Earlier this year, WIRED published a story that asked a question that seemed to encapsulate internet culture in 2017: What does 'covfefe' mean? The nonsense term was tweeted out by President Donald Trump, and the internet went into a fit trying to define it. As WIRED culture writer Angela Watercutter wrote, "Nearly every great meme […]
Tuesday afternoon, The New York Times announced it was hiring an opinion writer named Quinn Norton to write about “the power, culture, and consequences of technology.” Late Tuesday night, the Times fired her. Norton, a writer-activist who covered, among other things, the Occupy and Anonymous movements for WIRED in the 2000s, has been an outspoken […]
If one were attempting to define black genius in its modern form, the week of April 16 provides no shortage of starting points. We could begin with Beyoncé Knowles-Carter—the singer, mother, and pop maximalist who understands that music can, and should, be a kind of cinema—and her historically transcendent Coachella performance. Or we could just […]
It's always premature to declare the death of a videogame series. The creative seas of the big-budget games industry ride unending tides of stagnation and reinvention, a cycle of death and renewed life that wrings millions of dollars out of consumers every year. If you miss something, just be patient; it'll come back, eventually. This […]
More than 400 videogames were released this year. Four. Hundred. With a firehose like that, it's all too easy to miss some of the gems that become available, so we pored through our played list to pull together our favorite under-the-radar titles. These weren't necessarily the most popular games released in 2017, nor are they […]
As true-crime obsessives already know, last Friday Netflix dropped The Staircase, a docu-series chronicling the 2001 death of Kathleen Peterson and the subsequent murder trial of her husband, Michael. While the project followed a long and circuitous route to the streaming giant—it originally premiered in the US on the Sundance Channel in 2005, then received […]
I approached finding a spouse the way I do even the most emotional decisions: with logic. A few years ago, before I started dating, I wrote a list of requirements and some optional good-to-have features, similar to how one might decide on a smartphone. A friend who was helping me complained that I eliminated 90 percent […]
It doesn’t get more 2018 than this: In mid-April, a Trump-supporting Instagram influencer named Bermuda hacked the account of fellow influencer Lil Miquela, who has over a million followers. Wait, no, there’s more: Bermuda refused to return the account unless Miquela promised to “tell the world the truth”—the truth being that Miquela is not a […]
Stick a fork in it: Solo: A Star Wars Story is pretty much officially a flop. Its performance hasn't improved since its unimpressive debut and shows no sign of getting a boost. Moreover, judging from the fallout, the movie had more of an impact amongst conspiracy theorists than anyone else. Want proof? Read on. Is […]
Last week involved a shooting at YouTube, numerous scandals involving EPA director Scott Pruitt, and surprising new sanctions placed on Russian oligarchs, and yet, none of that makes it into what’s being discussed below. Does that mean, perhaps, that the week was too busy? Read on and make the decision for yourself. When the News […]