TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – A free roadside safety kit is being offered under the auspices of AAA, but it’s actually a phishing scheme that not only levies a “shipping charge,” but uses bank card numbers for unrelated items.
The Tahlequah Daily Press followed the link provided in a press release received by newsroom staff, preparing to write an article on something that sounded like a good deal for drivers who are members of AAA.
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TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – A free roadside safety kit is being offered under the auspices of AAA, but it’s actually a phishing scheme that not only levies a “shipping charge,” but uses bank card numbers for unrelated items.
The Tahlequah Daily Press followed the link provided in a press release received by newsroom staff, preparing to write an article on something that sounded like a good deal for drivers who are members of AAA.
This page requires Javascript.
Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – A free roadside safety kit is being offered under the auspices of AAA, but it’s actually a phishing scheme that not only levies a “shipping charge,” but uses bank card numbers for unrelated items.
The Tahlequah Daily Press followed the link provided in a press release received by newsroom staff, preparing to write an article on something that sounded like a good deal for drivers who are members of AAA.
This page requires Javascript.
Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.
MONTREAL—Posting the helpful explainer to their social media to educate the online public, Pornhub released a graphic Thursday illustrating the depth of the OceanGate submersible compared to a 10-inch cock. “The OceanGate submersible was designed to make it 152,790 inches deeper than this veiny, throbbing member,” said Pornhub PR representative Jennifer Collins, explaining that it would take over 15,000 large cocks stacked on top of each other to reach the Titanic wreckage. “Sure, this 10-inch cock is really big, but as we can see, it’s utterly dwarfed by the vast depth of the ocean. Unfortunately, all the cocks would likely implode before reaching the diving distance of the OceanGate sub. Even the most rock-hard of monster dongs would be unable to withstand the pressure of the ocean at that depth.” At press time, Pornhub released a second infographic comparing the depth of the submersible with a flaccid 6-inch cock.
The Top Ten Most Played Games On Steam Deck: March 2023 Edition
We’ve seen blackouts, we’ve seen sites toggle their settings to NSFW (thus cutting off ad revenue), but r/steam—whose mods were threatened with removal if they didn’t reopen the subreddit after an initial blackout—has decided as a community that if they had to reopen, they were going to reopen with a purpose.
And that purpose, as PC Gamer point out, was to become the internet’s top destination for all things steam-related. And by that I don’t mean the PC’s preferred shopfront and launcher, but steam engines. Steam clouds. Steam tractors, steam-driven cars and academic books about steam.
Here, for example, is a classic “rate my setup” post, emphasis on classic:
In this post, a user has an important technical question they’re hoping the community can answer:
Just because there’s a protest going on doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to celebrate:
Like most gaming subreddits, users are sometimes overcome with nostalgia, and like to reminisce about the good old days:
Here’s a reminder that Reddit only exists as it does today because it’s a place where users can teach, learn and hang out with other human beings for free:
In the wake of sitewide protests, ostensibly over some API changes but really about an increasingly corporate squeeze of a historically community-run site, some Reddit moderators have decided to hit CEO Steve Huffman in the only place it seems to hurt: the site’s wallet.
Some of the communities making the switch included r/MildlyInteresting, r/TIHI (Thanks I Hate It) and r/interestingasfuck. It’s a clever move (plus it’s more legal than ransoming the company with stolen data), and one that shows the lengths mods are going to protest Huffman and his team’s actions, but it’s also one that Reddit says violates their “Content Policy and Moderator Code of Conduct”. As a result, and as The Verge report, these mods are now finding themselves “logged out of their account and locked out” by “a Reddit admin account”, and their subreddits—with millions of members—are showing up as being completely unmoderated. Those former mods have also seen their accounts suspended for seven days.
It is incredibly funny to see the lengths Huffman and his staff are going to here. They’re in such a panic about their profit margins—and more importantly in their case, potential future share value--that they’re ignoring the fact Reddit’s entire worth is built on the back of unpaid labour. The site is literally nothing without its users (providing “content”) and mods (working for free), and Huffman is out here worried about ad revenue, from which none of those users see a cent? And sending the message that he’d rather leave whole communities unmoderated than put up with some protests?
The internet has wrought many perils on our civilization, but the one thing it has been good for is helping publicly record just how stupid these CEOs really are.
This Lesbian Mafia Anime Might Actually Make You Want To Play Golf
Alongside big subreddits like r/bestof, r/sports, r/music, r/pics and r/videos, a number of the most popular gaming subreddits have either confirmed they’re taking part, are polling members for their thoughts or will be taking more limited action as well.
That includes r/gaming with its 37 million members, r/PS5 and its 3.3 million members, r/minecraft’s 7 million members and r/wow’s 2.3 million members. Meanwhile mods at r/pcgaming (3.2 million members) are asking users for their input before making a decision, while r/nintendo are going into a “a read-only/restricted mode”, which is not quite as severe as locking the entire subreddit down. But if you’re like most people, you likely just lurk pages, so you may not be able to see anything but this right now:
Screenshot: Reddit / Kotaku
The entire thing has been planned for a while now, as a gathering of Reddit’s unpaid moderators banded together and penned an open letter to the site’s management, outlining not just the general popularity of the third-party apps, but also concerns over the potential loss of important moderation tools (which many third-party apps have but the official offering somehow lacks) and impact on NSFW content as well.
Reddit Goes Down
That letter has been backed by plans for much of the site to engage in a “blackout” on June 12, meaning today, which means individual subreddits will lock down into “private” mode, meaning anyone who isn’t already a follower/subscriber won’t be able to access them or see any of their content.
According to The Verge, over 6,000 subreddits have been affected on Monday as a part of the protest, which will last until the 14th. Some, it should be noted, are planning on staying private until things change. Other communities went dark as soon as the unpopular API changes were announced. Really, there are all sorts of approaches to the bad news. You might notice some communities are indeed available, but you can only post about the API changes. Others meanwhile will let you read the subreddit as it was, but won’t let you make new posts. In short, it’s a shitshow for Reddit.
Update 6/12/2023 11:10 a.m.:We’ve updated this post to reflect that Reddit is now in fact down and out.
The Week In Games: System Shock, Street Fighter 6, And More
For anyone using the site on a desktop computer the Reddit experience is fine, I guess (“Old Reddit” is better), but on phones, that all changes. Reddit’s official app sucks, and is absolutely loaded with intrusive ads, meaning a lot of people rely on the work of third-party apps—like the incredibly popular Apollo on iOS and my own favourite, Infinity on Android—to browse and comment.
The creator of Apollo has done the math, and says:
I’ll cut to the chase: 50 million requests costs $12,000, a figure far more than I ever could have imagined.
Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year. Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month, which is over double what the subscription currently costs, so I’d be in the red every month.
Meanwhile one of the developers of RIF, another popular Android app, say that not only are they also being priced out (if Apollo can’t afford it nobody can), but that Reddit is also implementing a change where third-party apps would lose access to NSFW subreddits, while the official site would not:
Removal of sexually explicit material from third-party apps while keeping said content in the official app. Some people have speculated that NSFW is going to leave Reddit entirely, but then why would Reddit Inc have recently expanded NSFW upload support on their desktop site?
It’s obvious that the steep pricing, which goes far beyond what these developers were expecting or could ever afford, is not there to make money. Not when it was clear nobody was ever going to be able to pay it. It’s being brought in to crush third-party alternatives, driving every mobile user to the official app where they’ll either have to watch ads or pay for Reddit Premium.
As the recent Reddit commercials have made clear, there’s a community for everything. Nihilist horror, Game of Thrones’ Hodor, avocado food porn (because why not)…you can always find your people. Case in point, there’s a subreddit dedicated to atrocious user interfaces, which is now seeing members attempting to best each other by creating the worst UI designs possible.
An Anime That Might Make You Put Your Minecraft Bed Next To Someone
The term is self-explanatory: A user interface is what allows you to interact with technology, from computers to McDonald’s kiosks to exercise equipment to, of course, video games. Some, like Elden Ring’s, are good. Most just get the job done. However, when you come across a bad UI, it’s like a painful hair in your eye and a sour taste in your mouth. Ubisoft games such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Bungie’s Destiny have been derided for their cluttered and clunky interfaces, respectively. But the nightmares being dreamt up on Reddit definitely, albeit intentionally, take the rotten UI cake.
Thanks, these UIs make me hate it here
As spotted by Twitter user Aleksandr Volodarsky, engineers on the badUIbattles subreddit are scraping the bottom of the barrel to build the most annoying user interfaces ever. A forum for folks “[creating] bad UIs just for the sake of them being bad,” redditors are designing UIs that, if they were ever implemented IRL, would make you never want to interact with technology again. Take this one designed by redditor Lamamour last April, in which you have to funnel digits into a moving row of blocks to enter your phone number.
This “enter your phone number” concept has been iterated, tweaked, and worsened since Lamamour uploaded their initial atrocity. The latest entry by user NotYourBoii confronts you with a disordered drop-down menu that makes entering a phone number (twice, I might add) pure pain.
But what if you wanted to unsubscribe from a newsletter, YouTube channel, or some other subscription service? Well, you wouldn’t be able to with redditor OrangePrototype’s unsubscribe button, as a fan blows your cursor away.
There are so many aggravating user interfaces on that subreddit, with Volodarsky tweeting out some of the worst he’s found. For your viewing frustration—I mean, pleasure—here’s a little roundup of Volodarsky’s incredibly annoying findings.
All of these were purposely designed to be as irritating as possible, and thankfully, I can’t imagine any game developers taking inspiration from user interfaces meant to get on your nerves (unless it was intended as part of the gameplay experience, as in Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy or QWOP). That said, it’s hilarious seeing redditors doing their best to make the worst UI ever.
This New Series Completes Studio MAPPA’s Dark Trilogy
For much of Twitter’s existence, certain users could be “verified” by confirming their identity with the site. This was an essential tool for celebrities, athletes, businesses and the media, people who may or may not have been famous, but who were all at risk of having their accounts impersonated in the name of disinformation and scams.
And for almost as long, certain weirdos had a thing about this, seeing a system designed solely to prove a user were who they said they were—a necessity on a social media platform—as a symptom of, I dunno, some kind of leftist media woke conspiracy.
Anyway, things got especially absurd when over the weekend it emerged that almost none of the formerly verified accounts were going to pay the $8. Not even millionaire celebrities. In fact many even publicly mocked Musk and the decision. In return, Musk himself ordered that certain high profile users be given a verified badge anyway, at Twitter’s expense, leading to incredible scenes like Lebron James turning down the offer and video game deals man Wario64—who has over 1 million followers, making him one of the site’s more popular users— having a “blue checkmark” forcibly hoisted on his account, then later removed again.
Amidst all the chaos, one notable (and wild) set of responses to events in the video game space came from Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games. I’m pasting his entire Twitter thread in full here, mostly so you can see the number of times he is so wrong he has to be officially corrected:
(Note: the #BlockTheBlue hashtag came from people figuring out very quickly that the kind of person who would pay Musk $8 a month for Twitter is also the kind of person you would want to block on sight)
Screenshot: Twitter
Screenshot: Twitter
Screenshot: Twitter
This man complaining about high school cliques and supposed “elites” is 52 years old and is worth almost $5 billion.
NEW YORK—In the wake of a cost-cutting decision to terminate roughly 10% of its workforce, National Public Radio announced Friday that it had launched a new podcast exploring the lives of employees they just laid off. “Although the decision to eliminate roughly 100 employees was not taken lightly, we are so excited to announce our next groundbreaking podcast series, which follows several NPR correspondents, researchers, and audio engineers on their gripping and often heartbreaking journey through unemployment,” said CEO John F. Lansing, adding that the 10-part, hour long series called Down And Out will feature many listeners’ favorite correspondents from podcasts like Invisibilia, Louder Than A Riot, and Rough Translation struggling to pay rent, go to the doctor, or put food on the table. “While NPR did provide employees with severance, that will eventually run out, and that’s where the podcast truly begins. Will our former employees ever be able to get another job? Will they have to move home with their parents? Might they even leave the media industry entirely? Tune in for our first episode—featuring a surprise guest who lost his job after 40 years of working at NPR—to find out!” At press time, Lansing announced that the entire Down And Out production team had been let go.
There is a bottomless dress-up box filled with things that people look for in a partner. You might prefer someone who is funny or empathetic, I consider myself lucky to have ended up with someone who never had an AJR phase. And I’m sure, out there somewhere, there is a person who wouldn’t want to date anyone who doesn’t demonstrate their proficiency in C++ within the first 40 seconds of knowing them. And for that person, this Tinder user who made an entire lo-fi video game about dating them is likely the one.
Games journalist Imogen Mellor first spotted the game after its creator Super Liked (that’s an extra, extra like for the folks at home who can’t recall the horrors of online dating) her profile on Tinder.
“I swear to God,” she said on Twitter, “someone just Super [Liked] me on Tinder and they’ve made a game about dating them????? and you can actually PLAY IT???”
Unlike other 32-bit indie games, though, this one is tailored to fit its creator’s dating needs exactly.
“It’s a browser game that contains info about the creator, their hobbies, passions, food preferences, a little video of foxes playing in their garden, a 3D model of their home, and a compatibility test,” Mellor tweeted. “I’m floored.” She didn’t respond to Kotaku’s request for comment in time for publication.
Providing strangers with a 3D model of your home feels like a security risk to me, personally, but I guess it’s important to always map out your exits when you’re dating a gamer. This one, in particular, “worked on an AI that was capable of getting to grandmaster in Starcraft II,” Mellor said, and she hasn’t “swiped left or right simply out of brain freeze on if I just want to talk to him.”
“This person must be very specific with the type of women they’re pursuing,” she said. “Actually, the game suggests as much with a full list of things they’re looking for in a person.” Well, it’s clear that we all learned something from this. Online dating makes everyone act in very healthy and normal ways. Good luck out there.
If you haven’t heard, Google Stadia is shutting down and closing shop next week. But before the never-quite-successful game streaming service dies, it has provided one neat (and free) little gift you can only play for a few days before it all goes offline.
Launched back in 2019, Google Stadia was a costly and massive investment from Google into the world of video games. Powered by the cloud aka a bunch of servers and off-site computers, Stadia’s big promise was instantaneous gaming on the go. No more updates or expensive consoles. And while it sometimes worked, the high cost of games, lack of features, small library, and internet costs ended up dooming the service. Sure, some superfans logged thousands of hours into it, but for most, it just wasn’t what they wanted or needed from a video game platform.
So it wasn’t surprising that in September of last year, Google announced the end of Stadia. In five days, on January 18, the video game streaming service will shut down. With the end so near, it seemed unlikely that Stadia would receive any new game releases. Yet, Google has published one final game. But don’t expect some big open-world RPG or remake. Instead, the final Stadia game is Worm Game, an internally developed title used to test Stadia long before it became a public service.
We probably were never meant to see or play this Snake-like test game as it sports fairly rudimentary graphics and kinda ugly menus. But in the final days of Stadia, it appears the devs working on the project were able to provide its community one final treat. Even better, anyone can play Worm Game as it’s free. (Which makes sense considering the Stadia store stopped working already.)
The game’s store page features this nice and touching description of the game and what it was used for:
Play the game that came to Stadia before Stadia came to the world. “Worm Game” is a humble title we used to test many of Stadia’s features, starting well before our 2019 public launch, right through 2022. It won’t win Game of the Year, but the Stadia team spent a LOT of time playing it, and we thought we’d share it with you. Thanks for playing, and for everything.
Is Worm Game some incredibly important or amazing thing? Not really. However, it’s still really cool to get a peek behind the scenes, and thanks to videos of Worm Game, this little piece of test software will be somewhat preserved for folks to look back at years from now.
This is a nice way to make the controller—which has one of my favorite modern D-pads on it—more useful and easier to hook up to more devices. I doubt the devs who worked on Stadia for years were planning for the controller to be the only thing left of Stadia in 2023, but here we are.
If you watched even a minute of Neuro-sama streaming on Twitch you knew it was only a matter of time before the AI-controlled Vtuber got banned. The channel is currently offline for two weeks due to “hateful conduct,” though it’s not immediately clear what the offending incident was.
“Okay so banned for 2 weeks obviously, not sure why something about hateful conduct,” Neuro-sama’s creator, a user who goes by Vedal, wrote in the Vtuber’s Discord earlier today. “Will try to appeal and find out more the good news for you guys is this gives me so much time to work on improvements and upgrades so hopefully by the time she’s unbanned she will be better than ever.”
Hundreds of fans responded beneath the message with crying emoji. On Twitter, the account Out of context Neuro called on Twitch to “free my girl.”
Neuro-sama started making waves in the video game streaming space back in December when she bantered with viewers in the Twitch chat while playing the rhythm game Osu! Unlike other Vtubers which are only people posing as anime avatars, Neuro-sama was the real deal, trouncing opponents in online matches while commenting on everything from Pewdiepie to League of Legends. More recently she’s been playing Minecraft and taking singing lessons.
Reserve the next gen Samsung device All you need to do is sign up with your email and boom: credit for your preorder on a new Samsung device.
The potential pitfalls of an AI built on globs of internet text and viewer prompts immediately became apparent, however. Early on one user asked Neuro-sama about the Holocaust. “I’m not sure if I believe it,” she responded.
Vedal told Kotaku last week he had immediately worked to improve the Twitch channel’s chat filters and Neuro-sama’s responses after that in order to avoid similar mishaps in the future. It’s a fine line between keeping her interesting and making her un-cancelable though. A big reason some viewers tune into her streams is clearly to watch her go off script, including rants about how she smells bad or her favorite kind of weed. No doubt getting banned will only increase her street cred and hype by the time she returns.
Twitch and Vedal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
YouTuber and internet personality Logan Paul has found himself with a massive target on his forehead recently. Paul, who’s been on something of a redemption arc these last few years following the “suicide forest” fiasco in December 2017, is back in hot water after crypto investigator Stephen “Coffeezilla” Findeisen published a three-part video series looking into CryptoZoo, a blockchain “game” Paul once heavily promoted. There are just two glaring problems here: The game doesn’t exist yet, and Paul’s most ardent fans and early investors have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process of supporting it.
Logan Paul, the older brother of boxer and media personality Jake Paul, is a YouTuber who began creating content on Vine in the early 2010s before migrating to Google’s video platform once Vine shuttered. He regularly uploads vlog-style videos in which he offers viewers a voyeuristic look into his daily life and the various shenanigans he engages in. While already a controversial figure during his early content creation days, Paul didn’t really draw the internet’s ire until December 2017 when he filmed a video in Japan’s Aokigahara Forest in which he and members of his crew filmed and interacted with a dead body in a manner many considered tasteless and inappropriate. (Aokigahara has a reputation for being a site of frequent suicides.)
This video and the subsequent reaction to it absolutely tanked Paul’s career for much of 2018. However, since then, Paul’s been rehabilitating his image as a media personality and professional wrestler, signing to WWE’s Raw while hosting a YouTube podcast that boasts over four million subscribers. Dude’s doing very well for himself. However, he’s the internet’s main character again following what appears to be his involvement in one of the biggest crypto scams that has been uncovered to date.
Coffeezilla
In a three-part video series totaling a little over an hour, Stephen “Coffeezilla” Findeisen—a YouTuber who “uncovers scams, fraudsters, and fake gurus that are preying on desperate people with deceptive advertising”—looked into CryptoZoo. What the hell is CryptoZoo? Well, as Paul explains it, it’s a “really fun game that earns you money.” According to the official website, which says the game is currently “undergoing upgrades to the core infrastructure of the ecosystem,” CryptoZoo is an “autonomous ecosystem that allows ZooKeepers to buy, sell, and trade exotic animals and hybrids.” Basically, it’s an NFT game in which players purchase zoo coins, CryptoZoo’s in-game currency, to buy egg NFTs that are hatched to become animals. Once hatched, you then breed those animals together to make hybrids and the rarer the hybrid, the higher the daily yield of zoo coins. Cash those out and boom, you’re pulling in money. In short, it’s structured to work like passive income.
Unfortunately, this “play-to-earn” NFT game filled with hand-made art—as Paul likes to heavily emphasize on his podcast Impaulsive—has never yet been playable, despite letting people sink tons of money into it. Coffeezilla discovered that, since CryptoZoo’s introduction in 2021, Paul stans have spent some $2.5 million on eggs alone, with the coin itself skyrocketing to a market cap of roughly $2 billion. Some folks Coffeezilla talked to shelled out tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars on CryptoZoo because they believed Paul was a “changed man” and he was creating a “safe place” for the everyperson to invest in cryptocurrency. Turns out they were wrong, at least on the second part, because now those people are out thousands of dollars.
Coffeezilla
Rob, or Helicopter Bob, one of the victims Coffeezilla video-chatted with, said he lost “just under $7,000 with CryptoZoo.” Helicopter Bob explained that the passive income, the project’s core mechanic, “never did [work] from the beginning and wasn’t even written into the contract where it showed you were actually yielding with Zoo.” He went on to say that “there was no way to claim your yield [and] there never was.” Basically, people were putting money into a system that was providing zero returns.
Worse yet, as an unnamed person told Coffeezilla in a separate video call, those who invested in CryptoZoo couldn’t even hatch the eggs they bought. “It’s just a picture,” the person said about the eggs. “There’s nothing I can do with it. It’s basically worth nothing whatsoever.” So, you’ve got diehard Paul fans pining to play a nonfunctioning game and losing money in the process. A game, mind you, that still doesn’t work to this day.
Coffeezilla
In Coffeezilla’s videos, we hear Paul explain certain issues with CryptoZoo’s development. Specifically, he says a “developer fled to Switzerland” with the source code and held it hostage for $1 million, and this is why the game’s been broken. But this developer, who Coffeezilla spoke to in the course of his investigation, claims that he hadn’t been paid at all for his work on CryptoZoo, despite bringing on a team of 30 engineers and burning $50,000 a week to build the NFT project. Another CryptoZoo developer Coffeezilla spoke with corroborated the claim, saying he also hadn’t been paid at all. Not only were Paul’s fans finding holes in their wallets after investing in CryptoZoo, but it appears that the people working on the project weren’t even being paid adequately or on time.
Kotaku reached out to Findeisen and Paul for comment.
Paul, for his part, has said that the report is “simply not true” and that, “when appropriate, all bad actors will be exposed, explained, & held fully accountable,” promising more details in his January 3 podcast. On December 26, Paul publicly invited Coffeezilla to appear on the Impaulsive podcast to hash everything out, though Coffeezilla responded by saying that he’d already invited Paul onto his show the day before. It remains to be seen whether or not anything will come to fruition from these exchanges.
NEW YORK—Expressing skepticism about the unproven technology’s potential in the lead-up to the holiday season, Cyber Monday retailers reportedly worried this week that Americans were simply not ready to buy goods over the World Wide Web. “While there may be a few fringe dedicated Netizens interested in online holiday shopping, we’re not sure the average joe has the understanding or, frankly, interest needed to purchase goods in cyberspace,” said Best Buy vice president Scott Evans, echoing thousands of web retailers who noted that Americans have always enjoyed the atmosphere and experience of brick-and-mortar stores, and the rise of the information superhighway did not seem poised to change that. “I’ll admit I’m a bit in the dark on how it even works. People type ‘http://www.bestbuy.com’ into their web browser, sure, but what happens after that? Do they just send us a check in the mail? Plus, after they buy their item, who drives it to their house? Me? Our IT guy showed the whole thing to me, and it just went way over my head. So I can’t imagine how the average consumer feels. Computers are great for playing solitaire, but I think using them to buy goods is just more of a headache than it’s worth for most Americans.” Evans added that all of this was obviously purely hypothetical, given that the company only expected to get a few dozen online shoppers during the holidays.
Maxwell FrostPhoto: The Washington Post (Getty Images)
Amidst a sea of depressing, enraging, mildly promising, and other election results tonight, one victory has proven to be truly inspiring. And it took place in Florida.
In a state that has voted overwhelmingly in support of goons like Governor Ron DeSantis, Democrat Maxwell Frost won Florida’s 10th Congressional District—based mostly in Orlando—by a landslide, capturing 58.8% of the vote (at time of posting) against his nearest competitor, Republican Calvin Wimbish, on 39.7%.
Frost’s victory is notable for a number of reasons. You’ll see him hailed in most reports as the “first member of Generation Z elected to Congress,” since he is just 25 years old, and don’t get me wrong, that’s an incredible achievement. But we’re here because Frost is, at least on record, also the first Kingdom Hearts fan elected to Congress. Here he is back in 2017:
Normally digging up a politician’s old tweets is a source in either boredom or frustration, since—given their advanced age—many Congressmen and Senators in the US were already image-conscious politicians by the time they began using the platform.
But Frost was just 20 when he wrote that Tweet. Just a regular guy, doing what we all used to do on The Hellsite, namely sharing little snippets of the people and things that we love.
G/O Media may get a commission
Frost ran because the incumbent, Democratic Val Demings, vacated the seat to try to (unsuccessfully) challenge Marco Rubio in the Senate elections. In a more recent Tweet, he said “WE WON!!!! History was made tonight. We made history for Floridians, for Gen Z, and for everyone who believes we deserve a better future. I am beyond thankful for the opportunity to represent my home in the United States Congress.”
Just so you don’t think he went straight from being a guy posting about Kingdom Hearts on Twitter to Congress, as NPR reports, Frost has been an activist for almost a decade now, and had previously “served as the national organizing director for March For Our Lives, a group that advocates for gun control policy.”
Chipzel, one of the most well-known chiptune artists (and video game composers) on the planet, is among a number of high profile users who have had their Twitter account suspended after seemingly breaking, but also not breaking, some new rules.
One of the big reasons his brief reign has proven so unpopular—along with mass (possibly illegal) firings, uncertainty over paid membership costs and just general Divorced Guy ramblings—has been his promised removal of Twitter’s verification process, which grants public figures (and those working in lines of work rife with impersonation, like journalism) a little blue tick next to their names. It’s a tiny little thing designed to simply let the masses know you are actually the person you’re claiming to be, but for brainworm reasons Free Speech and MAGA weirdos have spent years obsessing over them, elevating an administrative feature into something they think is a discriminatory, digital caste system.
Because this is such an astoundingly stupid (and dangerous!) idea, many verified users have been spending the last few days changing their usernames and profile pics to the same ones used by Musk himself, in clear and obvious examples of what’s going to happen on a global scale should the verification process be overhauled in this way.
Musk, wildly in over his head and having spent the last few days flailing around like a substitute teacher who has lost the class, sought to cut this practice—simply a taste of what’s to come!—out earlier today when he said “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended”.
Popular Australian satire website The Chaser appeared to be one of the first victims of this new rule, their account being locked down not long after changing their name to resemble Musk’s, despite clearly following this new rule and marking their account as parody (they also didn’t even change their name to ‘Elon Musk’, they changed it to ‘Elom Musk’).
Their account has however since been restored, with the new name ‘Elon Musk Fondles Dogs’:
UPDATE 11:59pm – Chipzel’s account has been kinda restored, though with this warning page appearing before viewers can access her feed:
Screenshot: Twitter
What both do appear to violate is a different rule he hastily introduced straight afterwards, which incredibly seeks to stop verified users from changing their display name (Tweets will always display two names, a display name you can edit and your actual Twitter username, which you cannot). In a follow-up Tweet, he says “Any name change at all will cause temporary loss of verified checkmark”, which given the frequency with which people do this—for everything from sports events to Halloween to the holiday season—is incredibly funny:
That’s a pretty heavy-handed rule just to try and stop people making fun of you on the internet! Former NFL punter (and Kotaku commenter) Chris Kluwe is another verified user who has been suspended, having also changed his profile pic and display name to match Musk’s (along with tweeting some mean things about Tesla cars).
If only Twitter had some kind of existing verification process that could easily sort out which accounts were real and which were fake. Ah well!
It’s weird that all these accounts were fully locked down, instead of just temporarily losing their verification like he clearly stated, but with half of Twitter’s staff fired and the other half burned to a crisp I guess mix-ups, hastily-implemented policy decisions, not knowing which hare-brained idea you actually got suspended for and billionaires wailing “I’m not owned! I’m not owned!!” are going to be the norm for the foreseeable future.
I’ve contacted Twitter for clarification on just which rule the affected accounts broke, and will update if they can ever find out and get back to me.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk says he plans to charge Twitter users for using the blue verification checkmark, quickly lowering the amount to $8 per month after sparking criticism for suggesting a $19.99 monthly fee. What do you think?
“Can we pay more for a bigger checkmark?”
Hector Hoffman, Fiberglass Laminator
“Now how will I know if my death threats are going to the real Will Wheaton?”
Sloane Rupar, Fur Trapper
“A public town square is only as good as its entrance fee.”
Tried sitting up today in PT, I would rather die than do that again. I hate this my whole body hates it. I don’t want to be tough. I don’t want to be brave I cried for a hour and the pain is so immense through all the meds im on. Idk if I can do this. I can’t explain this pain.
Chechik, now home after multiple surgeries—one which lasted for over five hours—returned to Twitch over the weekend to give further updates on the injury, its consequences and how she’s doing weeks after the accident.
In this clip, Chechik mentions how she is still out of breath doing even the simplest daily tasks, before showing off a huge scar that runs down the centre of her back:
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Later while playing she says that tests conducted on her while in hospital revealed that she had been unknowingly pregnant at the time of the injury, but then lost the baby due to the surgery required on her spine:
In the wake of this and other injuries suffered at the event, neither Twitch (organisers of TwitchCon) or Kairos Media (the creative agency actually running the booth) have commented publicly.
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