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Michael Dirda Is Incredibly Fortunate February 26, 2025
“I keep a button on my desk that says ‘Life?’ Of course I have a life. It’s a life filled with books.” Those are the words of Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Price-winning book critic for the Washington Post.In a recent Post interview, Dirda explained his de...
The Internet Will Never Be Kid-Friendly February 26, 2025
Despite decades of legislative efforts, corporate dollars, and parental anxiety, the internet is still no place for kids. Child-proofing the internet is failing technically, legally, and culturally. For many, this is a sign that we need to work harde...
The Millennial virtue economy is dead February 24, 2025
Millennials are having their post-Soviet moment: the truths, the lifestyles, the ideologies, and the religions that girded us through adulthood: all vapor. Our mode of social experience — in which boilerplate moralizing, right-think, and right-langua...
How Universities Get Away With Hiring Radicals February 21, 2025
In the days after the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Jemma Decristo, a UC Davis professor, took to social media to express support for the violent energies that had erupted in the Middle East. “HELL YEAH,” Decristo wrote on X, responding to a rep...
Late Night's New King February 20, 2025
On a Tuesday in February, Hollywood is in the throes of a “Bonfire of the Vanities” moment. Karla Sofía Gascón’s old social media posts, with shocking takes on George Floyd (“a drug addict swindler”) and Islam (“an infection for humanity that urgentl...
On the Clock February 19, 2025
It is an unusual thing for Hollywood to walk back across the ground that Steven hath trod. Whole subjects become untouchable once Spielberg folds up his director’s chair. The era of truly epic shark films began and ended with Jaws. No more boulders w...
It's Always High School February 18, 2025
The writer Elizabeth Ellen earned my admiration in October of 2022 when, as the Deputy Editor of literary journal Hobart Pulp, she defied the then-reigning orthodoxy of cancellations and speech-policing and published an interview containing taboo, fo...
The Education—and Anointment—of Barron Trump February 14, 2025
The night before Donald Trump’s second inauguration in January, the 22-year-old conservative activist CJ Pearson threw a party in honor of the influencers who had rallied behind the Republican nominee. The following week he received an email from a j...
Is This What Cancel Culture Achieved? February 12, 2025
Over the weekend, the artist and entrepreneur Kanye West, now known as Ye, let loose a blitzkrieg of appalling screeds to his 33 million followers on X. “IM A NAZI,” he proclaimed. He reiterated his position that “SLAVERY WAS A CHOICE,” contended tha...
The Everyday Avant-garde February 12, 2025
Generative Fiction: Henry James as a path for Avant-garde literatureThe aesthetics of “Alt Lit” have now defined underground literary culture for almost two decades. From Tao Lin’s early-2010s internet-driven auto-fiction to recent “post-ironic” nove...
The Work of Celebration February 10, 2025
Millennial moms on social media—which is to say, basically all of us—see endless memes and complaints about the “mental load,” which, per one internet source, is “a discrete category of family work, which entails the planning, schedule and rememberin...
I Gave Up My Smartphone for a Dumbphone. You Can, Too. February 03, 2025
I was on a mission, biking around to post fliers for my latest tech downgrading event. “Want to ditch your smartphone?” they asked in bold capitals. “Want to leave social media? Spend less time on screens?”...
Is Social Media More Like Cigarettes or Junk Food? January 23, 2025
In 1881, James Bonsack patented an automated cigarette-making machine, and, in the years that followed, smoking became much more prevalent in America. Parents and reformers grew worried about kids picking up the habit. “It is not uncommon, it is said...
Unquitting Social Media January 21, 2025
In 2013, I wrote a blog post titled “Why I Never Joined Facebook.” Social media had grown so ubiquitous that I felt obligated to justify my abstention; I pointed out that I didn’t need it because it didn’t solve any actual problems in my life. The po...
The Momfluencer Who Went to Jail January 20, 2025
As she faces the camera, Ruby Franke lowers her voice to a whisper. It’s as if you were there in the room with her, as if she were leaning in close to tell you her deepest, darkest secrets . . . or, perhaps, to reveal someone else’s.“Shari’s crying,”...
Revolt Against Stoicism January 15, 2025
The benefits of Stoicism dominate the modern mental health industry. It is not just Daily Stoic that has gained significant traction on social media, but we see how this mindset has permeated more recent behavioral therapies, like CBT and REBT. Even ...
When the Fire Comes January 14, 2025
As the fires in Los Angeles continue to multiply, the closing sentences of Joan Didion’s essay “The Santa Ana” have begun to pop up in news stories and on social media. “Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse,” Didion wrote ...
Why Is the Right Obsessed With Epic Poetry? January 07, 2025
In September 2023, the richest man in the world was daydreaming about the Trojan War. “I sometimes wonder if perhaps Rome was started by exiles from Troy,” Elon Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he had bought and swiftly renamed. His thought...
The End of Fun in the NBA January 03, 2025
The big power forwards and centers, wide as canyons in the shoulders and waist, used to bludgeon each other in the post like elephant seals. That was basketball once — Charles Barkley backing down defenders like a bulldozer, Shaquille O'Neal shatteri...
I Was Canceled by Bluesky December 13, 2024
The safe space must’ve thought I was too dangerous.“A Bluesky account you control,” read the unexpected message in my inbox the other day from the Bluesky Moderation Team, “has been detected by our systems as being spammy, fake, or inauthentic. … As ...
Are Social Media Platforms the Next Dying Malls? December 13, 2024
A shopping mall destroyed my home town.Maybe that’s not as scary as Godzilla destroying Tokyo (again!—yawn) or a cockroach eating Cincinnati. But it proved just as effective....
Wifejak, Icon of the Normal December 11, 2024
Social-media sites are dark places. Bigotry in every direction, footage of random ultra-violence, porn and OnlyFans content—all this and more is part of the routine user experience on these platforms, especially X, the app formerly known as Twitter. ...
Will the Joker Emerge? December 11, 2024
There has been at least one folk song, one look-a-like contest, and one fawning fan account. There is the tripartite catchphrase graffitied on walls across America. There are the gleeful comments and posts, an avalanche of them, thousands and thousan...
2025 Golden Globe Nominations December 10, 2024
The 2025 Golden Globe nominations went their own way, as this infamous awards show does every year. Emilia Perez may have been the subject of social media scorn for the past month, but these voters—who, yes, do tend to forecast a good chunk of Oscar ...
Yes, the World Ended on November 5 December 06, 2024
“Empire is the US from roughly WWII to a little after 9/11. It was at the height of its power, its prestige, and its economic worth. Then it lost a lot of those things. In the face of technology and social media, the mask of pride has been slowly era...
