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"He struggled to reconcile his online renown with his life in Molins de Rei, a municipality of 26,000 people near Barcelona. Online he was super-famous, - a quick search of the phrase 'worst person you know' pulls up almost two billion results - but the fact that it was in English meant that few in his hometown or in the marketing agency where he works knew anything about it."

"As anyone that is anyone knows, Wikipedia holds all truth. So in actual fact, Fenelon was Australia's 30th Prime Minister for two days. He stands alongside Australian meme-generator Tony Abbott, the first female leader Julia Gillard and the man who won't stop speaking Mandarin, Kevin Rudd. "

"Algorithms steer us back to similar content in echo chambers that inhibit both critical and creative thinking. Platforms incentivized to keep users scrolling discourage long-looking and render users as passive consumers, rather than active seekers of inspiration. They aren't a space for productive feedback, either: Art takes on a different tone when it's surrounded by dog GIFs, political memes, and your cousin's baby photos."

"Already, artificially intelligent software can evolve false political and social constructs highly targeted to sway specific audiences. Users find themselves in highly individualized, algorithmically determined news and information feeds, intentionally designed to: isolate them from conflicting evidence or opinions, create self-reinforcing feedback loops of confirmation, and untether them from fact-based reality. And these are just early days. If memes and disinformation have been weaponized on social media, it is still in the musket stage."

"There has been a great amount of research and resources dedicated to mapping social media "pipelines" into far-right and reactionary politics. Less thought, however, has been dedicated to a leftwing alternative. This is a huge gap in how the left, broadly, thinks about online politics. While the problems of online rightwing radicalization are very real, I believe that the mechanisms of social media also offer a path for progressive and leftwing politicization."

"After I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in 2022, I started following Instagram accounts that could help me understand the condition. Reels and memes about being neurodivergent started to fill my feed, along with tips on how to manage ADHD in a relationship and other helpful advice. But within days, something else happened: my phone found out about my diagnosis. All of a sudden, I was being served with ads for apps that claimed they could help me to manage my symptoms. There were quizzes to determine what type of ADHD I had: was I predominantly inattentive or impulsive, one asked. Did I definitely have it? Find out by taking this diagnostic test, another promised."

"Why are many Gen Zers averse to sending emails? Because emails are too formal, and not as instant as other forms of communication. So it takes too much time to compose the messages, and then it's difficult to get the formal tone correct, which causes anxiety."