Tag Archive : CULTURE

Oh, fandom. So passionate, so partisan—and, too often these days, so prolifically peevish. From Tumblr and Wattpad to more mainstream platforms like Twitter and Instagram, online communities have served as rallying points for stan armies: obsessives who comb over every interview and shred of non-news for information about the object of their adoration. But increasingly, fandoms' emotions have been curdling into a different kind of potion; something petty, entitled, conspiratorial, even abusive. So on the occasion of San Diego Comic-Con, one of the biggest fan events in the world, it's time for some tough love.

First, a note: this is a look at toxic strains that exist within a larger fandom, not an indictment of a given artist or person. Fandom is a pure and precious thing, and no one should feel conflicted about being invested in a pop-culture figure or property. If you express that investment by being a worse person, though—treating appreciation like warfare, demanding dogmatic purity tests, attacking people, or seeing yourself as some kind of a crusader—than it's probably time to take some time and re-assess things. We're sure nothing in the following catalog sounds like anything you've done in the name of fandom, right? Enjoy Comic-Con!

10. Barbz (Nicki Minaj Fandom)

The Barbz are a fiercely loyal sort. Case in point: In April, upon the release of Invasion of Privacy, a writer for British GQ explained how Cardi B had adopted Nicki Minaj’s style in a much more accessible way. “Nicki intimidates; Cardi endears,” she wrote. Minaj disciples responded with an all-out attack. The GQ staffer was flooded with malicious tweets, ranging from the direct (“I will kill u bitch”) to even more direct (“You better to delete that before we get your address and start hunting you and your family down!!”) The following month, the Barbz turned on one of their own when a self-proclaimed fan wondered aloud on Twitter: “You know how dope it would be if Nicki put out mature content? No silly shit, just reflecting on past relationships, being a boss, hardships, etc.” (Minaj took it further and DMed a disgustingly petty reply to the fan). For Barbz, fandom doesn’t allow for dissent—even when it's not dissent but a valid, healthy appraisal. This may come as a surprise, y'all, but love and criticism are not mutually exclusive.

9. Swifties (Taylor Swift Fandom)

Generally speaking, Taylor Swift’s fans aren’t bad—they just really love Swift and tend to be a little over-the-top about it. And most of the time, that’s what fandom is. (Also, this is a pop star who sends holiday presents to them; she’s earned their devotion.) But within that group, the “Bad Blood” singer has a few bad apples. There are those who go after Hayley Kiyoko for daring to point out that she shouldn’t be criticized for singing about women when Swift sings about men all the time. (Swift actually agrees with Kiyoko on that point.) There are Swifties who get bent out of shape when she doesn’t get nominated for enough awards. And then there are the white supremacists—fans Swift seems to have done nothing to court, but pop up anyway. Yeah, the ones who call her an “Aryan goddess”? Those are the ones who give her a bad reputation.

8. Zack Snyder Fans

Look, Zack Snyder's hardcore supporters have it rough. Or, well, they think they do. They’ve hitched their wagon to a star that occasionally blinks out. He’s made some OK movies (Dawn of the Dead, Watchmen) but he’s made even more that have been trashed by critics: Sucker Punch; Man of Steel; Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. That's led to a persecution complex among more than a few of his stans. While this kerfuffle has died down a bit with Snyder's step back from the spotlight—recently, he has shifted focus to make iPhone movies and produce the DC movies rather than direct them—the coming years represent a reckoning. James Wan’s Aquaman and Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman sequel are headed to theaters, and the receptions they get may determine whether critics have complaints with all DC movies, or just the ones with Snyder behind the camera. In the meantime, though, his own personal justice league will be there to defend it.

7. Rick and Morty Fans

Yes, Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland created a funny, smart, challenging (god, those burps) cartoon. Yes, it delivers a bizarro Back to the Future ride through both spacetime and genre tropes. Yes, it's the most STEM-conscious animated show since Futurama. But sweet tapdancing Pickle Rick, you've never seen a TV fandom more noisome than this one. There's the "this show is so smart normies don't get it" self-congratulation that's so over-the-top it became a copypasta meme; there's the propensity to doxx the show's female writers and generally be such venal stains that Harmon despises them; there's the mass freakout after McDonald's ran out of limited-edition Szechuan dipping sauce. (Yes, that's correct.) While Adult Swim recently renewed the show for 70 new episodes, there's going to be quite a lull before anyone sees a new episode—here's hoping the fans grow up a little bit in the meantime.

6. #TeamBreezy (Chris Brown Fandom)

It’s been almost a decade since reports first surfaced of Chris Brown’s violent abuse of then-girlfriend Rihanna. Since then, Rihanna has rocketed to pop superstardom while Brown’s career has strided along, aided by a loyal following that borders on enablers. Despite an earnest-seeming redemption tour, reports of Brown’s violent behavior continue to bubble up: Brown’s ex-girlfriend filed for a restraining order; Brown went on a homophobic Twitter rant; Brown punched a fan in a nightclub; Brown locked a woman in his home, without a cell phone, so she could be sexually assaulted. (Brown’s camp denies that last accusation.) Yet, Team Breezy generally attributes such reports to misinformation and "haters." Fandoms are built on stand-by-your-man loyalty, but at some point it becomes impossible to love the art in good conscience. If the #MeToo movement is any indication, the times have changed since Rihanna’s bloody face headlined gossip sites. Willful ignorance is no longer an acceptable choice.

5. XXXtentacion Fans

On June 18, outside of a Broward County motorcycle dealership, 20-year-old Jahseh Onfroy was fatally gunned down by two assailants. At the time of his death, Onfroy, who rapped under the moniker XXXTentacion, had already amassed a rare kind of fame: He attracted deep love and even deeper hate with a ferocious mania. The allure of Onfroy’s dark matter inspired the type of fandom that spills into violent obsession. A recurring source of vitriol for the rapper, and an easy target for his rabid fanbase, was his ex-girlfriend, Geneva Ayala, who filed multiple charges against the rapper (including aggravated battery of a pregnant woman, domestic battery by strangulation, and witness tampering). When it came to light that Ayala created a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for hospital bills due to damage inflicted by Onfroy, his fans bullied her into exile: forcing her to delete Instagram, hacking her Twitter account, harassing her at work to the point that she was left with no option but to quit, and shutting down her GoFundMe (it was later reopened). Having made a name for himself on Soundcloud, where he often engaged issues of mental health in his music, Onfroy willingly embraced his demons (he once called himself “lil dylan roof” on Twitter, referencing the Charleston shooter who murdered nine parishioners in South Carolina in 2015). But even now, in death, XXX is a reminder that extreme fandom has the power to blind people to the blood on their own hands.

4. Logang (Logan Paul Fandom)

Let’s get this out of the way up front. Many, even most, of Logan Paul’s fans are literal children. And so if you ask us who is really responsible for their bad behavior, we’re going to have to say the fault is predominantly with Paul and, you know, other adults. But the Logang (or the Logangsters, depending on who you ask), like Lil Tay, are inventing a new category of internet villain: the terrifying baby troll. They do all the things adult trolls do—parrot back the sexist and racist things Pauls says, stalk him outside hotel rooms, and harass and troll the “haters” daring to criticize their deeply problematic idol—but they’re kids! So you can’t really fire back at them without being a jerk yourself. Listen, Logang: all Logan wants to do is sell you merch. He’s not really your friend. Can I interest you in a puppy video?

3. Bro Army (Pewdiepie Fandom)

First rule of non-toxic fandoms: Don’t call yourselves "bro," don’t call yourselves an "army," and definitely don’t call yourselves the Bro Army. People might assume you’re a bunch of flame-war-loving trolls who think girls are icky—and where YouTuber PewDiePie’s fans are concerned, everyone would be absolutely right. It’s not just that they’ve stuck with the Swedish gamer/alleged comedian as he peppered his videos with racial slurs, rape jokes, anti-Semitism, and homophobia for nearly a decade (though that’s bad enough). It’s also that they insist that PewDiePie somehow isn’t being hateful at all. Oh, and if you quote their hero back at them, they’ll wallpaper your social media accounts with thoughtful messages about how you suck—for years.

2. The Dark Side of Star Wars Fandom

The most recent eruption has been a hilariously non-ironic campaign to remake The Last Jedi, but that's sadly just the latest in a long line of online grossness from the entitled Sith-heads who are so keen on reclaiming the Star Wars universe . Somehow, Gamergate has come to a galaxy far, far away; hectoring, harassment, even death threats aimed at director Rian Johnson. To be clear, this is a tiny (if vocal) subset of Star Wars fandom, which on the whole is as joyous and inclusive as the universe is finally becoming. But to to quote our own Adam Rogers:

"Everyone has a right to opinions about movies. Everyone has a right, I guess, to throw those opinions in the face of the people who make those movies, though it does seem at minimum impolite. Everyone has the right to ask transnational entertainment companies to make the movies they want, and if those companies don’t respond, to stop giving the companies money. But harassment, threats, jokes about someone’s race or gender? A Jedi would fight someone who did that stuff. The Force binds us all together. Hatred and anger are the ways of the Dark Side; they may bring power, but at a cost. It harms individuals, debases the people who do it, and it breaks the Fellowship. In the end, the cost of that power will be powerlessness."

1. Elon Musk Acolytes

"Always punch up" is a good life motto. You’ll accomplish a lot by speaking truth to power; dissecting the misdeeds of a relative unknown, though, makes you look like a tool. That’s why, despite the plethora of dark and toxic fandoms that flourish on the fringes of the internet, the group that tops our list of nasties is devoted to a person at the internet's very center: Elon Musk. To his fan club, Musk is so much more than a charismatic artist, a talented musician, or, hey, a flawed but successful tech entrepreneur—he’s a messiah, a vestige of an age of retrograde masculinity, when a reasonably successful man could expect his ideas to remain unchecked and his words be read as gospel. And Musk wields his one-man metaphor status (and his 22.3 million follower army) to whack out any dissenting opinions. “Because before he commented on my tweet, it was floundering in relative obscurity,” science writer Erin Biba wrote in a piece for the Daily Beast. But after Musk’s dismissive response, Biba found herself drowning in hate mail and abuse. By letting his mob pick over opinions he does not like, Musk is able to control the narrative, playing up investigative reporting on Tesla’s poor labor practices as a misinformation campaign—or even, in some recent deleted tweets, insinuating that one of the people involved with the Thai cave rescue efforts is a pedophile. It’s bad to be thin-skinned, and terrible to play the underdog, but playing it while you ignite a million-man bullying campaign is reprehensible.

Ever since news broke of Cambridge Analytica’s harvesting and misuse of Facebook user data, numerous politicians, technologists, and everyday people have offered opinions on how best to respond. Many have suggested users leave the platform; others have called for government regulation. Still more have advised on ways users should lock down their privacy settings and delete content. While I’m sympathetic to all of the above suggestions—and I have even deleted my account, at least for now—there are more effective steps users can take to protect their data and privacy. It just means breaking the rules a bit.

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About

Lil Miss Hot Mess (@LilMissHotMess) is a drag queen by night and a PhD student in media studies by day. She cofounded the #MyNameIs campaign, reads to children as part of Drag Queen Story Hour, and has performed on Saturday Night Live with Katy Perry.

Some backstory: I’m one of the drag queens who protested Facebook a few years ago after several of us were booted from the platform for having names on our profiles that didn’t match our driver’s licenses.

But while the protest started with drag performers, we quickly learned that the impact of Facebook’s real names policy went far beyond our community: We received emails from LGBTQ people, domestic violence survivors, Native Americans, political activists, professionals who worked in healthcare or the criminal justice system, and many more who used non-legal names as a means of better expressing their identities or ensuring their safety.

For many, Facebook was a lifeline, a means of connecting with communities or resources they couldn’t otherwise find close to home. But unfortunately, while Facebook offered some cosmetic improvements following our protest, it still retained the policy.

After reports of Russian interference with US and other elections and the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, many have asked me whether I have regrets about advocating against the real names policy. My answer is a firm no.

Many believe that Facebook’s policy is a safeguard against bad actors who might hide behind a fake moniker to cyberbully or harass people. However, I (and many others) have always argued that using a chosen name is not inherently deceitful and the benefits of being able to self-identify outweigh the costs. Moreover, bad behavior should be prohibited and punished on the grounds that its intent and impacts are harmful—not because of the name someone uses while doing it.

In fact, I would argue that in our current political and media climate, all users should take a cue from drag queens and employ pseudonyms and find creative ways of obfuscating or confusing companies’ data. Yes, these tactics may violate Facebook’s terms of service, but the platform (like many social media services) offers limited tools for controlling what information is accessible—your name, photo, location, and networks are always public—and how that data is used. And its recent updates are more of a redesign than a rethinking.

Below are a handful of tactics everyone can use to pollute their own data and protect their privacy.

Change Your Name: Using a chosen name allows you a bit more control over how your data is collected, stored, and used. By adopting a chosen name, it’s possible to stay in touch with friends who can decode who you really are, while avoiding exes, clients, and colleagues, or bad actors who you’d rather not be able to find you. Plus, using a different name on different platforms makes it just a bit harder for trackers to connect the dots between your accounts, activity, and behaviors. But, as those of us who’ve struggled with this policy know, it’s not always easy to change your name; you may have better luck starting with a new account or using a name that sounds “normal” to an American ear.

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“Like” Like Everyone’s Watching: Another easy way to make it more difficult for companies to paint a clear picture of you is to give them false, misleading, or simply too much information. For example, if you don’t want to be targeted by manipulative political ads, perhaps try “liking” some pages or politicians who don’t fully match your values; the same goes for favorite brands, places, celebrities, or anything else you can support. Think of this as throwing the company off the scent. Similarly, try “liking” every post or comment you come across, or reacting with “wow” or “sad” when you don’t really mean to. You can also use Ben Grosser’s Go Rando browser extension, which automatically randomizes your reactions whenever you click “like.”

Tag Photos Incorrectly: Similarly, try mis-tagging photos of friends—or use photos of celebrities, cartoons, or inanimate objects—to confuse Facebook’s facial recognition and computer vision algorithms. We’ve probably all seen Facebook mess up in its own suggestions (that happens all the time for drag queens), so let’s give them something else to laugh at.

Click All the Ads: You may also want to try clicking all the ads Facebook and other platforms deliver to you—especially the ones you’re not actually interested in. Again, this effectively hides your real interests within a sea of not-quite-real information. Also check out the browser extension AdNauseum, developed by Daniel Howe and Helen Nissenbaum, which will automate this for you.

Share Accounts: Finally, for those of us trying to curb our social media addictions, another option is to share an account with friends or family. That way, you can still make sure you don’t miss important updates or events, while making it harder to trace you personally.

Are these foolproof? Certainly not. There are still many creepy forms of high-tech tracking and big data analysis that allow social media platforms to put the pieces together, but these suggestions make the companies do the work—and ideally, force them to justify to us why they’re doing what they’re doing in the first place. Are they ethical? I think so. Until companies come clean about their motives and give us real options to present ourselves authentically, to control the flow of our data, and to opt out of particular kinds of tracking, I’d say we’re justified in taking steps to protect ourselves, even if that means stretching the truth.

Finally, will this confuse your friends? There’s no doubt about it. But that’s another thing everyone can learn from drag queens: Sometimes playing with who we are and what’s expected of us can make life a lot more interesting.

WIRED Opinion publishes pieces written by outside contributors and represents a wide range of viewpoints. Read more opinions here.

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After much fanfare, Justice League is finally in theaters, complete with Wonder Woman, Batman, The Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg. It’s a jam-packed two hours, but it can still leave people wanting more. For those looking to go—in the parlance of the tagline—"all in" with the film’s heroes, the DC Comics back catalogue is filled with stories that build out the mythology and ideas introduced in the movie, from Atlantis to Apokolips and beyond. With an entire comic book universe to explore, where should a new Justice League fan start? We have some suggestions.

Justice League Vol. 2 #1-6

Arguably the source material for the movie—albeit with an additional Green Lantern—the first six issues of DC's 2011 Justice League series had an impressive creative team (Geoff Johns and Jim Lee, aka DC's chief creative officer and co-publisher, respectively) and a daunting remit: Reboot the entire DC comic book universe and tell an all-new origin for the Justice League. That it manages to pull both off is more than slightly impressive.

How to read it: Available digitally and in the Justice League Vol. 1: Origin print collection.

Aquaman Vol. 8 #1-6

First, the bad news: Jason Momoa's Aquaman isn't really like any version of the Sea King from the comic books, so anyone looking for more of that guy will have to wait until next year's solo Aquaman movie. While you're waiting, however, check out the opening issues of the current Aquaman comic book series, which makes a convincing case for why Arthur Curry is a badass no matter what form he takes. (Yes, even this one.)

How to read it: Available digitally and in the Aquaman Vol. 1: The Drowning print collection.

New Gods #1-11

Wondering what Steppenwolf's whole deal is? Can’t decipher what those Mother Boxes are all about? Still can’t figure out what's going on with that teleport tube no one ever bothers to explain in the movie? Turn to the Source—that's a pun, which you'll realize once you crack open these comics. The 1970s output of Jack Kirby, the man behind the Fantastic Four, Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Avengers, and X-Men (to name just a handful), is more stylized and out there than his Marvel work, but it's no less awesome. Also, if you read these books much, much more of Justice League will make sense. We promise.

How to read it: Available digitally, and in the upcoming Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus print collection.

JLA #10-15

We won't spoil the post-credit sequence for those who haven't seen it, but those wondering where Justice League 2 might end up going would be well-served to read the "Rock of Ages" arc from the 1990s JLA series, in which the team faces two threats they didn't see coming. Spoiler alert: You'll have to deal with the fact that Superman was made out of electricity or something in this run, so get ready for a bright blue hero in a different costume than you’re used to. That said, if you can handle alternate futures, time travel, and the subjugation of the human race—all of which appear in this story—you can probably live with Kal-El looking a little weird.

How to read it: Available digitally, and in the JLA: Deluxe Edition Vol. 2 print collection.

The Flash Vol. 5 #25-32

Just as Ezra Miller's slightly nervous and lovable take on the fastest man alive, Barry Allen, is about to win new fans for the Flash, the regular DC comic featuring the character has—ahem—kicked into high gear, thanks to a showdown with his arch-nemesis that changes his powers for the worst. What happens when the Flash can no longer just run away from his problems? That's what you'll find out in these books.

How to read it: Available digitally and in print editions.

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Back in 2011, when Guillermo del Toro was first starting to hype his forthcoming movie Pacific Rim, he gleefully described it as “giant fucking monsters against giant fucking robots.” That’s how he always talked about it, with childlike glee. But he was also steeped in its antecedents: Toho monster films, Voltron, decades of sci-fi. The film he was planning was a playground toy battle writ large, imagined by a guy with the exuberance and resources necessary to build his own toys. Without that, it would’ve just been Transformers—all rock-‘em-sock-‘em, no heart.

Pacific Rim Uprising is what that movie would’ve been without Guillermo del Toro. Not to drag Steven S. DeKnight’s 10-years-later sequel—it could’ve been a much worse mecha-wreck than it is—but it’s clearly playing in someone else’s sandbox, tooling around with another kid’s toys. While it monster-robot fights are just as fun the second time around, it seems content simply to play the same notes as the original. And without the skill of del Toro and original screenwriter Travis Beacham, Uprising is nothing more than the wedding-band cover version of Pacific Rim.

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It’s funny that it would turn out this way. When the original Pacific Rim came out in the summer of 2013, it wasn’t exactly a critical darling. It barely cleared a 70 percent on Rotten Tomatoes; genre fans appreciated its charms, but it wasn’t embraced by the kind of people who would tell you at parties they loved films. There’s even an argument to be made that it was below the talents of the man who made Pan’s Labyrinth. But in retrospect, especially after seeing Uprising, it’s impossible not to notice del Toro's deftness. To have Idris Elba scream “We’re canceling the apocalypse!” is a gamble at best, but to pull it off so well the line briefly became a catchphrase—and even gets a shoutout in its sequel—is testament to GDT's mastery.

No, Pacific Rim wasn't deep. Yes, that ending was cornier than Iowa in the summertime. Frankly, it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly del Toro did to make it work—but those things become obvious when set next to *Uprising'*s shortcomings. Like, say, originality. Concepts like the “drift compatibility” and “neural handshakes” that let jaeger pilots sync to control their mechs seemed ludicrous the first time around, but they were forgivable because, hey man, cool story. But here? Not so much. Having Ron Perlman show up as a black market kaiju parts dealer in Pac Rim because Perlman makes a great bad guy. Having teenaged Amara Namani (Cailee Spaeny) introduced in the sequel as a potential hero who pilfers fallen jaegers doesn’t have the same impact, despite Spaeny's charisma. (Also, isn’t that Rey’s introduction in Star Wars: The Force Awakens?) The same goes for Uprising’s talk of the strange scientific properties of kaiju blood and the importance of banding together at the end of the world, which can feel like a strong case for un-canceling the apocalypse.

Sequels are never going to be truly original—canonical consistency is the entire point—but any subsequent installments in a franchise should at least try to further the lore, and I’m fairly certain the only new thing I learned in Uprising was that tapping into kaiju brains can get you so high you’ll want to marry a kaiju brain. (Don’t ask.) And what Pacific Rim Uprising does get right—its epic final third, wherein everyone shuts the hell up and lets the giant robots fight the giant monsters—it does in daylight so broad it renders everything just a little too shiny. Most of del Toro’s Rim took place at night, an aesthetic choice that gave every fight a neon-hued Blade Runner edge. Uprising is the opposite, an aesthetic choice that reveals too many details. Sunlight isn't only a disinfectant; it makes jaegers look even more like Transformers in a Michael Bay movie, and kaiju appear a lot less menacing. (Not for nothing, but the gaping blue hellmouth of the movie’s final Big Bad looks more like a Georgia O’Keeffe painting than anything else.)

None of this is to say that Pacific Rim Uprising doesn’t have redeeming factors. Again, the fights are fun. And John Boyega, who plays Jake, the son of Elba's character Stacker Pentecost, continues to exude the same charisma that has made him a Star Wars fan favorite. The movie passes the Bechdel Test, still a relative rarity in genre and sci-fi films. Charlie Day will probably never not be funny. But there’s no heart, no soul—and that was what Guillermo del Toro brought to Pacific Rim. Where del Toro imbued his movie with a sense of “Can you believe I’m getting away with this?” Uprising opts for “Oh yeah, we’re trying to get away with this! EXTREME!”

Guillermo Del Toro has always been a master of finding the joy and emotional center in surreal, even unbelievable situations. He made a movie about sexing a fish-man and won an Oscar for it. His is a special gift. He wants to give people worlds steeped in the creatures of his imagination. Pacific Rim Uprising, though, just gives them giant monsters and robots—nothing more.

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"Netflixing in Public"—the act of watching Netflix out in the world, not to be confused with "Netflix and chill"—is officially a thing. Ever since smartphones got fast enough to stream on-the-go, folks have gotten more and more used to watching TV and movies almost anywhere. Don’t believe us? Go watch the line at Whole Foods for an hour, or ride the New York City subway. Or check out the latest data from Netflix itself.

Yes, Netflix is paying attention to when, where, and how people consume TV and movies, and has actually started studying how their habits are changing. And in their latest data set, released today, the streaming service says it discovered that 67 percent of Americans now watch Netflix out in the world, a figure that, according to Eddy Wu, Netflix’s director of product innovation, shows that "Netflixing in Public has become a social norm."

Not that looking at stuff on your phone was ever really frowned upon. Even back in 2015, when Pew Research Center released its study on the matter, 77 percent of adults thought it was fine for someone to use their cellphone while walking down the street, and 75 percent thought it was acceptable for people to use them on public transit. In the intervening years, connectivity has only become more prevalent and watching streaming video more common (see: AT&T giving out free HBO Go with its unlimited data plans and T-Mobile letting users watch video without eating up their data allotment). Moreover, Netflix itself launched a feature a year ago that allowed folks to download video for when they're out of range, something that's no doubt upped the amount of video people are watching in the mall or at the airport.

“The introduction of the Netflix download feature has given users the freedom to watch their favorite movies and shows wherever they want,” Wu said in a statement, “like during their commute or waiting in line, or for some … that means at work or even in a public restroom.” (Um, that last one is oddly specific, Ed.)

Streaming while flushing aside, Netflix’s data—which comes from more than 37,000 responses to a worldwide survey conducted this past summer, rather than some sort of creepy tracking mechanism—found some fascinating bits of information. For one, 44 percent of the respondents reported that they’d caught someone snooping on their screen, and 22 percent were embarrassed by what they were watching. (Was it Gossip Girl? It was Gossip Girl, wasn’t it? Don’t lie.) Netflix also found that 11 percent of those surveyed had a movie or TV show spoiled because they peeked at someone else’s screen in public.

The snooping aspect of Netflix's study is compelling because it shows just how much rabid phone usage has completely eroded the line between public and private. Don't think so? Go back to that Whole Foods line and see how many people are talking to their significant other on an earpiece. The fact that almost everyone is on their phone now has lead to people being much more brazen about what they'll have up on their screens—screens that are likely to attract the attention of folks nearby.

And people who watch in public probably don't care if someone is looking over their shoulder. In addition to that fairly low embarrassment statistic above, Netflix also found 35 percent of those who binge in public say they've been interrupted by someone who wanted to talk about what they were watching. (Was it Gossip Girl? It was Gossip Girl wasn’t it?) The report didn't indicate whether any of them was bothered by the interruption, but chances are if they had been streaming in public for a while they were probably used to it. Fans still think of watching their favorite thing as a group event, whether consumed at home or elsewhere, it's just that smartphones have evolved our ideas where public spaces end and personal spaces begin.

Oh, and speaking of personal time, 22 percent of public streamers reported they have cried while viewing. Folks in Mexico, Colombia, and Chile were the most emotional, but—as Netflix’s data release notes—"it’s unlikely to see a German bawling while they binge." OK, that’s oddly specific, too.

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The first thing you notice when you walk into the theater is the smell of soap, followed by a faint stickiness on the carpeted floors, and a tacky coating on the armrests of the seats.

When the lights come up at the Gazillion Bubbles Show, it quickly becomes clear what's going on. Powerful fans blow tiny soap bubbles into the audience by the thousands. Little kids giggle; bigger kids scream. And like a magician, 27-year-old Melody Yang pulls out her wands.

She uses water-based vapor (she calls it "smoke") to create bubbles that erupt like volcanoes, and some that launch into the air like rockets. She brings kids on stage and makes huge, tubular bubbles that can encase five of them inside.

"People love it. It's just something that is so universal," she says. "It's something that takes you back to your childhood because a lot of the times when we see a bubble we see it when we're very young, and we're just like 'what is that?' You know, it puts us back in the moment."

Yang grew up on this stage. Her parents, Fan and Ana, have been performing together for decades, and over the years they brought Melody and her brother, Deni, into the act as well.

"Me and my brother would walk on stage and he'd put us in a bubble," Melody says of her father, "and then he would slowly teach me and my brother the routine."

Now, the Yangs take turns performing in New York, where they share a space with the Tony Award-winning musicals Avenue Q and Jersey Boys, and in venues around the world.

The family has set more than a dozen world records, for everything from Encasing the Largest Land Mammal in a Bubble (an elephant) to fitting the Most People Inside a Bubble (181 was their record) to making the world's Longest Soap Bubble Wall (a 166-foot, 11-inch bubble), a record that still stands. Their records not only prove that the Yangs are bubble experts, but also that there's a record for just about everything.

Watch the video above to see the incredible bubbles Melody makes—and to learn some of her tricks for making them at home.

Let's get this out of the way: You've seen the first trailer (and, before that, the TV spot) for Solo: A Star Wars Story, right? If not, go ahead and do that. OK, now that we have your undivided attention, we can get on with all the other Star Wars news of the last few weeks. And there's a lot. Can you say "a whole new series of movies, and even more"?

The Solo Han Solo Film Had Two Han Solos Behind the Scenes (Got All That?)

The Source: Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy

Probability of Accuracy: If Kennedy is saying it, it’s legit.

The Real Deal: While the new trailers didn’t show much in terms of Alden Ehrenreich’s Han Solo, it was revealed via Entertainment Weekly that the original Han Solo, Harrison Ford, was involved in the making of Solo: A Star Wars Story, acting as an advisor to his successor. “What [Ford] did so beautifully for Alden was he talked a lot about what he remembered when he first read Star Wars, and what George had done with Han,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy explained. “Who the character was and the conversations he had for so many years with George about how that character developed… He gave Alden that kind of insight which was invaluable. There were several times in the course of making the movie where Alden would actually recount some of the things that Harrison had pointed out. I think that was really, really helpful to him.” How much of this will come across onscreen, of course, no one will know until May.

Fans Won’t See the Seams In Solo

The Source: Director Ron Howard

Probability of Accuracy: The proof will be in the pudding when the movie’s out, but he seems very sincere, if nothing else.

The Real Deal: EW also talked to director Ron Howard about stepping in and taking over Solo after the dismissal of original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller. When asked about how much of the finished movie is his, versus Lord and Miller’s, he demurred. “I don’t really want to explain it. I don’t really want to be specific about that because, again, I don’t even want that to matter to fans,” he said. “I could understand why you’d ask, and some might even be curious, but look, everybody who has been involved in this has done nothing but love what this movie could be, and that’s been the vibe around it. I think audiences are gonna feel that love and excitement.” Well, that’s the hope, at least…

Winter Is Coming. Kind Of

The Source: An official Lucasfilm announcement

Probability of Accuracy: It’s an official announcement; this is as accurate as it gets.

The Real Deal: In a surprising move, Lucasfilm announced last week that Game of Thrones executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are going to be heading to the galaxy far, far away once their time in Westeros is up, signing on to create a new series of Star Wars movies for the studio. Lucasfilm didn't provide any details beyond that—but that didn’t stop people from speculating that they could be working on a Knights of the Old Republic movie, just like they did when it was announced that Rian Johnson would be working on a new Star Wars movie series. At this point, someone needs to make a real Old Republic movie just so fans won't have to speculate about it anymore.

Are There Secret Star Wars Movies in the Works?

The Source: Mysterious, vague rumors on Twitter

Probability of Accuracy: Who can even tell…?

The Real Deal: The hiring of Weiss and Benioff also launched a conversation online about the fact that Lucasfilm seems unable to hire anyone to make a Star Wars movie who isn’t a white man, at a time when the movies themselves are making efforts to branch out in terms of the diversity of their leads. This piece by Marc Bernardin is a fine example of why this is a problem, and what it means for the future of Star Wars movies and the fandom as a whole. Which is what made these tweets particularly interesting…

…Are there secret Star Wars movies in the works that no one knows about, being made by people that no one knows is working on them? It sounds unlikely and deeply paranoid … but also not entirely impossible, despite that.

A Galaxy Streaming Very Close to You Indeed

The Source: Disney CEO Bob Iger

Probability of Accuracy: It’s a vague announcement, but it's something that Iger has no reason to fib about, so let’s call it accurate.

The Real Deal: Star Wars: Rebels is coming to an end, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be any more Star Wars on the small screen. Indeed, just the opposite; speaking to investors recently, Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed, “We are developing not just one, but a few Star Wars series specifically for the Disney direct-to-consumer app. We've mentioned that and we are close to being able to reveal at least one of the entities that is developing that for us. Because the deal isn't completely closed, we can't be specific about that.” Multiple series? Start your speculation engines.

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Two years ago today, a studio called Niantic released a game with a novel proposition: Go outside. Point your smartphone at the real world. Catch some monsters. Within a day, Pokémon Go was at the top of every app store chart. Within 200 days, players had spent a billion dollars on in-game upgrades—the shortest time to reach that milestone by a wide margin. In the summer of 2016, you couldn’t walk two blocks without running into, sometimes literally, a person in hot Pidgey pursuit. And then it stopped. Or so it seemed.

The news reports faded. Shops that had seen a sharp spike in sales thanks to Pokémon hot spots settled back into their normal routines. In just four weeks, between that August and September 2016, Pokémon Go shed nearly 20 million players, as enthusiasts headed back to school, or lost themselves in various other viral pursuits.

But the game’s long retreat from that initial burst belies its continued, unprecedented success. And in the gap between what you might think happened to Pokémon Go and the game’s current-day dominance lies an important lesson about the future of apps.

Pokémon Went

It’s true that far fewer people play Pokémon Go today than did two years ago. In July 2016, the crush of players boosted attendance at Pokémon-heavy Crystal Bridges Museum in Fayetteville, Arkansas by 50 percent year over year. By that August, the tide was already ebbing. “It seems like the hype died down in the span of a month,” says Crystal Bridges public relations director Beth Bobbitt. (She adds, “We still have a lot of ‘pokestops’ and ‘gyms’ all around the museum campus so I think we’re still a great location to play the game, for those who still are.")

Niantic CEO John Hanke

You’ve seen this yourself, anecdotally. There are no viral videos of Pokécrowds gone amuck anymore. No one makes Weedle jokes at the water cooler. The natural conclusion: Pokémon Go is just another fad that disappeared in a blink, a fameball of Pog proportions. But writing off Pokémon Go after the initial frenzy is like assuming PyeongChang no longer exists post-Olympics. What matters isn’t how Pokémon Go looked at its zenith, but how it held on from there.

“It was completely uncharted territory. The initial fervor, that global excitement around the game and the way it spread virally, globally, in such a short period of time. It was a new experience for all of us,” says Niantic CEO John Hanke. “But looking at it in retrospect, it looks very similar to all games. There’s an attrition curve that’s reasonably consistent across games. Some games are better at that attrition curve than others. That kind of separates the winners from the losers.”

By every measure that matters, Pokémon Go has been a winner. Since its launch, it has almost never dropped out of the daily top 100 downloaded apps in both the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store, according to app analytics company App Annie. It has been the top-grossing app in the Play Store this entire week. In two years, according to an estimate by app analytics firm Apptopia, it has taken in $1.8 billion in revenue.

"Even though the mega spending at the beginning has died off, the rate of revenue is still highly impressive," says Apptopia communications lead Adam Blacker. "Where the money comes from is actually pretty evenly split between iOS and Android, which is unusual"

It also helps that mobile games don’t necessarily require lots of players to be successful. Revenue generally comes from power users, the whales that invest in PokéCoins—or whatever their poison—the way others might their 401k.

“Generally speaking within games, a smaller portion of your users are spending a lot of money. That’s true of most premium games,” says App Annie analyst Lexi Sydow. “I would imagine that trend would hold for this game.”

But the most impressive indicator of Pokémon Go’s sustained success is how much of their lives people devote to it. To this day, more cumulative time is spent playing Pokémon Go than any other game. It’s not even close: One in five minutes spent on the top 20 games on Android in May was devoted to chucking virtual Pokéballs.

“The game has been remarkably consistent and stable in terms of its performance post that bubble era, if you want to think of it that way, when we first launched,” Hanke says.

In fact, only a handful of apps—hello there, Candy Crush Saga—have had anything close to Pokémon Go’s staying power. The durability is surprising, especially if you’d forgotten Pokémon Go even existed. But it’s also instructive, especially as the app economy fully embraces the augmented reality experiences Niantic pioneered.

All Inclusive

Niantic doesn’t offer much in the way of demographic specifics on its players, but suffice to say they don’t much resemble the Fortnite crowd. The game attracts proportionally more older people and more women than its peers—and in fact can credit much of its initial success to enthusiasts who otherwise wouldn’t be playing anything at all.

“Pokémon Go was not displacing other games. It wasn’t taking time away,” Sydow says. “We saw that it was actually additive time. People were taking more of their day playing Pokémon Go but also doing what they would originally.”

Pulling from a broader pool has helped keep Pokémon Go going. While it experiences steady attrition like any other game, it has a higher ceiling on potential new players to attract. And because it’s a game that takes place in the real world, it has more ways of making sure those players stick around.

“I think the design of the game in terms of it being an MMO should not be overlooked,” says Hanke, referring to the massively multiplayer online game genre of which Pokémon Go is a prime example. World of Warcraft would be another, a comparison that Hanke invites. Just as a WoW guild encourages regular, cooperative play, exploring the world through a Pokémon Go lens with friends can be mutually reinforcing.

“I think in Pokémon Go, because it’s a real-world game, it’s even more sticky than with League of Legends or something, where you’ve got a team but never see them face to face," Hanke says. "With Pokémon Go, you are meeting those people face to face. You’re forming real friendships with them. Friendships are sticky. That’s probably the secret sauce of the game, right there.”

Niantic has, naturally, leaned into this advantage. In June 2017 it introduced so-called Raid Battles, a cooperative mode where groups of players team up to take down especially powerful bosses. This past January, it began organizing a monthly worldwide Community Day, using special Poké-bonuses to lure enthusiasts out into the open in major cities. And just last month, it started rolling out a Friends feature, which enables sending of gifts and trading of Pokémon among people you know in real life.

The roadmap from here follows that same course, buttressing the gaming appeal of Pokémon Go with hints of a social network. “I think there’s a ton more we can do there to basically enrich the game when you’re playing it together with people that you know,” Hanke says. That includes a system for dueling other players, which Niantic still plans to implement at some point.

Brave New Worlds

Whether Pokémon Go’s durability, two years later, surprises you likely depends on if you still play it. But its disappearance for so many people for so long underscores how little we know about what happens on other people's phones.

"Our mobile phones are our most personal devices. We have our bank accounts linked, we have our messages to our family members, we have our emails," Sydow says. "I think that translates here."

Its success may also prove difficult to replicate, although you can expect a swath of imitators now that both Apple and Google have invested deeply in augmented reality, and Niantic itself has opened up its platform to outsiders.

Pokémon Go is itself, after all, a spin on Ingress, a game Niantic launched in 2012 that follows the same basic pattern—minus the Pikachu appeal. Ingress had its devotees, but without generations of Pokémon fans to tap into, it had nowhere near the cultural impact. Niantic's upcoming effort, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, will also map a famous fictional property over the real world. As AR becomes less of a novelty than the norm, the trick will be to create those experiences without the failsafe of a megahit's built-in fan base.

Still, surely something else will catch the same lighting in a bottle—or Blitzle in a Pokéball—that Niantic has. When that happens, all due credit to the model that enabled it: Go outside. Point your smartphone at the real world. And find some friends to do it with.

Donald Trump is ruining television. Consider how the principal foci of TV seemed to shift when he became president—figuratively bullhorning his way into TV’s domestic interior in a way that has clogged the thematic daring on a number of shows across network, cable, and streaming platforms. Shows of every hue now engage the tempest of Trump's reach and rule. With Roseanne, which returned to ABC last night after 20 years off the air, we again see what happens to a sitcom exacerbated by the realities of 2018: It becomes a feral thing, a carnival of political and social discourse where opinions detonate left and right but solutions run dry.

Predictably, the show is drowning in the anxieties of the Trump era. "Knee still giving you trouble, Roseanne?" Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) remarks in an early scene. "Why don’t you get that fixed with all the health care you suckers got promised." She sharply lobs the insult while clad in a pink pussyhat and a T-shirt with the words “Nasty Woman” emblazoned on the front—just in case it wasn’t clear who she didn’t vote for.

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For the uninitiated: Roseanne is pure Americana. The show originally ran from 1988 to 1997 (the debut pulled in 21 million viewers) and chronicled a working-class family from an Illinois suburb. Living and loving paycheck to paycheck, they scraped by doing what they could—money, bills, and food were always cause for debates around social status—but they did have each other. At the head of the Conner tribe were Roseanne (Roseanne Barr), with her squawk of a laugh and pro-choice politics, and Dan (John Goodman), an overworked, lovable bull of a husband. The Conners, like most families, thrived on the theatre of kinship: its ceremonial arguments, its tender heart-to-hearts, and its awkward and hard-fought routes to empathy.

As with any show returning to television, there’s an overwhelming amount of ground to cover. The problem with Roseanne, already dangerously apparent in its first episode, arises from its insistence on doing just that: trying to be and become everything. (HBO’s preachy Here and Now suffers from a similar problem.) Dan can barely afford to pay for their prescription medication. DJ (Michael Fishman), recently back from a military tour in Syria, has a black daughter. Darlene (Sara Gilbert) is struggling to find work in a bone-thin job market. And Roseanne is a proud-and-loud Trump acolyte; she’s become someone who earnestly refers to conservative media as "the real news."

Writing for Vulture, executive producer and co-showrunner Whitney Cummings defended the revival’s thematic expansion. "This show is not about Trump," she wrote, "it’s about the circumstances that made people think Trump was a good idea." In an interview with The New York Times, Barr elaborated, saying that the show would be what it always was, a sitcom about the struggles families come up against on a daily basis “and what they do about it.”

It’s hard not to be cynical, though. The series shamelessly cycles through a litany of current events, a rotating chorus of podium-worthy monologues and pedestrian zingers: from gun ownership and gender fluidity to a duplicitous health care state, Colin Kaepernick, women’s rights, and surrogacy. And that’s just the first episode. These are tough, knotty issues that deserve to be lived in, to be fussed over with that classic Conner irritability—if that’s what Roseanne wants to be, and I believe it does—not rushed through on the way to the next joke.

Alan Ball’s Here and Now, the new HBO drama about a progressive multiracial family in Portland navigating the pitfalls and promises of contemporary life, is afflicted by a similar stumbling block, only on the opposite end of the political spectrum. Ball’s never been shy about his investigations into family alchemy—picking at the who, the how, the why. With Six Feet Under, he orchestrated a symphony of grief, death, and difficult love in the shape of the Fisher family, innkeepers of a Los Angeles funeral home. On True Blood, he again inverted the understanding of community and belonging through the residents of Bon Temps, a fictional Louisiana town besieged by shapeshifters and sex-obsessed vampires.

Here and Now, though, dives head-first into the mire of 2018. Trump’s name is rarely spoken, but his shadow looms large in the background. The show introduces talking points with real meat—Muslim faith, trans issues, police mistreatment, racial microaggressions—but often overcooks the essence of their messages. By the time we meet Greg Boatwright (Tim Robbins), a disaffected philosophy professor who finds himself powerless to the "cruelty of existence," he wants to feel connected to the world again. He portends wisdom in lumpy bursts of illumination, saying things like, "Maybe grand gestures are the best we can offer in a dying civilization" and "Anxiety is a completely appropriate response to today’s reality." It’s the kind of existential neurosis that on another show might seem useful, but here feels performative and overplayed.

The show, like Roseanne, is stuffed with racial and political overtones—but, again like Roseanne, is not without hope. Family dramas and sitcoms remain one of the more fascinating modes to understand American life, even after all this time. Just look to Black-ish or Jane the Virgin or Transparent; all have reoriented our view into the domestic interior in bright, unconventional ways. The problem with Roseanne and Here and Now is density. The former propels too quickly through powerful issues, while the latter treats them with the acuity of a college freshman: eagerly and immodestly, if sometimes too naively. That’s not to say there won’t be a payoff in the end. It’s the getting there that feels like a strain.

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Virtual reality, as it’s been promised to us by science fiction, is a singular realm of infinite possibility. Star Trek’s Holodeck, Yu-Gi-Oh!’s Virtual World, Snow Crash’s Metaverse: Each is the all-powerful experience generator of its world, able to accommodate a character’s any desire. Novelist Ernest Cline sharpened this vision in his 2011 debut, Ready Player One, which hits theaters in March courtesy of Steven Spielberg. While the story is set in the strife-torn meatspace of 2045, most of its action unfolds in a vast network of artificial worlds called the OASIS. And in the tradition of reality playing catch-up to sci-fi, the OASIS has become the endgame for real-world VR developers, many of whom are actively trying to replicate its promise. Are they making progress? Absolutely. Are they doing it right? Absolutely not.

The OASIS is saddled with a terrible acronym—hopefully Spielberg never lets one of his characters say “Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation”—but it offers something attractive: breadth. Some of the environments contained in the OASIS are created by users, others by government agencies; they range from educational to recreational (reconstructions of ’80s fantasy novels are popular), nonprofit to commercial.

Today’s real-life multiuser VR experiences, by contrast, are less OASIS and more ­PUDDLE (Provisionally Usable Demonstration of Dazz­ling Lucid Environments). Some of the constraints are aesthetic: In AltspaceVR, users are limited to a narrow range of expressionless human and robot avatars, while the goofy up-with-people charm of Against Gravity’s Rec Room hinges on you not caring that avatars lack noses. Other constraints are experiential: Facebook’s Spaces lets you hang out only with people you’re already Friends with. Startups with OASIS-size ambitions are hampered by still other issues, whether that’s a noob-unfriendly world-building system (Sansar) or a dark-side-of-Reddit vibe that invites trollery (VRchat).

The problem, though, isn’t such metaphorical boundaries—it’s literal ones. None of these PUDDLEs touch. You can’t hop from Rec Room to VRchat; you’re stuck where you started. That’s why it’s hard to feel truly immersed. To reach Cline’s 2045, developers need to start laying the foundation now for an infrastructure that links each of these worlds. If that sounds idealistic, or even dangerous, it’s not. Think of the days before the internet, when various institutions ran their own walled-off networks. Only when computer scientists came together to standardize protocols did the idea of a single network become possible. Now imagine applying that notion to VR—a metaverse in which users can flit between domains without losing their identity or their bearings as they travel.

The OASIS works because it feels like it has no owners, no urgent needs. It’s a utility, a toolkit available for artisans and corporations alike. If we want to realize this potential ourselves—universal freedom and possibility—let’s start thinking about VR the way Cline does: not as a first-to-market commodity, but as an internet all its own.

Peter Rubin (@provenself) is the author of the upcoming book Future Presence.

This article appears in the March issue. Subscribe now.

All photo references by Getty Images

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