Culture
In OneZero. More on Medium.
‘At 50, you’re just getting started’
One morning in 2015, as 59-year-old Sally Misha Hamana waited for a department store clerk to serve her, a man — “a gentleman,” she says — lined up next to her. “I like your hair,” he told her. His throwaway comment left her speechless. She’d stopped coloring her grays a few months back, and her cropped pixie cut was 100% silver. “What does it matter what I look like?” she’d thought. “Nobody sees me anyways.”
The struggle began in her forties, when she was marketing a Texas rodeo. People began talking over her. Dismissing her ideas. Long-term colleagues sidelined her…
In the late 1970s, hackers forged a social media network using the dominant audio tech of the time — the telephone
POV: You’re a 14-year-old kid in Atlanta. It’s 1978, and the internet hasn’t been invented yet, so you mostly get your kicks over the phone. You love to call up your local radio station, WQXI, to request your favorite oldies. This time, however, the line’s been disconnected. A prerecorded message plays in your handset instead. QXI’s AM call-in number is now 741–0790, and QXI’s FM call-in number is… Just as you’re about to hang up, you hear something weird: After the recorded message ends and just before it loops again, you hear someone else on the line. They’re yelling “Hello…
Open Dialogue
Evan Selinger in conversation with Clive Thompson
This is Open Dialogue, an interview series from OneZero about technology and ethics.
I’m Evan Selinger, a professor of philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology. One of my favorite activities is talking with smart and engaging people who think deeply about responsibility and the paths for creating a better future. In the “Open Dialogue” series, I’ll reach out to academics, journalists, activists, tech workers, and scientists to explore how to better understand controversies, more thoughtfully analyze innovation, and critically determine which leading ideas and behaviors need to change.
I’m excited to talk this week with Clive Thompson about how the…
A grotesque segment mocking Black farmers illustrates just how much bigotry a conservative star can get away with
An overtly racist video by conservative YouTube star Steven Crowder did not violate YouTube’s hate speech policy, the company told OneZero, though it has been taken down for other reasons. The stance highlights the broad leeway for bigotry in the platform’s moderation rules, even as it cracks down on certain categories of content, such as Covid-19 misinformation.
In a March 16 livestream, Steven Crowder and his co-hosts on the show Louder With Crowder — which has 5.4 million subscribers — performed grotesque caricatures of Black people. The bits were part of a segment mocking provisions in the new U.S. Covid-19…
Here’s what I learned DM’ing with fake copyright phishers
Every month, a couple accounts contact me on Instagram, say they work for the platform, and threaten to delete my handle unless I click on bogus URLs designed to collect my personal information. As far as I can tell, they’re after one thing: My blue check mark.
I’m decidedly not famous, but I have a verified Instagram account thanks to a previous job. (I ran the company Instagram, among other things.) Scammers often send me sketchy messages saying my profile has violated copyright law and will be removed in 24 hours if I don’t fill out a form. I…
Grifin may be the next WallStreetBets after a viral TikTok video sent it to the top of the iOS App Store — but experts warn against its model
Earlier this month, a new investing app called Grifin went viral on TikTok and shot to the top of the iOS App Store overnight. Launched in November and backed by $2 million in funding, the app aims to make the stock market more approachable by enabling its users to “magically invest $1” in brands that they’re already buying from.
“The moment you buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks, you get to invest $1 in Starbucks stock. You shop on Amazon, $1 goes to Amazon,” said Grifin co-founder and CEO Aaron Froug in the viral TikTok video, adding that the…
From critically acclaimed live performances of The Lion King to Beat Battle rooms where 21 Savage, Wiz Khalifa, and Drake judged work from fledgling producers, Clubhouse owes its “unicorn” status and social clout to its Black users, Keith Nelson Jr writes in LEVEL.
“For Black celebrities who are often used for the clout of their popularity and rarely the nuance of their personality, Clubhouse offered a rare gift: the power to choose who to engage with, and about what,” Nelson writes.
But now the platform has a choice to make. Will it recognize how important Black users are to its…
‘Twitter description guy’ isn’t a guy. It’s Twitter’s curation team, and I talked to the woman who runs it.
“Twitter description guy,” in users’ collective imagination, is a beleaguered soul, constantly scrambling to comprehend the bizarre subcultural memes that go viral on the site so that he can write sober-minded summaries of them for Twitter’s trending section. In December, Twitter’s description of a Minecraft-related trending topic led Twitch streamers and gamers to imagine a beleaguered “Twitter description guy”. They worked to make #TwitterGuyIsOverParty a trending hashtag in hopes that said Twitter guy would be forced to write a description of his own cancellation.
There is, of course, no single “Twitter description guy.” The descriptions are written by Twitter’s curation…
BIG TECHNOLOGY
Ten years ago, Ghonim used Facebook to spark a revolution in Egypt. This week, he discusses social media’s evolution since then.
OneZero is partnering with the Big Technology Podcast from Alex Kantrowitz to bring readers exclusive access to interview transcripts — edited for length and clarity — with notable figures in and around the tech industry.
To subscribe to the podcast and hear the interview for yourself, you can check it out on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2011, Wael Ghonim created a Facebook page that sparked the overthrow of the Egyptian regime. Since then, the former Google marketing director has kept a close eye on social media’s evolution and has plenty to say about where it’s…
To defend science, the Paranormal Challenge devises experiments to test claims of X-ray vision, telekinesis, and other paranormal abilities
When Gary Arnold first heard the noise, he was alone in the library at the local college where he teaches writing. He was enjoying his lunch and reading a copy of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the story of a man whose life is changed by the unexpected spectral visitors.
He heard it in his right ear, a staticky, high-pitched crackle that reminded him of old dial-up modems. It was odd, but it also seemed important, so he pulled his inexpensive feature phone out of his pocket. …
