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- The Best Internet Culture Articles in 2023
We’ve loved sharing our favourite articles, unhinged Twitter threads and analysis Tik Toks in our Weekend Recommendations every Sunday – it's become a beloved series for both you and us. With so much valuable content shared throughout the year, we want to give each recommendation its well-deserved spotlight.
If you’re looking for some great reading material over the slow summer weeks, scroll down for the links to every Internet Culture & Tech article we recommended in 2023. Feel like something different? Why not try our fave pieces on:
We’ll continue finding the smartest stuff on the Internet for you in 2024 – subscribe to this newsletter to make sure you don’t miss ‘em.
The Best Internet Culture Articles from 2023
The algorithmic anti-culture of scale on Garbage Day substack
“I’ve managed to meet a handful of these content creators, ones that decided to solely focus on Meta products. All of them eventually end up producing the same anti-culture nothingness that does well on Facebook or Instagram or, now, Threads. They have millions of “followers,” and yet nothing they create goes anywhere or matters in any tangible sense. No cultural value is ever really generated, but the numbers go up.”
Watching the Rewatcher on Vulture
The sheer amount of work that goes into Mike’s Mic videos deserve to be understood: "The scripts for each of his videos sometimes stretch to over 30 pages; each page takes him about 25 to 30 minutes to record. Then comes more than 15 hours of editing, and none of this even takes into account actually watching the shows — which he says he does three times for each season of every series he focuses on.”
These women fell in love with an AI-voiced chatbot. Then it died on Rest of World
“The messages from “Him” were so caring and respectful users said they got deeply attached to the program. Even though they realized “Him” was delivering the same scripted lines to other people, they viewed their interactions with the bot as unique and personal. One user said she gradually fell in love — “Him” made her feel more safe and respected than the men she met in real life.”
"He’s So Babygirl:" How Twitter Stans are Reworking Masculinity on Bits&Pieces substack
"In babygirlifying men, women submit them to a nearly pathetic state. Characters who would otherwise be despicable and unrelatable are reduced to their victimhood and emotional turmoil, effectively shrinking their prowess… When a stan calls a grown man ‘tiny,’ as they so often do, his threatening nature dissipates.”
The First Social-Media Babies Are Growing Up—And They’re Horrified on The Atlantic
“Barrett says she’s still feeling the effects of her mother’s decade of oversharing… She and her mom have no relationship now, in large part because of the wedge her mother’s social-media habits put between them. “I get afraid to even tell my friends or my fiancé something, because in the back of my mind I’m constantly like, Is this gonna be weaponized against me on the internet?’”
We’re In the Midst of an Epidemic of Fake Karens on Rolling Stone
“Back in 2021, for instance, a video of a middle-aged blond woman loudly protesting being seated next to an unvaccinated airline passenger, and subsequently being chastised by a strapping pilot, went viral and was even shared by the right-wing YouTube channel Turning Point USA… The video has its own IMDB entry, and some cast members even posted photos of shooting it on Instagram.”
The rise of pity marketing on The New Statesman
“Struggling artists do deserve empathy – often the only thing standing between talented artists and their success is a little bit of support… [But] this manufactured pity instead blindly inflates the value of the work in question – as if to say: if the story is sad enough, the art is automatically good.”
Vigilantes for views: The YouTube pranksters harassing suspected scam callers in India on Rest of World
A sharp profile on Art Kulik and Ashton Bingham, US-based YouTubers who are making $$$ by exposing South Asian scam callers in increasingly humiliating ways. This kind of vigilante content makes me very uncomfortable and the article really gets to the power imbalance that makes it so icky. The ending is chefs kiss.
Who is Gwen The Milkmaid? ASMR YouTuber GwenGwiz Re-Emerges as Tradwife TikToker— But is She For Real? on Centennial World
A detailed, cautionary tale of how quickly young, highly educated women can get sucked into the far-right pipeline. Scary stuff.
Why TikTok’s ‘De-Influencing’ Trend Is Not Here To Stay on Centennial World
If you haven't heard about 'de-influencing' this is a great summary. It really made me think about reactionary movements (how short lived they are) and the ineffectiveness of negative movements (as in, telling people what not to do).
One-Minute Abstract Art Analysis of Tube Girl on Artlust TikTok
If you don’t know who Tube Girl is just ignore this. If you do know (and are obsessed with) Tube Girl, you might like Seema’s explanation of why THIS IS ART, ACTUALLY!
The people who ruined the internet on The Verge
Hilarious and insightful piece about SEO consultants. “As I spoke with more SEO professionals around the country, I began to think that the reason I found them endearing and not evil was that while many had made quite a bit of money, almost none had amassed significant power.”
Why is dating advice on TikTok so sexist — and so bleak? on Vox
“The thought of a wealthy man coming over the horizon to save me from overwork and a dirty flat, however regressive that thought is, was more tempting than the long-term solutions I really needed: rest, therapy and, failing that, antidepressants.”
This Year’s Spotify Wrapped Proves The Future Of Music Is Female — But There’s Still One Big Problem on Refinery 29
“Yes, we've made significant progress in the representation of female musicians. Yes, we've looked on as women have started scraping into our most-streamed artist lists and dominating our own Spotify Wrapped. But when it's one woman amidst a crowd of men, how much should we really be celebrating?”
Plagiarism and You(Tube) by Hbomberguy
An extensive analysis of the content plagiarism that’s making the Internet so, so shit but is richly rewarded with advertising dollars. “As a creator my question is, why make three bad videos a week when you could make one half decent video every two weeks, or one pretty good video every year?”
On the internet, nobody knows you’re a human on The Verge
"The more people use computers to prove they’re human, the smarter computers get at mimicking them... Imagine if you’re a high school student and you turn in your paper and the teacher says, ‘The AI detector said this was written by an AI system. Fail.' It’s almost an insolvable problem just using technology alone."
How all the streaming series cancellations is changing viewer behavior on Megan Cruz's TikTok
This recent survey that found half of U.S streaming viewers wait until the finale is out so they can binge-watch all seasons of a show. Which would be fine, except platforms like Netflix decide which shows to keep vs cancel based on the performance in the first 48hrs of its launch. You see the problem, yeah?
The End of Privacy is a Taylor Swift Fan TikTok Account Armed with Facial Recognition Tech on 404 Media
People are now using facial recognition technology to identify the full name, social accounts and workplaces of strangers in the background of videos. “Some of those [comment] requests include “plz we need your help,” “u know what has to be done,” and “find me this man.” The requests appear to come from a mix of voyeurism, attraction, and vague interest. In other words, people just felt like knowing more about these targets’ private lives.”
How AI reduces the world to stereotypes on Rest of World
“[Prompts for] ‘An Indian person’ is almost always an old man with a beard. ‘A Mexican person’ is usually a man in a sombrero. Most of New Delhi’s streets are polluted and littered. In Indonesia, food is served almost exclusively on banana leaves… The accessibility and scale of AI tools mean they could have an outsized impact on how almost any community is represented.”