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Featured Writers

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Steve Hendershot

Award-winning writer, reporter and multimedia producer in Chicago, specializing in long-form stories about innovation, exploration and discovery.

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Steven Monacelli

I'm at Steven Monacelli. I'm an award winning investigative journalist in Dallas, Texas, where I primarily focus on extremism, disinformation, social movements, and the influence of dark money in politics. …

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Selene Nelson

Hi! I’m Selene Nelson. I’m a writer, journalist, author and copywriter.As a journalist, I've written for The BBC, The Sunday Times, The Independent, HuffPost, ThinkProgress, Town & Country, Evening Standard, …

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Lola Phoenix

I'm a writer of fiction and non-fiction. This portfolio is for the writing I have done for newspapers, magazines and blogs usually on LGBTQ and gender related subjects. I write …

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Emily Lundquist

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Gerald Nesmith

WRITER/POET/FILMMAKER

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Latest Articles

"Bro leave her alone": Gen Alpha is showing printed brainrot memes to strangers and the results are hilarious

A surreal TikTok trend sees the chronically online bringing meme culture into the real world, and the results are hilarious. The trend involves people approaching strangers in public and showing them printed folders full of brainrot memes and images, including John Pork and Skibidi Toilet.As always, reactions from members of …
By Laura Holliday
• The Daily Dot

The "watch my egg" TikTok challenge brings back the old-school internet prank

A new TikTok trend is cracking people up…literally. In the viral “watch my egg” prank, which first originated in September 2025, users text friends or family an egg emoji (🥚) and ask them to “watch it” while they’re away. What happens next depends on the recipient’s imagination: the egg hatches …
By Laura Holliday
• The Daily Dot

Comedian says she coined "girlbossed too close to the sun." Now it's in a Taylor Swift song

A TikTok creator says she’s the one who coined the viral phrase “girlbossed too close to the sun”…and now she’s hearing it in a Taylor Swift song.Comedian Caroline Timoney (@carol.in3) explained in a recent video posted to the platform that she was the first person to come up with the …
By Laura Holliday
• The Daily Dot

Distracted by the Bob: Inside the new SpongeBob meme taking over TikTok

A new meme called “Distracted by the Bob” has taken over TikTok, and like most SpongeBob trends, it’s as ridiculous as it is surreal. What began as simple jokes about secretly watching SpongeBob instead of doing homework or chores has spiraled into something stranger: people now claim to encounter “The …
By Laura Holliday
• The Daily Dot

"He is stable, you are deep": How a song lyric became a relationship test

TikTokers are celebrating all things messy, vulnerable, and unhinged again. Nothing new, but this time…well, you could say it goes deep.The “he is stable, you are deep” TikTok trend started as a fun way for people to contrast safe, dependable partners with intense and unpredictable ones, but it has evolved …
By Laura Holliday
• The Daily Dot

Kendamanomics explained: the app, the players, and the kendama rivalries fueling TikTok drama

TikTok has found its latest obsession: kendama, a centuries-old Japanese skill toy now fueling leaderboard rivalries and TikTok fandom wars through an app called Kendamanomics.Kendama dates back to Japan’s Edo period. The game is simple in theory, using a wooden handle (ken) and a ball (tama) on a string, but …
By Laura Holliday
• The Daily Dot

Is being single a luxury now? Viral dating theory says yes: "My avoidant attachment took this as a direct threat"

A TikToker has shared her controversial theory on why being single is a luxury.In a now-viral video posted to the platform on March 3rd, user @onlinekeeks divided viewers with her positive opinion of singlehood. Her theory is being picked apart in follow-up videos on TikTok, and of course, there’s discourse …
By Laura Holliday
• The Daily Dot

Internet clashes over photo of man having intimate chat with AI girlfriend on the subway

A viral photo of a man talking to the large language model (LLM) ChatGPT on his phone has initiated extensive debate on X regarding contemporary uses of AI.The controversial photo, posted on June 3, 2025, shows a man on a packed subway train engrossed in an intimate and vulnerable conversation …
By Laura Holliday
• The Daily Dot

"My grandma isn't ready for this": Google's new AI video tool is so realistic, it's freaking people out

A new wave of AI-generated videos is taking the internet by storm. The videos—created with Google’s new, state-of-the-art AI video generator Veo 3—allow users to generate audio alongside visuals, leading to highly cinematic and hyperrealistic results. However, they are leaving users stunned and scared in equal measure, with many calling …
By Laura Holliday
• The Daily Dot

Here's why the Aerial Tramway Emoji is suddenly in every YouTube comment section

An emoji takeover is sweeping YouTube. After content creator John Casterline urged his 7.2 million subscribers to start using the aerial tramway emoji 🚡, allegedly the “least-used emoji in the world,” comment sections across the platform have been flooded with the little yellow icon.The campaign, which Casterline described as an …
By Laura Holliday
• The Daily Dot

Only Black first-class traveler says American Airlines "ran out" of meals before she could be served

A Black travel influencer is going viral after posting a TikTok alleging she was the only first-class passenger on an American Airlines flight who wasn’t served a meal. In a TikTok that has been viewed over 4.9 million times, the influencer says she was given just a cup of coffee, …
By Laura Holliday
• The Daily Dot

"Low GPA Activity" meme turns into school trend of kids setting their Chromebooks on fire

Videos of kids setting fire to Chromebooks are going viral in a supposed TikTok “trend,” causing outrage and debate over whether there’s a new wave of classroom vandalism spreading, or if we’re seeing another round of internet-fueled moral panic. Though some are cracking jokes, footage of Chromebooks smoking and going …
By Laura Holliday
• The Daily Dot

'The American mind can't comprehend this' meme has Americans and Europeans beefing

An image of a quintessential English terraced house led to a deeper discussion on X recently, regarding differences between European and American lifestyles. It’s part of an ongoing trend best summarized as ‘The American Mind Can’t Comprehend This’ meme—that, while often fun and lighthearted, hints at a growing gulf between …
By Laura Holliday
• The Daily Dot

People are feeding AI the same image 100 times, and it keeps changing race, gender, and weight. Here's why that's a problem:

The internet has a new AI-image generation trend, and as usual, it’s proving highly divisive. The craze began with a now-viral video where a user inputted a picture of his friend into ChatGPT—instructing it to “create the exact replica of this image, don’t change a thing,” over 70 times. The …
By Laura Holliday
• The Daily Dot

‘I wasn’t officially diagnosed’: Women with endometriosis are posting about poor medical care online. Will doctors finally start listening?

‘I wasn’t officially diagnosed’: Women with endometriosis are posting about poor medical care online. Will doctors finally start listening?April Christina knows all too well what it’s like to be dismissed. After suffering from years of unresolved pain and other chronic symptoms, she was diagnosed with stage 4 endometriosis. It’s a …
By Makalah Wright
• The Daily Dot

Leftist Twitch steamer, U.S citizen, says CBP searched phone at Mexico border

A self-described “leftist shitposter” said he had his phone searched while coming back into the U.S. from Mexico on March 31. The search comes as reports of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) searching travelers’ phones when entering the United States increase and, in some cases, denying entry over anti-Trump social …
By Hope Talbot
• The Daily Dot

EXCLUSIVE: Former U.S. military members, Patriot Front dropout secretly run Nazi publishing houses

In September 2024, a man by the name of “Royce” appeared on Stew Peters’ “Uncancelable” podcast.Peters is an extreme right-wing ideologue with over 500,000 followers on Rumble. He kicked off this particular episode by offering viewers a promo code for a Holocaust denial website.Royce was there to promote Europa: The …
By Steven Monacelli
• The Daily Dot

Columbia anonymous messaging app explodes in fury after Mahmoud Khalil arrest

The private messaging app Sidechat exploded following the arrest of a Palestinian activist who helped lead campus protests at Columbia University. Sidechat, an anonymous messaging app popular with college students that requires a university email address, has previously been used to coordinate protests at several American university campuses. It has …
By Hope Talbot
• The Daily Dot

X users aren't buying Musk's claim Ukraine was behind site's massive outage

Users on X are having a hard time believing Elon Musk’s claim that Ukraine was behind the site’s massive outage yesterday. Following lengthy outages on Monday that left thousands of users without access, Musk claimed the site experienced a “massive cyberattack.”“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X,” he …
By Hope Talbot
• The Daily Dot

A Hitler-quoting 'Aryan' has the attention of JD Vance and Elon Musk—who is @captivedreamer7?

Days after the 2024 election, Vice President JD Vance followed @captivedreamer7, an X user who boasted that his viral tweets about Haitians allegedly eating cats in September 2024 put it on Vance’s radar, sparking a weeks-long panic. The specious tale of migrants was a microcosm of both the election and …
By Steven Monacelli
• The Daily Dot

Gruesome POV TikToks of horrific tragedies are the latest get-rich-quick AI scheme

A TikTok with over 2.4 million views begins with the title “POV: You wake up as a slave in 1800s America.” Viewers “awake” to see their outstretched legs on the ground of a dirt-floor shack, before “blinking” and reappearing in a field, holding a basket of cotton, as other enslaved …
By Hope Talbot
• The Daily Dot

DOGE has saved Americans $55 billion. Or $24 billion. Or just $1.5 billion

In just a month of cost-cutting, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) saved the federal government $55 billion. Or $24 billion. Or $16 billion. Or, barely over a billion dollars. A spate of trackers keeping an eye on DOGE’s contract terminations has sprung up—including on DOGE’s own website—and no …
By Hope Talbot
• The Daily Dot

Meta's AI Instagram bots spark swift backlash: 'Manufacturing the human experience'

Internet users swiftly went to work in the wake of an interview Meta executive Connor Hayes had with the Financial Times, where he said the company hosted entirely AI-generated characters that post on Instagram and other platforms. These profiles “exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that …
By Hope Talbot
• The Daily Dot

The internet can't handle the United Healthcare CEO's alleged shooter being Italian

With the identity of the alleged United Healthcare shooter now revealed, the internet is turning to one of its favorite forms of discourse: Joking about Italians. The alleged shooter, identified as Luigi Mangione, was arrested in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania earlier today. Mangione was born and raised in Maryland, …
By Hope Talbot
• The Daily Dot