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Netflix's New Gawker vs. Hulk Hogan Doc Has Us All Conflicted

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Shortly before Donald Trump was elected president, Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media ended their months-long legal battle over the wrestler's sex tape. The case may seem like a media law footnote, but as director Brian Knappenberger argues in his documentary, the fight over Gawker's decision to publish the footage irrevocably shifted the media landscape. In […]

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Where Is Hollywood Looking for Its Next Hit? Podcasts

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When television networks resort to adapting books that haven’t even been written yet, it’s time to start looking for new source material. Luckily, salvation might be as close as their smartphones. As the supply of books and comics ripe for adaptation dwindles, TV producers are looking to podcasts for fresh material—and finding stories with audiences […]

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Tumbleseed Is an Ingenious Game—If You Can Manage Not to Die

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Let me get this out of the way up front: I am terrible at Tumbleseed. Like, are-you-an-infant? terrible. A few hours in and I've made stunningly little progress. Each screen of progression takes lives upon lives, and by this point I know this world better than I know some members of my family. Every time […]

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Fewer Comics at Comic-Con? Blame Comicononomics

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The local comics shop—LCS in the parlance of us adherents—remains the place for a certain breed to get our fix. In the last couple of decades, though, troubles have set upon the LCS like the Legion of Doom coming hard at the Hall of Justice. Digital comics, trade paperbacks, distribution difficulties, and a persistent and […]

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A Mortician's Tale Might Be the First Game to Really Get Death

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Videogames have never really gotten death. They're full of death, of course, but only as a conceit, a shallow reading of a much deeper concept. Death in games is a punishment, a roadblock, a temporary setback, an opportunity. It's not a real end; it's mechanical, never philosophical. Gaming, as a medium, struggles to understand death […]

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The Most-read WIRED Culture Stories of 2017

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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 […]

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Beyoncé, Kendrick, Kanye, and How the World Seeks to Limit Black Genius

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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 […]