Culture / Digital Culture

Soon after WIRED's global editorial director started in 2023, she sent me a message on Slack. By accident, I hearted it. A message from my very serious, very new boss. It haunts me to this day.I have no recollection of what the message…

Access is an illusion. Or, really, what I mean to say is: access, filtered through social media, is an illusion. In 2016, no one understood that better than Timothy Stokely, who launched an adult subscription site called OnlyFans that…

Replika wants you to pay, and it will find many, many ways to convince you to. Want to talk to an “advanced” AI? Upgrade to an $80 yearly subscription. Want your bot to officially play as your girlfriend, wife, or otherwise specified role?…

The last phase of the setup involved swiping left and right on stock images of people’s faces until the app, supposedly, figured out what profiles matched my true “#AttractionDNA.” Despite choosing men and women of various racial…

Oh yeah, I remember those feeds.They had stopped posting, so I was like, I'll just go straight to the source and read it there instead of waiting for this weird bot account to post it. And I just so happened to get into a stupid argument…

Squirelo’s passion for accessibility is twofold. He grew up around friends and family members living with disabilities and also had ADHD. Beyond that, he has a strong desire to help people. The release of PlayAbility, which began rolling…

Since January 7, wildfires have been burning their way through Los Angeles. The aftermath is devastating, with over 16,000 homes destroyed, drinking water contaminated, and more than two dozen people killed. As longtime residents attempt to…

Mere moments after his swearing in Monday, President Donald Trump made a proclamation to attendees of his inauguration: “It shall henceforth be the policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.”…

After weeks of leaks and wild speculation, Nintendo has finally announced the Switch 2, the highly-anticipated successor to its wildly popular hybrid handheld console. The gamemaker released a two-minute teaser today with a first look at…

In December, in a piece about Luigi Mangione and the “blackpilling” of America—a descent into disillusionment—Vox writer Rebecca Jennings described a general malaise settling over the masses: “All swaths of Americans increasingly appear to…