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.
By Justin Chang
Open Questions
What’s Happening to Reading?
For many people, A.I. may be bringing the age of traditional text to an end.
By Joshua Rothman
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.
By Katy Waldman
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.
By Jia Tolentino
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.
By Kyle Chayka
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.
By Cal Newport
The Lede
How Dare Celebrities Cheat?
Our parasocial dismay has become confused with social critique.
By Lauren Michele Jackson
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.
By Kyle Chayka
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.
By Kyle Chayka
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.
By Kyle Chayka
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.”
By Jia Tolentino
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.
By Joshua Rothman
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.
By Kyle Chayka
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.
By Kyle Chayka
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.
By Kyle Chayka
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.
By Kyle Chayka
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.
By Anna Russell
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.
By Jay Caspian Kang