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Snap This: Donald Trump Prints Out Blog Post, Writes on It, Mails it Back to Vanity Fair Writer
We can’t tell if Donald Trump is being totally subversive by printing out a Vanity Fair blog post about him, adding his comments in Sharpie, and mailing the hard copy to VF editor Graydon Carter… or if The Donald simply hasn’t learned about Track Changes or other online editing programs. More »
‘M. Night School’ Website Is Raising Money to Send M. Night Shyamalan Back to Film School
Tired of M. Night Shyamalan‘s recent cinematic failures like Devil and Razzie Worst Picture winner The Last Airbender? Do you yearn for the days of such masterful suspense thrillers as Signs? If you’ve got a dollar to spare, you could help M. Night School in sending the director back to his alma mater, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. More »
Video Gallery: ‘Trust’ and How Hollywood Thinks We Interact on the Internet
David Schwimmer‘s second directorial feature Trust is a riveting cautionary tale about what happens when an innocuous Internet friendship translates to real emotional danger in real life. It’s also probably the best portrayal of the Internet and social media that has come from film and television. In the almost twenty years since the Internet became mainstream enough that Hollywood incorporated it into storytelling, we’ve seen digital communication portrayed as deadly, oversimplified, schlocky, and cringeworthy. And then a few filmmakers/TV writers completely get it. More »
Good News! Wasting Time on the Internet Makes You a Better Worker
A new study from the University of Copenhagen found that when a group of subjects watched a funny video before performing a task, they made less mistakes than the other group, who didn’t get to watch the video and instead listened to their peers’ laughter while they did the same task. So, they’ve concluded that allowing workers to cool off on the Internet during the day will actually make them more productive. More »
Netflix adds seasons 1-4 of Mad Men to Instant Watch starting July 27. – We’ll still have to wait for close to a year for new episodes, but online syndication is nothing to sneeze at. (Deadline)
Miranda Cosgrove and Other Nickelodeon Stars Appear in Anti-Bullying PSAs
Remember Nickelodeon’s The Big Help, the do-good specials that had All That stars volunteer to help kids refurbish their local parks? Over the years, it’s changed as needed, adapting its content to match events like 9/11 or the threat of global warming. This year, its focus is on teen bullying. More »
April Fools’ Day on the Internet: Bronx Zoo Cobra, James Franco, and So Much More
Friday Or Die isn’t the only site that got in on today’s trickery; if you’re looking for fake products, Twitter shockers and new reality shows, then look no further than our roundup of April Fools’ jokes. More »
Facebook’s “Supermarket Scrabble” Group Unites Subversive Shoppers
Facebook: A place for our parents to be awkward, for us to stalk our crushes without their knowing, and now, for strangers to unite in the most childish of pranks. The Facebook group Supermarket Scrabble (2,450 members strong) invites its delinquents to go to their local supermarket, rearrange products so that they spell out dirty words, and upload the photographic evidence. More »
Miley Cyrus Doesn’t Like How the Internet Makes Stars–Especially Rebecca Black
Miley Cyrus quit Twitter in 2009, and even though there were rumors last week that she would return, she’s made it clear that she’s not a fan of social media. On a recent podcast of The Kyle and Jackie O Show, Cyrus said, “I do not tweet, I do not social network, I try to stay out of it. I complain enough about people knowing too much about my private life, so to go out there and exploit myself would be silly and hypocritical.” But what she has to say about viral star Rebecca Black comes across as just a bit hypocritical. More »
5 Situations Where the Emoticon Defense Might Come in Handy
The news story that prompted this post is actually really appalling: A convicted sex offender just lost his appeal because he justified his actions by referencing an emoticon. To clarify, a 60-year-old man named John Jacques arranged a meeting with a 13-year-old girl — who turned out to be the police — he met online. However, Jacques believes that this is entrapment because while he sent pornographic videos and wrote sexually explicit messages to the “girl” during their courtship, the fact that she sent back a winking emoticon was a clear indicator of “enticement.”
Wait, what? More »
Model/Blogger Xiaxue Calls Out Peter Coffin on His Fake Girlfriend Kimi Kobayashi
Sometimes the Internet is like a multimedia soap opera, and for that I love it. Xiaxue, a Singaporean blogger and model, posted this account to her blog yesterday (via BuzzFeed), in which she gets the final word against YouTube comedian Peter Coffin, with whom she had been butting heads for the last few months. Xiaxue has admitted more than once that she considers herself ugly, which is why she Photoshops the self-portraits she posts to her blog, and has gotten plastic surgery. Coffin doesn’t agree with her choices, and frequently challenges her over Twitter. (For what it’s worth, I don’t agree with plastic surgery either, but there’s a difference between trying to help someone and insulting them behind the veil of the Internet.)
The straw that broke the camel’s nose — er, back — came in early March, when Coffin called out Xiaxue for getting a nose job. When she asked why he felt the need to insult her, he responded that her self-revision was as bad as telling people that they would never be good enough unless they were rich and beautiful. After Xiaxue blocked him, a young (beautiful, we might add) woman named Kimi Kobayashi started laying into Xiaxue over Twitter. More »
James Franco’s Mom Betsy Gives Screenwriting Advice: “What’s to Lose?”
Anyone who has participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, every November) either as a writer or observer knows that ScriptFrenzy, the screenplay equivalent, is coming up fast. On April 1, thousands of Hollywood hopefuls will hunker down and spend thirty days on a movie or theater script, tracking their progress to 100 pages and cheering each other on along the way. The final product doesn’t necessarily have to be perfect — ScriptFrenzy is about getting started.
Betsy Franco, YA author and James Franco‘s mom, just wrote a piece for ScriptFrenzy’s Young Writers’ Program, sharing her experiences and urging first-time writers to take the leap. More »
4chan Understands Internet Privacy Better Than Facebook
At SXSW last week, 4chan founder Christopher Poole (known for a long time only by his screen name moot) criticized Mark Zuckerberg‘s vision for an online identity. Where the viewpoints of these two pivotal Internet players diverge is the dilemma of whether people should use their real name or a pseudonym on various websites. More »
Teens Don’t Trust the Internet for Sex Ed
A 2008 study of “a racially and ethnically diverse” group of 58 high school students has led the Guttmacher Institute to determine that although teenagers use the Internet for socializing, their primary source for sex education is still friends and family. Granted, it’s a very small sample, but it’s encouraging that teens interested in having sex are seeking out reliable sources. More »
Movie Plots Reimagined with “If You Watch It Backwards”
I love single-subject blogs, so I was delighted when this If You Watch It Backwards — based on a meme at Reddit several months ago — popped up on BuzzFeed. This joke is pretty much laid out for you as long as you know the plot of a given movie (or, as the site demonstrates, TV show or even website) and have enough spatial reasoning to turn the events around in retelling it. We’ve compiled the 11 funniest examples in our gallery. More »
Internet Urban Legend: How the Whole “Faking Cancer on the Internet” Thing Started
Last week, Reddit users were enraged to discover that a poster known as Lucidending had lied about having cancer. In the forum’s AMA (Ask Me Anything) forum, Lucidending claimed to have only 51 hours to live; he planned to overdose via Oregon’s laws of assisted suicide. What followed was a weekend of intimate conversation in which Lucidending played by the AMA rules and shared details about his life, in the hopes of leaving some sort of legacy. Some people even donated money to charities in Lucidending’s name. More »
The Memes That Should Have Appeared in Jennifer Aniston’s “Sex Tape” Commercial
I’ll admit, there was a certain appeal to Jennifer Aniston‘s first print ads for Smart Water: She references her all-American appeal in suggestive (but not sleazy) poses, and looks like she’s having fun. By contrast, in her new video campaign, Aniston seems harried and unfunny, and the commercial itself is crammed with outdated memes. Basically, the Smart Water team should’ve stuck to simple, because that’s what’s more effective for selling, you know, water. More »
You Guys, We Forgot Chuck Norris’ Birthday
I don’t know how I’m still here to write this, since the fury of Chuck Norris‘ roundhouse kick should have demolished me for forgetting the 71st birthday of the man who played Walker, Texas Ranger for eight years and inspired one of the greatest Internet memes. But the Bearded One is apparently forgiving, because I’ve been allowed to live another day, provided that I give you the best Chuck Norris facts. More »
Fan Performs “Open Letter to Stephen Fry” Live, for Stephen Fry
At this site, we advocate crushes — it’s in our name, after all — so even though this celebrity is out of the range of what we usually cover, I couldn’t resist posting this video. You might recognize Stephen Fry from his appearances on TV shows like Bones, or cameos in V for Vendetta and Alice in Wonderland (he voiced the Cheshire Cat). But if not, know simply that he is a sweet-natured, witty British man.
Just last month, Fry tweeted Internet musician Molly Lewis‘ “Open Letter to Stephen Fry” video, in which she sweetly asked the star, despite his sexual orientation, to let her carry his child. He laughed it off, but then forces converged to bring Lewis to a Harvard event in late February, honoring Fry with the Lifetime Achievement Award. More »
‘The Chronicles of Rick Roll’: Elaborate Internet Prank or Legitimate Movie?
The full-length trailer for NURV’s feature film The Chronicles of Rick Roll was released today, and hoo boy is it intense… and fake? My meme-loving heart wants to believe that this endeavor is legitimate, that these Internet celebrities have banded together for more than a four-minute joke. More »
