The Verge’s Internet Culture section is the home for daily coverage of how our online lives influence and are influenced by pop culture and the world around us. The ways in which we communicate, create, and live with each other have been radically altered by the internet’s powerful connective tissues, from the platforms we inhabit, like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram; to the policies, laws and guidelines that govern them (or don’t); to the subcultures, communities, and memes that bring us together there — for better or worse. Here you’ll find our coverage of life on the web, with an eye on what’s next.
A live-updating tracker using Bluesky’s API puts the site at over 14,980,000 users right now.
The site has been growing fast lately, possibly spurred most recently by the US presidential election.
Verge staffers review election.omg.lol: “Both horrifying and kinda helpful.” “This is a hell site.” “This rules.”
[election.omg.lol]
Mariah Carey has once again emerged from the Halloween cobwebs with an elaborately produced video reminding us the holiday season — and nonstop replays of “All I Want for Christmas is You” — is upon us.
As far as celebrity memes and bits go, I respect the dedication and raw capitalism with this one.
[YouTube]
That’s XOXO organizer Andy Baio reflecting back on the speaker lineup he put together for this year’s conference, which was the last. I encourage you to read his blog post about this year’s talks, which were all amazing. (Including one from The Verge’s Sarah Jeong!)
You can watch all of the talks on YouTube.
[Waxy.org]
So The Bear Cave, a newsletter popular among shortsellers, is claiming the short-sellers at Hindenburg Research are ripping it off. “This is the essence of plagiarism: taking the heart of someone else’s work without acknowledgement and repurposing it for your own audience.” Nate Anderson of Hindenburg has responded on Twitter, Edwin Dorsey, of The Bear Cave, isn’t having it.
[thebearcave.substack.com]
The world we live in is, in so many ways, 20 years old. Let’s go back and see how we got here.
If you have FOMO about missing out on the very last XOXO festival, the official video recordings have begun rolling out one by one.
Here’s my own talk, mostly about the harassment campaign that upended my life. I previously wrote about the experience as part of The Verge’s The Year Twitter Died package.
Think Shot Spotter, but for songs. There’s a “crappy Android phone” that’s set up in the Mission in San Francisco that’s just on Shazam all day. “This is culture surveillance. No one notices, no one consents. But it’s not about catching criminals. It’s about catching vibes.”
[walzr.com]
Tegan and Sara (pop stars, iykyk) were known for their online presence and cultivating a fan community. But a catfish hacked Tegan’s accounts, and clearly had access to an awful lot of her personal information... turning her life upside down.
PBS News spent a few minutes with GeoGuessr superstar Trevor Rainbolt, who made a name for himself on TikTok by being really good at the game of guessing where a random Google Maps Street View photo was taken, based on small clues and the occasional “vibe guess.”
We do love it when a news segment digs into a niche internet subculture.
Former US President Donald Trump, who posted AI-generated images of Taylor Swift implying that she had endorsed him for President, now says he hates her, in a post on Truth Social.
(Swift has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the office.)
Debates over AI’s artistic value have focused on its generative output. But so far, interactive systems have proved far more interesting.
In an interview with The New York Times, former model Leticia Sarda — better known to some as “Celebrity Number Six” — revealed she had no idea that thousands of people online have spent years trying to identify her because of some unusual curtains.
“I never expected this would show up 20 years later,” Sarda said.
In January 2020, a Reddit user requested help identifying the celebrities illustrated on some decade-old curtains, and the internet quickly matched all but one to their original photograph.
That remaining figure, dubbed “Celebrity Number Six,” remained a complete mystery until yesterday when the reference image of Spanish model Leticia Sardá was finally uncovered. Guess it’s time to retire the subreddit?
Activist investors are circling Match, including the terror machines at Elliott Management. But 79 percent of women say they don’t want to use apps ever again. The shift away from dating apps is happening as Match is trying to squeeze more money from its users.
[kyla.substack.com]
Someone go get David Hume — we’re trying to figure out what blue is. I scored 174, true neutral.
[ismy.blue]
The creator of “One Million Checkboxes” has shared some heartwarming stories about the creative ways that teens interacted with the now-shuttered website. Check out the below video, this X thread, or Eieio’s blog for some feel-good Friday vibes about concealing URLs in binary and creating pixelated Rick-Rolls.
Help. Help help help.
But for those of us doomed to remember what the Obama years were like the first time around — the turbo-pop, the undercuts, the novelty Twitter accounts, the Internet Boyfriends, the girlbosses, the hashtags, the precise shades of pink — there is one last bracing thought. For better or worse, these were our ’60s, and we’re all just going to have to come to terms with that.
