The Year That Was and Wasn’t
The past year has been bad—but what made it bad, more or less? To find out, we asked a group of writers and thinkers: What were the most important events of 2016, and what were the least?
internet
A collection of 65 issues
Being John
When five million people share your name, your Google-ability is miserably low. Will this forever change naming?
The Year That Was and Wasn’t
We asked writers and thinkers to tell us: What were the most important events of 2015—and what were the least?
The Wayback Machine
How nostalgia works and why social media may destroy it altogether, or restore it to its original purpose.
What #Pobrezafilia Means for Mexico
Photos of poor, brown-skinned women, naked, in sexually suggestive poses, are flooding social-media networks.
Lo que #Pobrezafilia significa para México
Fotos de mujeres pobres, morenas, desnudas en posiciones sexualmente sugestivas están inundando las redes sociales en México.
The Downstairs Gays
Social media makes it easy to virtually tour our neighbors’ homes—and really, their entire lives. The hard part: finding the clear divide between entertainment and cyberstalking.
How the Other Half Shares
When the media talks about social media, it’s always about young, white Americans. We spoke to a wider sample—including a sex worker, a pastor’s wife, a rapper—to see why people do what they do online.
The Problem of the Flying Puppies
Catfishing is usually part of an online romance scam—not the world of expensive French bulldogs.
Silicon Valley High
No one’s surprised in Silicon Valley when a 12-year-old runs the family e-commerce store. But going to the same high school as Steve Jobs and liking it are two different things.
Ars Erotica
What one woman labels kinky, another person calls a crime against cake. Offering a taxonomy of erotic fixations.
What Think-Piece Writers Get Wrong About Lobotomies
The web is full of pundits looking to turn every topic into think-bait. One writer commits himself to thinking much, much deeper.
Against the Clock
The invasion of the Apple Watch is imminent. While the technology future it heralds is exciting, some of our wrists are already spoken for.
Binge Reading Disorder
The typical American consumes more than 100,000 words a day and remembers none of them.
Big Time
When viral stardom strikes, your entire future is suddenly within reach—would you capture it or just let it slip?
Kafka’s Kickstarter
The latest works from the author will be given with pleasure, and received with thanks, but we need your support.
It Made Me Feel Like More Than One Person
You can learn how to read a poem, but you can’t choose how it will affect you. Here, a little cough launches a journey through a reader’s mind.
This Will Be the Year That Was
If you can't wait to find out what 2015 will bring—from John Galliano's Cosby sweaters to Jenny McCarthy getting polio—wait no longer. (Spoilers ahead.)
Catching Up With the Mp3 Bloggers
A decade ago, and then again five years later, we gathered a set of music bloggers who pioneered online music discovery—often to the chagrin of record labels. Now we reconvene to discuss the current state of listening to and reading about music online.
Some Facts About the Listicle
The bread and butter of online journalism, epitomized by lists like “The 25 Most Kimye Things That Have Ever Happened,” got its start in a 19th-century column in the New York Times.
Sorry I’m Not Sorry
Many people in the news are saying sorry, albeit through gritted teeth. Why apologies are essential—especially the non-apology apology—to navigating our modern world.
Our Better Shelves
After visiting more than 2,000 independent bookstores—at least virtually—the Amazon annihilation, Orwell misquotes and all, doesn't seem quite so inescapable.
Water From Elephants
Humans have kept elephants for thousands of years, longer than we've domesticated chickens. Yet the great animals’ capacity to cry for freedom comes as a shock.
A Brief History of Bloggering
Even a fake history of blogging—going back to the Old Internet, when HTML templates were so raw—offers insight into how we reached today’s web and survived comments.
This Is How I Post
Over the past decade, social media has made us all big communicators, but we’re giving off more noise than signals. An argument for the handwritten note.
Who Goes There
The Heartbleed Bug exposed a well-known secret: Passwords suck. But that’s really nothing new—just ask the Romans. Explaining the password’s past and future.
The Jennifer Berman Club
We all have doppelgängers, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends with them. One Jennifer Berman reaches out to other Jennifer Bermans.
Send, Dad
Ever since my dad got an iPad last year, he sees it fit to multitask: Read an article, and text me about it.
Watch and Learn
YouTube tutorials are the classrooms of the 21st century. Are they enough to make you a better person?
All the President’s Killers
Fifty years after Dallas, an illustrated guide to every person, plot, and nefarious organization ever accused of killing JFK.
Kitty Pride
A visit with the prima donnas of the 32nd Annual Westchester County Cat Show helps a longtime owner appreciate her unruly childhood best friend, now departed.
From Beyond the Grave
Convinced his wife was buried by mistake, a widower insists on unearthing her body. What happens when they open the coffin? As is our Halloween ritual, TMN writers share their own endings to the story.
My Brief, Binding Road
Since the closing down of Silk Road, the number of drug dealers selling online has increased nearly 50 percent. A former customer waits in fear, wondering why he used his real name.
The Complete Biography of North West
A baby is born to a celebrity couple. Meanwhile, many more babies are born to countless other non-famous couples. This is what happens next.
A Good Angle Is Hard to Find
The spread of the selfie produces daily turmoil, from columnist doom-mongering to celebrity scandals. Meanwhile, the world just took a billion more. Defense of a misunderstood phenomenon.
Our Bad
In light of the ongoing Snowden leak, the National Security Agency has begun mailing apology notes to private citizens. However, since it did take the time to read your correspondence, advice may be included.
The Internet of Actual Things
As we progress from smartphones to smart toasters, our things are becoming increasingly connected. Soon they'll be on Facebook alongside us. From there, it's only a few steps to tactful beds.
From Here You Can See Everything
Our current era of on-demand television series does more than facilitate binge-watching—it encourages it. David Foster Wallace already told us what happens next.
The Real Me
The internet is an unrelenting enabler of our flaws and an unforgiving archive of them—so should you google your new love interest, or hold off? And what if they google you first?
Touching From a Distance
Technology is moving so fast, it’s easy to overlook that what's to come is already right in front of us. Stop for a moment, and you’ll see the future.
The Missing Bride
A bride disappears on her wedding day, never to be seen again—or will she? Continuing a grand TMN Halloween tradition, our writers and editors craft new endings to a familiar tale.
The Break-Up
Elections once conferred a larger knowledge that made us feel more connected to what’s important. But this cycle’s meaningless content overload has delivered little more a desire to unplug.
The Pleading of President Forty-Four
The White House has been lauded for its grassroots internet campaigns to raise money. But what happens when a man takes the president's messages too personally?
Interstellar Hard Drive
All your precious data, everything you've created and every memory you’ve captured and stored, is etched on a hard disk somewhere on Earth. Back it up all you want—it won’t matter if the planet goes. The search for storage beyond the cloud.
Here There Be Monsters
A professor teaches his students skepticism by instructing them to create hoaxes with the web as their laboratory.
Arts and Crafts and Money
When “small batch” equals big dollars and one-person companies are supported by corporate-size websites, is “hand-made” what we think it is? A report from North America’s largest consumer craft fair, where the competition for puppet dollars is intense.
The Sound of the Internet
If the internet makes a sound (and it does), are you listening? Our correspondent uses software to transform the digital ephemera of web browsing—from network traffic to JavaScript, browser histories to JPGs—into music.
Don’t Leave Me
World War II had veteran parades. Vietnam War vets were often ignored, if not shunned. For the current generation of war-weary Americans, solace comes on YouTube.
The Truth Will Set You Free
I knew when I was in trouble—like the time I was 13 and was caught watching porn on my dad’s computer—and I knew I couldn’t escape my fate. Nor would I have wanted to.
Twitter by Post
Twitter is the contemporary postcard—social updates that are limited by size, but not imagination. For a month, with a billion stamps, our correspondent moved his tweets from the laptop to the post office, and rediscovered the joy of mail.
What I Didn’t Write About When I Wrote About Quitting Facebook
The emergence of the Social Media Exile essay has been swift and smug. A language expert dissects a genre while also being seduced by its allure.
In Zarafshan
Cruising and boozing around Uzbekistan, a Canadian reporter winds up in a place that gives no logical reason to visit, where the question “why?” has no answer. Fortunately, virtual travel remains risk-free, except for all the beer.
Interlude by the Bay
With his old life again behind him, The Golem returns to looking ahead to what’s next—or at least trying—and finally gets around to answering some reader email.
On Surrender
The day after being roped into his latest protection duties, The Golem faces new threats—and a history of unstoppable devotion.
I’m Your Man
Ruth catches up on the blog, and a reader entreats The Golem to explain the intricacies of his relationship.
No Blog Is an Island
After a friend comments on the antisocial nature of this blog, The Golem ruminates on the true purpose of blogging, and whether “first” is more meaningful than previously thought.
Marked Man
The tricky part about blogging is knowing where to draw the line about what’s revealed. After his last post raised some eyebrows, the Golem addresses the whole eating thing.
I Meme Mine
One post in, and it’s time to assess what went right and what went wrong; or it would be, if a questionnaire didn’t take precedence. The Golem gets tagged by the internet.
Love, Lies, and Online Dating
Either you've done it or you know someone who has: online dating, the scourge and savior of contemporary romance. A panel of experts discusses love 2.0.
South by South-BEST!
Every year for South by Southwest, thousands of creative visionaries descend upon Austin, Texas. You might meet some of them, too--if only you weren't at the Interactive portion of the festival.
The LiveJournal of Zachary Marsh
An awfully different young man graduates from high school and quickly learns more than he bargained about snack foods, ducks, and a secret family history.
MetaFilter in the Ruins
When the apocalypse comes, when the world ends as we know it, you can bet someone will be updating the Blue.
A Chat With Penny, Chatterbot
Computers are taking over the world, and recently they’ve started talking back.
Flip Flop Flyin
It’s been two years since Flip Flop Flyin started, and the web hasn’t been the same ever since. Craig, the man behind the tiny man, joined our writer for a short conversation and helped him understand the beauty of small things. Note: Craig does not have a ‘Beatles’ haircut. He is very serious about
Andy Crewdson of Lines & Splines
Our writer interviews Andy Crewdson of Lines & Splines. We especially like that he is an ‘average indie kid.’