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.

The White House is posting Stardew Valley memes about whole milk. 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.

How did we get here? Michael Senters, a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech, is here to explain how online culture became the culture.

• It’s all for the posts
• A YouTuber comes to town
• What, exactly, does it mean to be terminally online?
• The right goes all in on identity politics
• The pandemic drove us all crazy
• Turns out the post-modernists were correct
• Posting yourself into a different form or reality
• Survival tips for the extremely online
• Depraved art and Hearts of Iron IV
• Deus Vult?
• Video games as propaganda
• We should have been harder on the online Nazis
• John Romero will make you his bitch
• A brief history of Something Awful
• Fighting the performance regime

How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch

Six Prosecutors Quit Over Push to Investigate ICE Shooting Victim’s Widow

Do you have stairs in your house?

Fuck You And Die: An Oral History of Something Awful

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On January 28, 2025, I sat down with Aram Shabanian to talk about how we thought the first year of the Trump administration would go. I put the audio in a vault and didn’t listen to it until now.

We focused on geopolitics and the American military and our hit rate for predictions was about fifty percent. Domestically, it’s been much worse than I expected. Abroad it’s been much weirder than I expected. The bit about America seeking violence though? Right now that feels spot on.

• Hegseth’s reforms got worse for women (vindicated)
• Conscription is not back (wrong)
• The yearning for violence when the gloves come off (vindicated)
• All the episodes that weren’t produced
• Sicarioifciation continues apace
• The bigger problem was that people felt bad
• The dangers of boredom
• “Drugs won the war on drugs and then looted the armories.”
• Against burning it all down
• Greenland is still on the table
• The ceasefire didn’t last and war did not spread to Europe (wrong)
• Elon Musk is out (vindicated)
• X is still around, but it IS producing on-demand CSAM (wrong?)
• WWIII and mass riots didn’t happen (wrong)
• Martin O’Malley 2028?

The Cult of Sicario

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On the last Angry Planet of 2025, novelist and Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay returns to reflect on a year of spectacle and cruelty.

Between the Pentagon’s boat strikes and the administration’s constant barrage of grotesque memes, it feels like America is a crueler and cruder place. For better and worse, the Presidency sets a moral standard for the country and Trump has lowered that standard. Klay wrote about all this in a piece at The New York Times and he’s here with us today to talk through it.

• “It’s too easy to condemn.”
• The project is spectacles of cruelty
• “You’re not supposed to be joining a gang of thugs.”
• What is this doing to us as a nation?
• The lust for cruelty and domination
• Klay’s review of Hegseth’s first year
• War vs. Defense
• “Read long things.”
• Living in the Hell of opinions
• Ending on a high note

What Trump Is Really Doing With His Boat Strikes

Trump Admin’s Racist Halo Memes Are ‘A New Level of Dehumanization of Immigrants’

Trump has accused boat crews of being narco-terrorists. The truth, AP found, is more nuanced

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