Eric Greitens’ violent ad asks followers to go “RINO hunting” — and it’s right out of the fascism playbook — On June 20, US Senate candidate Eric Greitens posted an incredibly violent political campaign advertisement on his social media channels. The ad, which features a militarized police force destroying a house and Greitens pumping a shotgun, resembles contemporary examples of extreme far-right propaganda. The video, mirroring terrorist visual rhetoric, displays…

Even if an engineer thinks a machine may have a soul, it may just be in the imagination — “My battery is low and it’s getting dark,” messaged the Mars Opportunity Rover to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2019. All over the internet, people reacted emotionally to the “death” of the Mars rover. Outside the scientific community, the “loss” of the Opportunity Rover affected very few people, but…

Exactly a year after Burnham released his Inside special on Netflix, he released the outtakes on YouTube — I watched Bo Burnham’s Inside Outtakes while waiting to board my flight at the airport. It’s the first time in years that I’m flying international as I, like many others, spent a great majority of the last few years inside. While I wore a mask, I was surrounded by mostly…

Health organizations and the public should be aware how memes are used during public health crises — In the first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic, meme creators were setting the cultural tone of the oncoming shifts that result from a global disease. Memes and online humor aid in coping with concepts bigger than comprehension, but also enable us to believe that some of our innermost thoughts…

From ‘Deplorables’ to ‘Ultra MAGA’, the Right loves to weaponize insults from their opponents — When Hillary Clinton said that half of Donald Trump supporters are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic,” she inadvertently coined the infamous catchphrase “basket of deplorables.” Within hours, far-right media had pounced on her statement and memed it into oblivion. By the end of that week, Trump’s rally attendees were wearing…

An interview with the designers behind the “Are You The Asshole” bot — Reddit’s r/AmITheAsshole is one of the most entertaining subreddits on the entire site. Though it started in 2013, the subreddit’s popularity increased during the pandemic when people, isolated from social interaction, started stewing about the little things. Are you the asshole when you punched your roommate after they ate all…

‘White Hot’ documents how the fashion retailer used exclusivity, racism, and warped beauty standards to shape 90’s teen culture — Early in Allison Klayman’s new documentary White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch, former A&F model Bobby Blanksi explains that the retail store sold a dream, almost like a young person’s fantasy of fashion “by advertising them with no clothes on.” Klayman’s Netflix film tells a chronological…

Up close with a new technology at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention — “In the next decade, the future of cinema will incorporate video game technology,” said Paul Graff, visual effects supervisor of Boardwalk Empire, Stranger Things and The Wolf of Wall Street. Graff said this to my 2011 cohort at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Faculty Seminar. Graff had just…

15 years ago, the web video channel showed TV stars the potential of YouTube — When the landlord knocked on the door, Will Ferrell became nervous and his friend Adam McKay threatened to leave. Ferrell’s rent was late and he knew the landlord would be pissed. Reluctantly, he goes to the door and opens it. …