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Internet

The Current Cinema

“Cloud” Is a Cautionary Tale of E-Commerce—and the Summer’s Best Action Movie

In Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s film, a crafty online grifter learns that digital crimes beget analog punishments.
Open Questions

What’s Happening to Reading?

For many people, A.I. may be bringing the age of traditional text to an end.
Page-Turner

Colum McCann’s Limp Novel of Digital Life

In “Twist,” the characterization is listless and the internet is just a series of tubes.
The Weekend Essay

My Brain Finally Broke

Much of what we see now is fake, and the reality we face is full of horrors. More and more of the world is slipping beyond my comprehension.
Infinite Scroll

How the Internet Left 4chan Behind

The anonymous forum thrived when edgelord content wasn’t acceptable on more mainstream social media. Today, it can be found most anywhere.
Infinite Scroll

A Lesson in Creativity and Capitalism from Two Zany YouTubers

Some of the optimism of the early Internet seems to live on in the whimsical videos of James Hobson and Colin Furze.
The Lede

How Dare Celebrities Cheat?

Our parasocial dismay has become confused with social critique.
2024 in Review

The Year Creators Took Over

The attention economy has dominated the Internet for more than a decade now, but never before have its protagonists felt so central to American life—or had such direct access to the levers of power.
Infinite Scroll

What Google Off-loading Chrome Would Mean for Users

A landmark antitrust ruling could change the Internet’s power balance, but the industry is shifting regardless.
Critics at Large

Will Kids Online, In Fact, Be All Right?

A new documentary reveals social-media platforms’ iron grip on the lives of teen-agers, one that’s increasingly being linked to a slew of mental-health issues. How scared should we be?
Infinite Scroll

The Banality of Online Recommendation Culture

A recent surge of human-curated guidance is both a reaction against and an extension of the tyranny of algorithmic recommendations.
Under Review

A Story Collection About People Who Just Can’t Hang

Niche-porn addicts, self-proclaimed feminist allies, and nightmare optimization bros converge in Tony Tulathimutte’s “Rejection.”
Open Questions

Are We Living in the Age of Info-Determinism?

Increasingly, our networks seem to be steering our history in ways we don’t like and can’t control.
Infinite Scroll

Making Memes for the Global “Oat Milk Élite”

A loose federation of hyperlocal Instagram accounts are both satirizing and codifying the habits of a homogenous consumer class.
Infinite Scroll

Faux ScarJo and the Descent of the A.I. Vultures

OpenAI’s snafu over its “Her”-like voice assistant might be funny if it didn’t portend a larger crisis in the integrity of digital information.
Infinite Scroll

Who Wins and Who Loses When We Share a Meme

Two new books by art-world authors explore online shareability and come to different conclusions about what creators stand to gain.
Infinite Scroll

The Internet’s New Favorite Philosopher

Byung-Chul Han, in treatises such as “The Burnout Society” and his latest, “The Crisis of Narration,” diagnoses the frenetic aimlessness of the digital age.
Critics at Large

Kate Middleton and the Internet’s Communal Fictions

In the months leading up to the announcement of Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis, online sleuths created a vivid fictional world explaining her absence. When conspiracy steps in, where does that leave reality?
Letter from the U.K.

How Kate Middleton Shamed the Internet

After the Princess’s cancer diagnosis, some who had pushed conspiracy theories about her absence seemed chastened. Others were less contrite.
Fault Lines

The Misguided Attempt to Control TikTok

The freedom to use social media is a First Amendment right, even if it’s one we should all avail ourselves of less often.