A key difference between the millennial generation and that of gen Z is that millennials did not grow up curating an online image on social media, and therefore had a much lesser terror of being perceived. We'd put up entire albums of terrible, blurry photos from a single night out, write nonstop on LiveJournal, produce appalling juvenilia and then post it on fanfic or art forums.
Before Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok became the giants of our digital lives, there was a vast ecosystem of social media platforms that once defined how people connected online. From odd niche communities to networks that shaped the idea of sharing and socializing on the web, these platforms were innovators in their time, only to fade into obscurity as trends shifted and technology evolved.
You can't get to the land of cool without first climbing cringe mountain.- Erica Mallett, New York Times. As dangerous as Everest and as technically demanding as K2, no discussion of the world's most challenging peaks is complete without a mention of Cringe Mountain. But for those willing to undertake the rigorous climb, the rewards waiting at the summit are extraordinary.
For the chronically online, 2025 was the year of "brain rot", AI slop, and " rage bait," a time of consuming Labubu matcha Dubai chocolate to the sound of "nothing beats a Jet2 holiday" and "six-seven," on repeat, as a form of torture. Here, we take a look back at the biggest internet-culture moments that brought us all together even as the country is more divided than ever.
The indie web began a few years after the end of GeoCities, which Yahoo shut down in 2009 (at least, in the US - GeoCities Japan managed to hang on until 2019). GeoCities was a free web hosting service that launched in 1994 and once hosted millions of personal HTML websites, from pop culture shrines to teachers' pages for their students (and truly everything in between).
The NP. mark is "deliberately simple", focusing on a character that comes from its behaviour rather than its look. "It often overlays imagery, not to obscure but to create another layer of meaning. It becomes both a window and a veil, echoing how identity functions online - always present, always mediated," says Natasha. The colour system is bright and "contrasty", creating tension and urgency,
To be honest, people are saying "honestly" all the time. According to the Corpus of Historical American English, a database that measures word usage over time, the use of "honestly" has skyrocketed over the last 25 years. Not just in casual conversation: It's a signifier of online authenticity. "Honestly" is the name of the podcast by CBS News' new editor Bari Weiss, the title of a 2022 studio album by Drake, the name of a new AI journaling app and appended to a number of popular TikTok and Instagram accounts.
On this episode: Lucy Lopez, Elizabeth Newcamp, and Zak Rosen are joined by ICYMI host Kate Lindsay to discuss viral slang like "67" and "41" and what it all means. They unpack the difference between "bro" and "bruh" (it's huge!), why the harmless bit of brain rot might actually be good for kids, and more! Later, they discuss a listener's question: "how do I, a childless aunt, talk to my nieces and nephews without it feeling awkward".
Set in a future not that far from us now, Interstellar follows Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former Nasa test pilot turned farmer who leaves his children Tom (Timothee Chalamet) and Murph (Mackenzie Foy) behind on a climate-ravaged Earth to search space for a new home for mankind. Murph is furious with grief at Cooper for picking a future for humanity over a life spent with her;
she's been doing what she calls "book reporting" them. "We go on a journey together and we decide to research what that means, where it comes from, why it happened, and where it stemmed from," she explains. She then says her sons are already beginning to understand how everything in culture is interconnected and that "Mom, it's not that deep" is actually very rarely true.
Patricia Lockwood is probably referred to as the voice of her generation more frequently than any other late-millennial author. Initially best-known for her poetry, she is also often referred to as Twitter's poet laureate. Lockwood rose to fame by tweeting surreal sexts, the most well-known of which reads, "I am a Dan Brown novel and you do me in my plot-hole." Her breakout memoir, Priestdaddy,
Skibidi is defined in the dictionary as 'a word that can have different meanings such as 'cool' or 'bad' or can be used with no real meaning as a joke'. An example of its use is 'What the skibidi are you doing?'.
Using just the photo and some vague background context, Rainbolt pieced together the location. Within no time, he revealed the exact pizza joint.
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