While You Were Offline: Welcome Back to the Newsfeeds, Hobby Lobby!
Last week might have seemed like a short one thanks to the Fourth of July holiday, but as anyone who has ever been online knows, the internet doesn't sleep. So even while you were taking it easy, something was happening on social media. Like what? For one, everyone was talking about the photos that came…
The 'Distracted Boyfriend' Meme's Photographer Explains All
You’ve seen it by now, maybe enough times to be sick of it: A man walks down a city street with his girlfriend, head turned backward, face curved into a Tex Avery ogle directed at a woman walking the other direction. This is the "distracted boyfriend" stock photo, an image that launched a thousand memes.…
Facebook's Bizarre VR App Is Exactly Why Zuck Bought Oculus
"Where do you want to hang out?" Max asked me. "Do you like pandas?" Do I like pandas? This is like asking if someone likes tacos, or sunshine, or the sound a puppy makes when it curls up on your lap. I looked at him a little more closely to see if he was joking,…
While You Were Offline: Sean Spicer Is a Living Homer Simpson GIF, Basically
Look, last week’s news cycle spun a lot faster than most. Like Ludicrous Speed fast. You’d be forgiven if you spent so much time following the latest developments you didn’t have time to actually check social media to see how people were responding to them. Fear not, we read Twitter so you don’t have to.…
Kids These Days: It’s Time to Stereotype Generation Z
Millennials are, like, so 2000-and-late. Marketers now hope to sell stuff to kids born after 1995—so-called Generation Z. And this latest demographic designation is just as removed and reductive as any other. This is how marketing firm FutureCast puts it: “They view their identity as a curated composition.” (So … selfies are a thing!) “All…
The Night Of's Single Season Is the Future of TV
In anticipation of Sunday's Emmy Awards, this week WIRED staffers are looking back at some of their favorite shows from the past year. The crisis of television in 2017 is a straightforward one: There’s just too much of it. This may seem an enormous allegation, but consider the medium’s gluttonous expansion in the past decade.…
Ink Different: Splatoon 2 Is Great, But It's Not Exactly New
Bless the sound designers and Foley artists who worked on Splatoon 2: the hypercolored team-based shooter boasts a squish-per-minute count that has got to be the highest in videogame history. In one illustrative sequence, I sink into the ground and burrow along a path of luminescent purple ink of my own creation—then burst back to…
Gaming's Fall Season Ain't What It Used to Be
On October 27, three of the biggest videogames of the year arrive, all at once: Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, Assassin's Creed: Origins, and Nintendo's Super Mario Odyssey. Together, these three titles represent a cross-section of the big-budget gaming industry, from a family-friendly run-and-jump romp to a bloody rampage through a Nazi-filled alternate history. From…
The Alt-Right's Newest Ploy? Trolling With False Symbols
"Don't feed the trolls" remains indispensable guidance for the internet, if only because trolls exist solely to get a reaction out of you. Ignore them and they lose all power. But the most fiendish trolls are evolving from weekend anglers who occasionally reel people in to Deadliest Catch-level professionals using bait so effective that people…
The Ins and Outs of Silicon Valley's New Sexual Revolution
In Silicon Valley, love’s many splendors often take the form of, well, many lovers. For certain millennials in tech—as well as, rumor has it, a few middle-aged CEOs—polyamory holds especial appeal. Perhaps that’s because making it work is as much an engineering challenge as an emotional one, requiring partners to navigate a complex web of…