Yaaaay! (Free agent sounds so sexy lol) (hire me)

It looks like the replies to the harassing twitter are a sea of empty bots and angry extremists. This is honestly terrifying. This is someone with a *fandom* account. They are not a public figure, they're not using their real name online. They've done nothing but produce a viral tweet.

I wrote about how Nepal's Discord election is a new development in social media-driven protest foreignpolicy.com/2025/09/22/n...

Last year I co-wrote a piece with @umairfan.bsky.social about the way cultures that valorize endurance make it much harder for people to take the threat of extreme heat as seriously as they do extreme cold. It's past time to change that. www.vox.com/climate/3597...

There's so much horrific shit in the news right now, but this one in particular is enraging me. I see she set up a GoFundMe earlier this month, but new donations have been disabled. Friends who know something about legal advocacy, how can we help Talia Teneyuque?

it has been breaking us since the 90s! I wasn't even a Democrat as a kid, yet I watched this argument play out from the right, and even I saw it was a bullshit argument that constantly worked against the Dems. DEMS HAVE BEEN PLAYING THEMSELVES SINCE NEWT GINGRICH. it's so jawdroppingly obtuse.

It's not just that the cruelty is the point. The cruelty and systemic hatred is a choice being made daily by individuals at the federal and local level. They are choosing to ignore fair judicial rulings, choosing to trick detainees into paying bond they have no intention of granting.

The Federalist wrote a weird call-out of a bunch of leftist journos, quoting us for not being mad when Trump was de-platformed from Twitter. They quoted me pointing out, accurately, that kicking an extremist off a privately-owned social platform isn't a violation of free speech. Because it isn't!

i'm a writer who went to the national spelling bee and i have to double-check all the rs and fs in "sheriff" and "terrific" every single time. Also i flatly refuse to spell "grey," "theatre," and "'til" correctly because i think "gray," "theater," and "till" are all much uglier.

I wound my way into a "Pride and Prejudice variations" corner of Amazon and what what is this unholy product comparison we are living in a cursed moment

literally sitting here worrying what will happen to my cats when the regime comes for me

"The words are Hitler's, but" — Warner Bros. CANNOT keep going with the Harry Potter series. HOW? For the love of christ, didn't they make her sign a million fucking "please don't quote Hitler on Twitter" contracts that she's surely now violating? Kanye got canceled for this bullshit. Come on.

Rural southerner from childhood here and I never in my life heard of this idea that "bless your heart" is passive-aggressive judgment-throwing until I moved up north and until social media made it a thing. I find it so annoying bc every southerner I know uses it sincerely and sympathetically! Boo.

My personal TV opening theme song top 5: 1. *tie* The Sopranos / The Golden Girls 2. The Story of Yanxi Palace 3. Full Metal Alchemist - Opening 4 ("Rewrite" by AKFG) 4. The Gilmore Girls 5. The Gummy Bears

And they also just tripled the salaries of their fact-checkers to match their newly increased workloads, right? ....right?

Why is it so hard for so many media outlets and people with influential platforms to acknowledge the pain and humanity of the people Charlie Kirk tried to marginalize and erase? it would only take a few sincere words. why in god's name are so many of them reacting like that's an offensive ask?

My American government teacher was a huge Reagan fan who constantly quoted him to us. My US history teacher leaned liberal and wasn't quiet about it. My senior English teacher idolized Wallis Simpson and Prince Edward and had photos of them in her classroom 🫠

Between the Klippenstein analysis of his Discord chats and the new charging documents, I think we currently have three basic options for what radicalized Tyler Robinson: 1) another well-hidden layer of his internet activity that hasn't yet come to light 2) his family's zealous gun culture 3) both

conspiracy theories bad, but i am side-eying that an actual human, typing on his phone in 2025, would actually write "I’m worried what my old man would do if I didn’t bring back grandpas rifle" like what is this weird dated homesteader speak

This is essential reading for anyone trying to understand Charlie Kirk's murder. This is *extremely* important if you have young children, especially boys. Please read and understand how nihilistic meme culture is impacting young boys. foreignpolicy.com/2025/09/15/c...

Straight up not kidding that this reminds me very much of the time I interviewed Tommy Wiseau: First he got mad and called me "disrespectful" for asking him about his own public quotes, and then moments later he told me "you give me good spin, now I appreciate you." 🫠 www.vox.com/2018/3/15/17...

Also must shout-out the sublime A River Runs Through It, my besties Butch and Sundance, and All is Lost — which is just mesmerizing if you haven't seen it, the only time I've truly felt like I was watching an acting master class on film.

there was a time when this would have been an unthinkable betrayal of american values, and at minimum a headlining story for weeks. every day seems to see yet another unconscionable undermining of our remaining shared fundamental beliefs, going unremarked, stripping those beliefs away one by one.

In an incredibly detailed report (it's almost 80 pages, tiny font), a top independent human rights commission has concluded Israel is committing genocide. The Pillay Commission report was released today (I'm still working my way through it) www.bbc.com/news/article...

it's more frightening bc they are exponentially emboldening themselves in real time. Trump has just TWICE had the military openly murder immigrants. Fox anchor calling for murdering the homeless. "trans deathcults." I told a relative tonight that i think the regime may kill me. It's to that point.

Battle doomscrolling by posting 5 small pleasures in life: 1. cool breeze on a hot day 2. scallops 3. Miles Davis's cover of "It Never Entered My Mind" 4. the way my kitten squeaks and leaps about when getting fed 5. when you hear someone on the street or across the way, singing just for themselves

I have made my cats my entire personality (my cats = Artemis, Tati, and Wang Yibo)

Why is it so difficult to know what the shooter's motives are? Because meme-fueled culture is malleable, ironic, and intentionally obfuscatory: foreignpolicy.com/2025/09/15/c...

how I feel about the NYT at least 5 times a week on average

Between "punish anyone critical of the white supremacist," "trans people are a death cult," and "just kill the homeless," I can't stop thinking this week has fully eroded our cultural consensus that every person is a human being. Not even that everyone deserves rights. That everyone is *human.*

I enjoyed The Pitt, but have always enjoyed even more the way everyone else loves The Pitt. Happy for everyone in this bar!

Respectfully sir, you and every single media pundit and every single democrat and every single person who considers themselves a civil human being should have been saying this every single time the subject of trans rights came up since 2014.

this is a vv important thread, and it just made me realize that this moment we're in bears a lot of similarity to something I think about all the time wrt true crime, which is that people can't seem to comprehend being unalive.+

The Stars Hollow town square complete with gazebo and string lights and luke's diner and a little troubador and kim's antiques and taylor doose yelling at clouds and omg it's already in beta 🙏 beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

This is also the effect that Charlie Kirk's more moderate statements and all his upbeat Christian motivational speaker moments had: they served as cover for his extremism. His fans sanitized his message as they amplified it. His niceness legitimized all his hateful rhetoric and allowed it to spread.

i'm in no way calling her a leftist, but i think a lot about how in the Before Times, J.K. Rowling fell off the list of UK's wealthiest people bc she donated so much of her money to charity. And now, she's not only back on the list, but to spite her haters, she frequently gloats about her wealth.

Literally-Bobbidy-Boo 😆

nothing the daily mail does should surprise me at this point, yet I'm just floored by how galling and malicious putting "family refuse to deny transgender motive" in the headline is (the family refused to comment, period).

transvestigation is so hilarious, and really just makes it even more apparent how absurd the construct of gender actually is. like: they might have gotten away with being read as cis male had the truth-detecting AI filter not correctly detected their tell-tale, trans-coded LEOPARD SEAL HOODIE

1) of 5) criminal justice things: Across the nation, courts have systematically implemented sentencing and conviction reforms via System Review Units! They have led to hundreds of reduced and overturned convictions. I did a deep dive about this re: Adnan Syed's case: www.vox.com/culture/2336...

Just going to reiterate that this account is a bot account, and the website it promotes is an AI-generated website with a fake AI-generated masthead and even AI-generated fake colleagues allchronology.com/about/

I wrote this in 2020 (after covering gamergate since the very beginning) and arguably the only thing that has changed since culturally is that police are finally getting better at parsing online stalking and threats. and even there it's still very hit-and-miss. www.vox.com/culture/2020...

jesus newsweek calm down

at this concert, the band played a Taylor Swift cover, and when I cheered along with the Swifties, the ladies next to me turned around (we had not spoken at all before this) and told me they didn't think I seemed like a Swiftie! What! I am just sitting here! Is it bc I exude nonbinary vibes 😂

Wonderfalls!

this is utterly embarrassing. imagine just deciding based on vibes and zero sourcing that a message is anti-fa. OwO. just having to turn to KnowYourMeme for the most accurate information about this shooter and his motives because nobody in legacy media has a clue. bsky.app/profile/tagi...

was not expecting to cry before brunch but everyone is being so lovely, thank you all <333333

cries in: "i am literally a writer and reporter who specializes in internet culture and gaming who can be hired right now"

This is perhaps the best time to announce that that internet culture reporter has parted ways with Vox and is now open to freelancing, if anyone would like them to, oh, explain the increasing role memes and shitposts have played in extremist violence, for ex: www.vox.com/culture/2019...

@bittersouth.bsky.social Without acknowledging that Kirk frequently spread racist & anti-LGBTQ hate, including calling for our deaths, your statement frames our right to exist as a mere opinion, and frames disagreement w/that opinion as legitimate civil discourse. Disappointing. Please do better.