Internet

Some of the optimism of the early Internet seems to live on in the whimsical videos of James Hobson and Colin Furze.

Our parasocial dismay has become confused with social critique.

The attention economy has dominated the Internet for more than a decade now, but never before have its protagonists felt so central to American life—or had such direct access to the levers of power.

A landmark antitrust ruling could change the Internet’s power balance, but the industry is shifting regardless.

A new documentary reveals social-media platforms’ iron grip on the lives of teen-agers, one that’s increasingly being linked to a slew of mental-health issues. How scared should we be?

A recent surge of human-curated guidance is both a reaction against and an extension of the tyranny of algorithmic recommendations.

Niche-porn addicts, self-proclaimed feminist allies, and nightmare optimization bros converge in Tony Tulathimutte’s “Rejection.”

Increasingly, our networks seem to be steering our history in ways we don’t like and can’t control.

A loose federation of hyperlocal Instagram accounts are both satirizing and codifying the habits of a homogenous consumer class.

OpenAI’s snafu over its “Her”-like voice assistant might be funny if it didn’t portend a larger crisis in the integrity of digital information.

Two new books by art-world authors explore online shareability and come to different conclusions about what creators stand to gain.

Byung-Chul Han, in treatises such as “The Burnout Society” and his latest, “The Crisis of Narration,” diagnoses the frenetic aimlessness of the digital age.

In the months leading up to the announcement of Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis, online sleuths created a vivid fictional world explaining her absence. When conspiracy steps in, where does that leave reality?

After the Princess’s cancer diagnosis, some who had pushed conspiracy theories about her absence seemed chastened. Others were less contrite.

The freedom to use social media is a First Amendment right, even if it’s one we should all avail ourselves of less often.

A doctored image of the Princess of Wales and her children has become the most captivating episode of her entire public career.

The Princess of Wales is at home recovering from surgery. But that’s not what the Internet thinks.

To a degree that we have yet to fully grasp, what rules our age is the ideology of the Internet.

The author and former enfant terrible on life after death, breaking the rules, and forging a self through fiction.

Enrique Pedráza-Botero and Faye Tsakas’s short documentary follows a group of friends in suburban Texas who make their living in the world of “findom” on OnlyFans.