J.K. Rowling controversy explained

Thirty-five years ago, British author J.K. Rowling was commuting from Manchester to London when she was struck by divine creativity: She imagined the tale of a young, orphaned wizard who was key to unraveling a magically violent authoritarian uprising. In what would become Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (for American readers), the young mother…

Reddit addresses bot problems, ID verification

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman caused a stir when he told a tech show that the platform was considering some form of ID verification to combat bots. Now Huffman has officially addressed the issues in a message to Reddit users posted right on the platform itself. Huffman says Reddit isn’t looking to identify its anonymity-loving user…

The internet made BTS. Arirang asks what comes next.

The first thing BTS ask for on Arirang, the group’s long-awaited fifth studio album, is simple: “Put your phone down.” It sounds almost cliché in an era of screen fatigue, but coming from BTS, it lands with a strange kind of dissonance. This is, after all, a group that didn’t just benefit from social media…

The incel glossary decoded: Alpha males, body counts and the manosphere’s key terms

If you’ve spent any time consuming dating content lately, you’ve almost certainly encountered the vocabulary: high value, alpha, body count, Chad. Terms that, not long ago, were esoterically confined to misogynistic, racist incel (“involuntarily celibate”) forums and have now migrated wholesale into mainstream culture — repackaged as self-improvement content, dating advice, and meme language for…