{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"Acast","provider_url":"https://acast.com","height":250,"width":700,"html":"<iframe src=\"https://embed.acast.com/$/3dd76634-7b1c-45c2-a9cf-2f6f96d4e0b4/697d0593f0f157225a542bb2?\" frameBorder=\"0\" width=\"700\" height=\"250\"></iframe>","title":"Online Culture Is the Whole Culture","description":"<p>There was a time, just before the pandemic, when folks would say “Twitter isn’t real life” as a means of dismissing the horrors of social media. This was a cope, a way to ignore the worst political and cultural actors who now dominate our psychic landscape. Now those people are in charge and they’ve manifested Twitter into real life in a way previously thought impossible.</p><p><br></p><p>The White House is posting <em>Stardew Valley</em><a href=\"https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2011864079053238516\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><em> </em>memes about whole milk</a>. A Customs and Border Patrol official is asking people if they’re triggered when they respond with empathy to the murder of a woman. Laura Loomer, one of the most online gargoyles to ever live, is a serious policy player in administration. The Secretary of War has a video game tattoo.</p><p><br></p><p>How did we get here? Michael Senters, a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech, is here to explain how online culture became<em> the</em> culture.</p><p><br></p><ul><li>It’s all for the posts</li><li>A YouTuber comes to town</li><li>What, exactly, does it mean to be terminally online?</li><li>The right goes all in on identity politics</li><li>The pandemic drove us all crazy</li><li>Turns out the post-modernists were correct</li><li>Posting yourself into a different form or reality</li><li>Survival tips for the extremely online</li><li>Depraved art and <em>Hearts of Iron IV</em></li><li>Deus Vult?</li><li>Video games as propaganda</li><li>We should have been harder on the online Nazis</li><li>John Romero will make you his bitch</li><li>A brief history of Something Awful</li><li>Fighting the performance regime</li></ul><p><br></p><p><a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/us/fraud-minnesota-somali.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch</a></p><p><br></p><p><a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/us/prosecutors-doj-resignation-ice-shooting.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Six Prosecutors Quit Over Push to Investigate ICE Shooting Victim’s Widow</a></p><p><br></p><p><a href=\"https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=do+you+have+stairs+in+your+house\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Do you have stairs in your house?</a></p><p><br></p><p><a href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/fuck-you-and-die-an-oral-history-of-something-awful/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Fuck You And Die: An Oral History of Something Awful</a></p>","author_name":"Matthew Gault and Jason Fields"}