longer than a scroll.

If you choose not to pay attention, that’s your right. But stop pretending ignorance is imposed on you.

You were warned. Repeatedly.

For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com

This article will be archived as part of the ongoing WPS News Monthly Brief Series available through Amazon.

References

Carr, N. (2020). The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. W. W. Norton & Company.
Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs.
Postman, N. (1985). Amusing Ourselves to Death. Viking Penguin.

Backrooms' Biggest Scare Is Capitalism

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://aftermath.site/backrooms-movie-parsons-youtube/

CNN: YouTubers are setting box office records. It could change the future of moviemaking. “The biggest two movies in America right now, ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Obsession,’ come from twentysomething filmmakers who honed their craft on YouTube. Their films were made with relatively low budgets and were marketed online. Now that they’re filling theaters with teens and young adults who rarely show up at […]

The Guardian: Colbert launches YouTube channel less than a week after late-night show ends. “Stephen Colbert hasn’t even been off the air for a week, but is already causing some hubbub with the launch of a new YouTube channel that has garnered more than 120,000 subscribers.”

NiemanLab: You couldn’t create a more anti-news internet if you tried. “The loss of local media in particular is associated with greater loneliness, lower awareness of public officials, and more corruption. It’s like an invisible tax levied on our communities that we pay civically, cognitively and sometimes even literally, in the form of higher local bond prices due to more wasteful […]

Ah, yes, the groundbreaking scientific revelation: #trees in Costa Rica have become upscale restrooms for the animal kingdom. 🌳💩 What a captivating read—right after you adjust your browser settings, because apparently this discovery's too avant-garde for the unprepared internet user. 🌐🙄
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.72964 #scientificdiscovery #wildlife #restroomsonnature #avantgarde #internetculture #HackerNews #ngated

Nullsoft, 1997-2004 AOL kills off the last maverick tech company (2004)

https://slate.com/technology/2004/11/the-death-of-the-last-maverick-tech-company.html

#HackerNews #Nullsoft #AOL #TechHistory #MaverickCompanies #InternetCulture #2000sTech

Tubefilter: On new channel, Technoblade’s dad will sustain his son’s lasting impact. “To meet the ongoing demand for more content, Alex’s father is taking ‘Technoblade never dies’ literally. The man known as Technodad has launched a new channel called Team Technoblade, which he will use ‘as a way of keeping my boy’s memory alive.'”

The legend of John Titor
https://negativepid.blog/the-legend-of-john-titor/

#timeTravel #johnTitor #conspiracies #hoaxes #internetMysteries #scienceFiction #internetCulture #science #politics #USwar #onlineLegends #onlineLore #negativepid

The legend of John Titor
https://negativepid.blog/the-legend-of-john-titor/

#timeTravel #johnTitor #conspiracies #hoaxes #internetMysteries #scienceFiction #internetCulture #science #politics #USwar #onlineLegends #onlineLore #negativepid

Ars Technica: Musk loves Grok’s “roasts.” Swiss official sues in attempt to neuter them.. “Last month, Swiss Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter filed a criminal complaint over an offensive Grok post generated by an X user that requested that the chatbot ‘roast’ the government official.”

Ah yes, the internet's favorite pastime: digitizing a 372-year-old snooze fest under the guise of "Project Gutenberg" to make sure no one in the 21st century ever reads it. 🤓📜 Bless those brave #transcribers for valiantly preserving every yawn-inducing detail while we all pretend to care. 😂
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm #digitization #ProjectGutenberg #bookpreservation #internetculture #HackerNews #ngated

What’s On Netflix: Stranger Things Radio Station ‘WSQK: The Squawk’ Archived by Fan After Going Offline . “Missed out on the live broadcast from Hawkins? A dedicated fan has archived the entire run of the Stranger Things Season 5 promotional radio station, WSQK, ensuring the 80s tunes and some hidden lore updates live on.”

Unpopular opinion? 📢 The best part of the early internet wasn't the technology it was the anonymity and the niche forums where you could be yourself without the pressure of building a brandy.
​We’ve traded community for algorithms, and I think we’re starting to regret it. That’s why spaces like this (Mastodon) feel so refreshing.It’s about people again.
​Do you miss the 'old' internet, or do you prefer the connectivity of today? 🤔🌐
​#InternetCulture #SocialMedia #Web3 #Community #TechReflections

Waze Blog: Drive with “SpongeBob” on Waze. “The world’s favorite sponge is jumping in as a navigator for an open-road adventure! To celebrate the upcoming release of ‘The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants’ in theatres December 19, SpongeBob is bringing his nautical charm, quick wit, and bursts of positivity to your daily drive.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/12/05/waze-blog-drive-with-spongebob-on-waze/

Emojipedia: Emojitracker Is Back . “Today, as part of this year’s World Emoji Day celebrations, Emojipedia is pleased to announce the long-anticipated relaunch of the real-time emoji analysis site EmojiTracker.com. Now powered by Emojipedia’s global user base, the site supports all emojis approved since 2010 and also features a selection of new country-specific filters.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/07/16/emojipedia-emojitracker-is-back/

https://youtube.com/shorts/r-ToXvkQihs?si=IF2ZQ5hFywppouMv

Andrew Tate says Free Greta Thunberg
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#AndrewTate #GretaThunberg #ViralMoments #InternetHistory #Controversy #SocialMedia #ClimateActivism #OnlineInfluence #LegalTroubles #2022Recap #InternetCulture #ViralTweets #SarcasmWins #InfluencerDrama #DigitalAge

Geeks are Sexy: One Flipbook to Rule Them All! Join the Ultimate LOTR Animation Project!. “Want to be part of the most epic fan art project ever? Animator extraordinaire Andymation is creating the world’s longest flipbook—a complete, hand-drawn recreation of The Fellowship of the Ring! This three-hour flipbook will need over 100,000 frames, brought to life by 1,600 fans from around the […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/05/28/geeks-are-sexy-one-flipbook-to-rule-them-all-join-the-ultimate-lotr-animation-project/

Boing Boing: Latest idiotic social media trend has kids setting their laptops on fire. “Pulling the fire alarm to get out of class has been replaced by setting actual fires. Students are setting their Chromebooks on fire while participating in a viral TikTok trend. Schools across Connecticut have had to evacuate due to the smoke and fire caused by students inserting conductive objects like […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/05/16/boing-boing-latest-idiotic-social-media-trend-has-kids-setting-their-laptops-on-fire/

NBC News: Virginia teenager shot and killed by homeowner while recording TikTok prank video. “Virginia teenagers said they were recording a ding-dong ditch prank for a TikTok video when a homeowner opened fire, killing an 18-year-old boy. The homeowner, Tyler Chase Butler, was arrested on charges of second-degree murder, malicious wounding and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony in […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/05/13/nbc-news-virginia-teenager-shot-and-killed-by-homeowner-while-recording-tiktok-prank-video/

New York Times Style Magazine: How Should a Woman Sound?. “If you’ve been on TikTok at all, you know this voice: It’s female and aggressively chipper. It veers from high-pitched to only slightly lower than high-pitched with intonations that defy logic and emphases placed where they ought not to be. It’s a voice destined to say things like, ‘Hey, can I play too?’ when there’s clearly […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/05/08/new-york-times-style-magazine-how-should-a-woman-sound/

Tubefilter: Viva Las Vegas: MrBeast is launching a resort experience on the Strip. “MrBeast is bringing a themed experience to Sin City. The most-subscribed personality on YouTube has partnered with Resorts World Las Vegas for a ‘MrBeast Experience’ that is described as the ‘ultimate’ entertainment opportunity for the creator’s fans.” I can imagine an entire SNL episode of sketches built […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/01/31/viva-las-vegas-mrbeast-is-launching-a-resort-experience-on-the-strip-tubefilter/

NBC News: From Brat to ‘brain rot’: 2024’s biggest memes and moments. “Slop, rap beef, brain rot and, yes, ‘hawk tuah’ — what a year it’s been on the internet. The colloquial definition of memes has expanded to include any type of viral internet phenomenon, including slang terms like “rizz” or “skibidi,” that comes alive on social media, according to Don Caldwell, editor-in-chief […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2024/12/23/from-brat-to-brain-rot-2024s-biggest-memes-and-moments-nbc-news/

Why are scuba divers trafficking coke? Who's the ‘Rat Daddy’ of NYC? What's a Shrek rave? Explore the weird side of the world with these stories.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/epv8aj/wildest-stories-of-2023?at_medium=Social%20media&at_campaign=Mastodon
#weird #internetculture #Crime #Drugs #Culture #bryanjohnson #footfetish #maidcafe #nepobabies #amazon

Can you teach yourself to be a farmer by watching YouTube? This man did Forget about having to be born into a farming family, the internet is paving the way for this truck driver to get into the industry. https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2020-06-25/vertical-farming-ideas-for-peter-anderson-came-from-youtube/12383942 #SustainableandAlternativeFarming #Fishing,Aquaculture #AgriculturalCrops #InternetCulture #Hydroponics #RuralMedia #FruitCrops #Rural