Notes on the paranoid style in online fandom

Tiffany to cover internet culture on The Atlantic’s tech team

After they were banned from Reddit, trans-exclusionary radical feminists became the latest of many toxic communities to simply build their own platform.

How a subreddit seemingly destined to devolve into chaos stays remarkably sane

The soft, sad freaks on an unprofitable website claimed victory in the battle for the internet’s soul and defined the worldview of a generation.

Dispatches from a moral panic

Suddenly everyone is “toxic.”

Even a niche subculture built around magical cartoon horses is reckoning with racism.

The internet has decided that Pfizer is significantly cooler than Moderna—but why?

Twitter fan accounts are organizing to support the protests, often before the celebrities they love say a word.

An anonymous social-media account claims to “combat right-wing threats” to democracy, and recently started fundraising through a PAC.

Supply is low, demand is high—but that alone cannot explain the weird indignity of renting a vehicle.

We’re more predictable than we thought.

Experts weigh in on whether you should cancel your dates, dinner parties, and gym sessions.

First of all, keep them out of the light.

How the domestic aesthetics of Instagram repackage QAnon for the masses  

The social platform just banned the president’s most notorious internet fan club, as part of a sitewide purge of forums that “promote hate.”

Kodak changed the way Americans saw themselves and their country. But it struggled to reinvent itself for the digital age.

Someone who looks like they’re always staying inside on Instagram may actually have a double life they’re hiding to avoid judgment.

A cryptic utterance from a supposed spambot never lost its relevance.

Why the grandiose promises of multilevel marketing and QAnon conspiracy theories go hand in hand

Long before the NFT boom or the Web3 backlash, an unglamorous movement was under way. Where does it stand now?

From bobby-soxers to Beatlemania to Bieber Fever—we all know what a screaming fangirl looks like. But do we really know why she’s screaming?

Conspiracy thinking in America had a huge night on Tuesday.

TikTok’s recommendation algorithm is known for its accuracy and even its “magic.” What does it mean if the videos it picks for you are totally disgusting?

For years, women on the internet have been writing conspiracy theories about celebrity pregnancies. What sparks them?

Will any of us survive it?

The old but newly popular notion that one’s love life can be analyzed like an economy is flawed—and it’s ruining romance.

Online, groups of women have started using the rhetoric of the incel movement. But to what end?

A conspiracy theory spreading online says the whole internet is now fake. It’s ridiculous, but possibly not that ridiculous?

No one realizes that their own take on Die Hard as a Christmas movie helps sustain a powerful curse on the internet. Not even the guy who started it all by accident.

literally show me a healthy person finds art in a hopeless place

A classic meme about being radicalized is now so absurd that it means almost nothing at all.

Following the riot at the Capitol, Trump supporters are having an existential crisis on Twitter.

The most furious and oddly compelling of the Trumps is developing a personal brand as a victim of the platform he loves.

Amelia Whelan used social media as an accelerant for her sales community. Then things blew up.

How do we memorialize life online when it’s constantly disappearing?

Welcome to the age of the regreditorial.

The users who reappear after countless left swipes have become modern urban legends.

Inside NUMTinder, a Facebook dating group exclusively for people who are really into public transit.

The app that stoked the insurrection is gone, but something else is destined to replace it.

If everyone is vigilant and responsible, it can be done safely.

My new Facebook account had the most generic interests possible, and still it brought me to a place no one should ever have to go.

In defense of One Direction, Twitter teens and screaming women everywhere.

Silicon Valley has always dreamed of building its own utopias. Who’s ready to move in?