• “Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance”⁠, Horton & Wohl1956 (Lonesome Gal)

• “A Deep Dive into K-pop”⁠ (it sells⁠)

• “China’s Selfie Obsession: Meitu’s apps are changing what it means to be beautiful in the most populous country on earth”⁠

• “The Digital Future of Tabletop Games”⁠

• ⁠“What ARGs Can Teach Us About QAnon” (“Who Buried Paul?”)

• AIBO⁠; ilo“The Comforting Fictions of Dementia Care: Many facilities are using nostalgic environments as a means of soothing the misery, panic, and rage their residents experience”⁠; “What Robots Can—and Can’t—Do for the Old and Lonely: For elderly Americans, social isolation is especially perilous. Will machine companions fill the void?”⁠; ⁠“My Parents’ Dementia Felt Like the End of Joy. Then Came the Robots”⁠

• “11 Reasons Not to Become Famous (or “A Few Lessons Learned Since 2007”)”, Tim Feriss

• Targeted Individuals⁠: “United States of Paranoia: They See Gangs of Stalkers”⁠

• Munchausen Syndrome⁠: ⁠“The Lying Disease: Why Would Someone Want to Fake a Serious Illness on the Internet?”⁠; ⁠The boy who convinced his friend to murder him via false online identities⁠

• Stans⁠: ⁠“Obsessed Benedict Cumberbatch Fans Tried to Have Me Fired: My encounter with internet fandom, and the rise of the celebrity relationship conspiracy theory”⁠; “How a Fake Baby Is Born: For years, women on the internet have been writing conspiracy theories about celebrity pregnancies. What sparks them?”⁠; ⁠“[Adam Driver Standom] Adam Driver Makes Fun of a Fan’s Gift in the New Yorker”⁠; see also the British monarchy, “Babygate”/Sarah Palin

• “Violence and the Sacred: College [and mimetic desire] as an incubator of Girardian terror”⁠, Dan Wang

• ⁠“What to Make of Rod McKuen?”; “The Instagram Poet Outselling Homer 10 to 1: Meet Rupi Kaur, author of the ubiquitous Milk and Honey”⁠

• ⁠“AI and the Indian Election”⁠

• Economics:

  • ⁠“1,000 True Fans”⁠, Kevin Kelly⁠

  • Cameo⁠: “How Cameo Turned D-List Celebs Into a Monetization Machine”; “How Cameo Blew Up During Quarantine”⁠ (but then struggled⁠); “How to Hire a Pop Star for Your Private Party: For the very rich, even the world’s biggest performers—Beyoncé, Drake, Jennifer Lopez, Andrea Bocelli—are available, at a price”⁠

  • Eugene Wei: “Status as a Service”; ⁠“TikTok and the Sorting Hat”; ⁠“Seeing like An Algorithm”

  • Turner Novak: “The Rise of TikTok and Understanding Its Parent Company ByteDance”, “Pinduoduo and Vertically Integrated Social Commerce”;

  • Non-fungible token⁠: ⁠“When the Stagnation Goes Virtual”⁠

  • ⁠“Making is Show Business now”, Alex Danco

• Reaction video⁠: “Why do people like videos of other people reacting to videos?”

• Streaming:

  • ⁠“The Blurred Lines of Parasocial Relationships: The disappearing divide between ‘followers’ and ‘friends’”⁠; ⁠“Why Can’t We Be Friends: Podcasts and other forms of “parasocial” media reframe friendship as monetized self-care”

  • “How to Get Rich Playing Video Games on Twitch: For the stars of the streaming service Twitch, success means working around the clock”⁠

  • “Ice Poseidon’s Lucrative, Stressful Life as a Live Streamer”⁠

  • “The Chinese Farmer Who Live-Streamed Her Life and Made a Fortune”⁠

  • “The app that lets you pay to control another person’s life”⁠

  • ⁠“Caught in the Study Web: Exploring Gen Z’s Ambitious and Anxiety-Fuelled Pursuit of Straight A’s Across YouTube, TikTok, Discord, and Twitter”⁠

  • ⁠“The Weird World of Vegan YouTube Stars Is Imploding: Rawvana, Bonny Rebecca and Stella Rae are eating animal products, triggering outrage and an identity crisis”

  • ⁠“The Rise of the $10 Million Disc Golf Celebrity: How much can athletes really make in niche sports? A whole lot more than you might think. Disc golfer Paul McBeth set a new standard by signing an 8-figure endorsement contract—and his deal might only be the beginning”⁠

  • People’s Republic of Desire⁠

  • “The Twitching Generation: Around the world, doctors have noticed teenage patients reporting the sudden onset of Tourette’s tics. Is this the first illness spread by social media?”⁠

  • “On Discord, Music Fans Become Artists’ Besties, Collaborators, and Even Unpaid Interns: Originally launched as a messaging app for gamers, the platform has become an intimate place for artists and fans to connect and build community. Can this fragile ecosystem last?”

  • “The Business of Phish”

  • Virtual Youtuber⁠: “The overworked humans behind China’s virtual influencers: Hidden behind the perfect faces of China’s $16 billion virtual celebrity industry is an angry, overworked labor force.”; Kizuna AI⁠/Hololive Production⁠/Nijisanji⁠/VShojo⁠ (“It’s rare to hear <70% female for chat products…”⁠); “How Chinese influencers use AI digital clones of themselves to pump out content: Questions over honesty and legality as livestreamers, particularly in online shopping, use avatars to boost their earnings”⁠

  • Gambling: “An NFL linebacker quit football to sell Pokémon cards, now he’s making millions”⁠

  • Chess: “How Magnus Carlsen Turned Chess Skill Into a Business Empire”⁠/“The New Economics of Chess”⁠; ⁠“Chess.com finds streaming success”; “The Most Popular Chess Streamer on Twitch: The former chess prodigy Hikaru Nakamura was widely disliked on the professional circuit. Then he started streaming”⁠; “The [Alexandra] Botez Gambit: An enterprising chess streamer finds her opening”

• Porn:

  • ASMR⁠: “How A.S.M.R. Became a Sensation: The brain-tingling feeling was a hard-to-describe psychological oddity. Until, suddenly, it was a YouTube phenomenon.”⁠ (cf. ⁠Lonesome Gal⁠); “Inside the secretly vibrant business of porn MP3s: Video sites like Pornhub and OnlyFans get all the attention, but audio smut is a surprisingly profitable enterprise.”⁠

  • AI Dungeon⁠; Replika (e⁠g⁠.⁠); ⁠“How it feels to have your mind hacked by an AI”⁠; Xiaoice⁠ (eg.); “A 23-year-old Snapchat influencer used OpenAI’s technology to create an AI version of herself that will be your girlfriend for $1 per minute”⁠; ⁠“A Failed AI Girlfriend Product, and My Lessons”; ⁠“AI Boyfriend”⁠; “She Is in Love With ChatGPT”⁠

  • ⁠“In Defense of Chatbot Romance”⁠, Kaj Sotala

  • Projekt Melody⁠

  • Only Fans⁠: ⁠“Porn Takes On a Personal Touch in the Pandemic”⁠; ⁠“When Influencers Switch Platforms—and Bare It All”⁠; ⁠“A day in the life of an OnlyFans creator [Aella] who makes up to $100,000 a month off explicit content”⁠; “The ‘E-Pimps’ of OnlyFans: Clever marketers have figured out how easy it is to simulate online intimacy at scale, ventriloquizing alluring models with cheap, offshore labor”⁠; “The Sugar Babies of Stanford University: from overnight social media fame to sugar-baby side hustles, America’s elite young women are changing the rules of sex and class”; “Dispatches from the Rap Wars: My 18 months inside one of Chicago’s most notorious gangs”; ⁠“This Is Catfishing on an Industrial Scale: Hired as customer service reps, these freelancers were instead tasked with luring in the lonely and lovestruck through a network of dating and hookup sites”⁠; “Inside an OnlyFans empire: Sex, influence and the new American Dream—The fast-growing platform represents the creator economy at its most bluntly transactional, where sex is just another unit of content to monetize”⁠; ⁠“I Went Undercover as a Secret OnlyFans Chatter. It Wasn’t Pretty”⁠; “Dan’s the man: Why Chinese women are looking to ChatGPT for love”⁠; ⁠“Onlyfans Figured Out How To Scale Connection”⁠

    One can note that the result of 2022 ⁠Stable Diffusion⁠ democratizing human-level art & porn has been many artists (existing & new) adopting it secretly to save their labor, and angry fans/commissioners exposing them. But as the tools get better and t Homo hypocritus will find a way, whether it’s ⁠‘farm-to-table’, ‘bean-to-bar’⁠, ‘extra virgin virgin olive oil’⁠, ‘fair trade’⁠, ‘sustainable’⁠ anything, ⁠‘CO₂ credits’⁠, fitness instructors, muscled⁠ Hollywood actors, pro wrestling⁠/cycling⁠/baseball⁠ etc. They’ll pretend to be ‘hand-made’ ⁠premium mediocre⁠ goods, and we’ll pretend to pay anywhere close to what that’d actually cost to be so good. (Do not summon up that which you are unwilling to put down!)

  • “The New Unsexy Sexy Marketplace: These days, there’s no limit—or reason—to the intimate objects sold online.”⁠

  • “She Gets Paid Just to Humiliate Her Fans: The high-priced hustle of financial domination, where “pay pigs” send tributes to their cash masters”⁠

  • “Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex? Despite the easing of taboos and the rise of hookup apps, Americans are in the midst of a sex recession.”⁠

  • ⁠“Livestreaming monetisation models, aka, What do camgirls have in common with Twitch streamers?”⁠; ⁠“Maximizing Your Slut Impact: An Overly Analytical Guide to Camgirling”; Mia Malkova⁠

  • “Jon Ronson on bespoke porn: ‘Nothing is too weird. We consider all requests’: Turned on by gremlins? Excited by ketchup or rare stamps? There’s a porn film for that. Inside California’s new growth industry”⁠

  • ⁠Review of The Great Happiness Space⁠

  • ⁠“God-Shaped Hole”, 0hpl

  • “The sexfluencers: Platforms like OnlyFans mean people with big followings online can earn money. Where does that leave the sex workers who were there first?”⁠

  • “Meet the goonettes, women with staggering online porn habits: Hours-long masturbation sessions are the norm. “I love going brain numb to porn”, says one scenester”⁠

• See Also: “Littlewood’s Law and the Global Media”⁠, “The Melancholy of Subculture Society”⁠, “GPT-3 Creative Fiction”⁠

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