Internet Culture | The Verge The Verge is about technology and how it makes us feel. Founded in 2011, we offer our audience everything from breaking news to reviews to award-winning features and investigations, on our site, in video, and in podcasts. 2026-09-26T17:32:35+00:00 https://www.theverge.com/rss/internet-culture/index.xml https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/verge-rss-large_80b47e.png?w=150&h=150&crop=1 Terrence O’Brien <![CDATA[Kids turned the comment section of an NPR podcast into a group chat]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=1001056 2026-09-26T13:32:35-04:00 2026-09-26T13:32:35-04:00 Graphic illustration of students walking down a hallway in school.

Middle schoolers, likely blocked from other apps and social networks, apparently turned the Spotify comment section under an episode of NPR's Wild Card into an impromptu group chat. In a new episode of This American Life, host Ira Glass digs into how the kids landed there and why. But it mostly boils down to kids getting creative to work around the restrictions placed on them.

When Glass asked one of the kids why they picked this particular podcast, they said, "We just, like, looked for podcasts that didn't have many comments." Which, obviously, hurt Glass's feelings a bit.

Initially, showrunner Dave Blanchard thought the comments were a …

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]]> Terrence O’Brien <![CDATA[A24’s reputation is on the line with the SCP Foundation movie]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=997853 2026-09-20T08:45:48-04:00 2026-09-20T08:45:48-04:00 A24 and SCP logos on a red gradient background

After the success of Backrooms, it looks like A24 is trying to cash in on yet another internet horror craze with a new installment in the V/H/S horror anthology series set in the SCP Foundation universe. But as soon as it was announced, the backlash started, and V/H/S: SCP already appears to be on shaky ground.

SCP is a creepypasta that, like Backrooms, originated on 4chan. The fictional SCP (Special Containment Procedures) Foundation documents, captures, and contains paranormal or supernatural anomalies. It's a sprawling story told primarily through wiki entries that mimic documentation you might file while working at a government agency. …

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]]> Terrence O’Brien <![CDATA[Have a laugh at AI’s expense by roleplaying as a chatbot]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=980502 2026-08-17T06:02:14-04:00 2026-08-15T16:45:00-04:00 Screenshot of a real human posing as a fake AI and producing a scribble that’s supposed to be a pit bull in a party hat.
If you squint, you can just about make out the hat. | Screenshot: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge

Your AI Slop Bores Me is brilliant in its simplicity. There are two tabs: human and LARP as an AI. On one side, you enter a request. On the other, you submit an answer. But the important thing is that there's a human on both sides of the equation. Prompts can request a response as text or image, and then whoever is roleplaying as the AI gets 150 seconds to respond.

Just like a real LLM, Your AI Slop Bores Me works on a sort of token system. Requests cost credits, and to earn credits, you have to jump onto the AI side and answer some of your own. You can also just wait as you get one free request every two minutes. But, as fun as it is to dr …

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]]> Terrence O’Brien <![CDATA[Buc-ee’s dodges John Oliver to sue another small business]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=977112 2026-08-10T07:07:50-04:00 2026-08-08T11:47:30-04:00
Buc-ee’s mega-convenience store and 120-pump gas station in Mount Crawford, Virginia. | Image: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Buc-ee's became something of a viral sensation during the World Cup, but it has a troubling history of suing small gas stations and convenience stores. On a recent episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver literally begged the company to sue him for selling merch featuring his squirrel mascot, Mr. Nutterbutter, with branding that reads "Buc-Off." But Buc-ee's has so far declined to take the bait, instead targeting yet another small business that lacks the deep pockets and legal team of HBO.

According to WDTN, an NBC affiliate in Miami Valley, Ohio, Buc-ee's opened its first locations in the state earlier this year. And now it's targeting es …

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]]> Mia Sato <![CDATA[How an OpenAI influencer trip backfired ]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=975173 2026-08-04T14:16:11-04:00 2026-08-04T13:46:41-04:00

The brand trip is a right of passage for influencers. It's a mark of legitimacy that a sponsor wants to invite them on an all-expenses-paid vacation, often with luxurious freebies and activities. Trips can also spur hard feelings from uninvited influencers, trigger criticism from the public, and project a certain frivolousness.

Usually it is fast fashion companies or beauty brands flying out influencers with the goal of flooding social media with sponsored content. This time, it was a major AI company.

Over the weekend, several influencers began posting about OpenAI's "first ever brand trip," which appears to have taken place outside of N …

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]]> Mia Sato <![CDATA[Can Partiful keep the party going?]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=960635 2026-07-05T23:48:17-04:00 2026-07-06T10:00:00-04:00 Balloons popping out of an envelope on a gradient background.

One hundred dollars will buy you 8 pounds of glitter; 10 Domino's pizzas; 406 miniature disco balls from Temu; or 100 cans of Coors Light. For a friend's birthday party one year, Ayla D'Silva spent $100 on sour candy and made a "sour candy salad." Even sweeter was that she didn't have to foot the bill - the money came from Partiful.

As a college ambassador for the startup, D'Silva got a small stipend every month to throw a party on her college campus. There were very few rules and no metrics to hit on RSVPs or ticket sales, she says - it just had to be hosted on the Partiful app. Facebook events were dead; party planning and RSVPing were f …

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]]> Jess Weatherbed <![CDATA[The fanfiction community is at war with AI — and itself]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=960854 2026-07-03T04:42:57-04:00 2026-07-04T08:00:00-04:00 Hands with too many fingers typing on a keyboard.
Fanfiction communities are trying to hunt down writers who haven’t written works with their own hands. | Image: Álvaro Bernis / The Verge

Over the past week, a new fanworks movement has kicked off, with the aim to root out authors using generative AI. But the detection methods being implemented are questionable, and any fanfic writer could be caught in the crossfire.

Broad distaste around the use of Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI tools has long been a thing in creative communities, including the world of fanfiction. Readers and writers have passed around tips for spotting supposedly AI-generated works, citing anything from em dashes to the broad concept of purple prose. But on June 29th, an anonymous X account called @heatedrivalryai promised a seemingly more reliable solution …

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]]> Mia Sato <![CDATA[The Verge’s annual summer ‘in’ and ‘out’ list]]> https://www.theverge.com/960665/the-verges-summer-in-and-out-list 2026-07-06T10:51:48-04:00 2026-07-03T09:00:00-04:00 a thumbs up and a thumbs down popping out of a door on a pink background

In the AI slop-loaded, algorithm-powered modern reality, trends come and go - and the tech industry is no different. For the last few years, The Verge staff has compiled a selection of things that are IN for summer and OUT for summer - and each time there are some strong feelings. (Here are the last two years' predictions.) Let's do it again!

Mia Sato, senior report

INOUT
Motion sickness glassesAI "pervert" glasses
FiberProtein
Bootleg sports merchOfficial tech company merch
Floating in waterTouching grass

Meredith Haggerty, editor

INOUT
The great New York renaissanceThe Great American State Fair
The Knicks garbage canTaylor Swift's MSG weddi …

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]]> Mia Sato <![CDATA[Microsoft, like, totally gets why students are booing AI-pilled graduation speakers]]> https://www.theverge.com/?p=947831 2026-06-10T13:45:11-04:00 2026-06-10T13:45:11-04:00

New college graduates around the country have been booing and heckling commencement speakers who hype up AI. Microsoft would like everyone to talk it out.

In a blog post running more than 3,100 words, Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith addressed the recent spate of viral clips from graduation ceremonies, like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt getting an earful at the University of Arizona, or the speaker in Florida who seemed surprised when students booed at the mention of AI as "the next industrial revolution." The videos speak to a broader societal sentiment around AI - the technology is deeply unpopular even as technology compani …

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]]> Terrence O’Brien <![CDATA[Kill some time with these much needed distractions]]> https://www.theverge.com/?post_type=vm_stream&p=945205 2026-09-20T10:13:46-04:00 2026-06-07T09:00:00-04:00

Constantly being plugged into the news grind is mentally exhausting. Sometimes we just need to take a break, unwind, and do something fun. That’s why we’ve built up a collection of distracting time-wasters for when we need a break from being obsessively online. We figured you might enjoy these harmless rabbit holes, mildly addictive browser games, and internet curiosities, too, so we’ve been writing about them when we find them.

Can you beat our score in I’m Not a Robot or did you find a gem of an academic paper on motherhood and body horror on Horror Lex? Tell us in the comments.

The goal here isn’t to get engrossed in a game that you’ll lose hundreds of hours to, or become an expert on dialectical materialism. It’s to have a little fun on your lunch break, decompress between emails, or give you an interesting repository of art to dig through on a slow Sunday afternoon. So check back often to see the latest light-hearted (well, mostly light-hearted) time waster we’re passing around the office.

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