All posts tagged: content creators

Asus ProArt 27 QD-OLED (PA279cdv) Review: HDR for All

Asus ProArt 27 QD-OLED (PA279cdv) Review: HDR for All

Published by skeptic

As far as the Asus’ appearance goes, the side bezels are a bit large, and the top and bottom bezels aren’t the same size, which I find visually off-putting. Nicely, though, the amount of adjustability is impressive. This stand can swivel, tilt, rotate into portrait mode, and the height can shift 5 inches. The stand has some very basic built-in cable management, with down-firing ports that help keep cords organized. Also, the flat base doesn’t require much space on my desk. Each of the two back USB-C ports has a specific purpose. One is USB-C 3.2 with DP Alt Mode, which provides 96 watts of power delivery for your laptop. The other is a USB-C 3.2 port for the KVM switch, enabling you to connect two PCs to the monitor and switch between them seamlessly. Fortunately, Asus clearly labels each port, so you know which to use for your intended purpose. The monitor also comes with two USB-A ports for accessories, a headphone jack, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4, and a DisplayPort Out for daisy-chaining monitors …

Viral Disneyland Content Creator Defends Her ‘Special Friendship’ With Peter Pan

Viral Disneyland Content Creator Defends Her ‘Special Friendship’ With Peter Pan

Published by skeptic

As a Disney content creator, Toni Kulusich posts meet-and-greet videos with lots of different Disneyland theme park characters. But her favorite is Peter Pan. A hugely popular character in the Disney parks, Peter Pan has a large internet fan base and is beloved for his spontaneity and playful interactions with guests as well as his sharp-tongued, often bratty personality. Kulusich, a 27-year-old Los Angeles native who goes to Disneyland about once a week on her annual pass, loves making videos of herself with Peter, posting videos of herself playing tag with him or skipping around the parks. Kulusich, who uses her middle name online for privacy reasons, never thought there was anything problematic about her Peter Pan content until August 2, when she saw that a video in which she’d gifted Peter a crocheted duck keychain was getting a lot of attention. As the views grew from 10,000 to a million, the negative comments started to pile up. “Slice that duck open and make sure there’s no AirTag inside,” one commenter wrote. “Imagine being known …

Honor’s Robot Phone Has a Gimbal-Powered Camera for Vloggers

Honor’s Robot Phone Has a Gimbal-Powered Camera for Vloggers

Published by skeptic

The gimbal-powered 200-megapixel camera isn’t the only camera, either. It’s joined by a 200-megapixel telephoto camera and a 50-megapixel ultrawide, not to mention the 50-megapixel selfie shooter. The gimbal has 4 degrees of freedom, and you can activate it in the camera app or by making a palm motion on the selfie camera. And since it can rotate 300 degrees, you can use it as a selfie camera too. The phone is shockingly light at 248 grams (the aforementioned iPhone 17 Pro is 206 grams). I wholly expected the Robot Phone to be top-heavy, with all those camera components at the top and the massive 7,060-mAh silicon-carbon battery inside powering the whole system. But in fact it’s decently balanced. A glass cover protects the gimbal camera, and you can slide it to the right when you’re ready to activate the gimbal. Once the camera is out, you can manually control the gimbal for ultra-smooth video capture through the camera app, or use preset motions to give your clips a cinematic look. There’s even voice control …

The ‘Manosphere’ Isn’t a Movement. It’s a Multibillion-Dollar Grievance Industry

The ‘Manosphere’ Isn’t a Movement. It’s a Multibillion-Dollar Grievance Industry

Published by skeptic

For many years now, a dark question has haunted parents, teachers, the internet, and media institutions: What’s wrong with young men? Why, people ask, are boys so politically extreme, spouting misogynist rhetoric, and increasingly drawn into risky crypto schemes and online gambling? How did they become so lonely, with their depression symptoms often overlooked? The male youth vote broke for Trump in the 2024 election following a GOP campaign built on naked appeals to meathead machismo. Yet there are signs that his second term in office has done little to stem the anger of Gen Z men, whose support for the president is now plummeting. The most common explanation of these interrelated phenomena is that younger men have banded together online under the umbrella of something known as the “manosphere,” usually conceived as an organic right-wing rebellion driving the culture wars. A new study, however, suggests that this is entirely backward: The digital ecosystem that produces red-pilled men is less of a movement than it is a pyramid scheme. In “The Grift Economy: How Young …

Etsy Is In Its Flop Era, and Sellers Are Fleeing

Etsy Is In Its Flop Era, and Sellers Are Fleeing

Published by skeptic

In 2017, Emily Olson, a stay-at-home mom based in Boulder, Colorado, started selling prints and custom-made puppy portraits on Etsy. Her watercolors were simple and relatively cheap—images of saucer-eyed corgis and malamutes in mini-tuxes, which she sold for $75 to $300 each—but dog owners adored them: “They were a labor of love,” she says. In 2021, she says she made more than $40,000 off her Etsy store, and her social media following ballooned to 180,000 followers on YouTube. But in 2022, she noticed something odd: Her sales started precipitously declining. Competitors flooded the platform, and she kept finding copies of her work on drop-shipping sites like Alibaba, where they were advertised as original creations. Then there were the AI-generated pet portraits, which were supplanting her listings in search results and selling for a fraction of the price. The most frustrating part, she says, was that the AI-generated portraits were getting great reviews. “People were like, ‘Oh, this is the cutest image, I love it in my daughter’s bedroom.’ They didn’t really know or care who …

‘Doo Doo Water and a Few Needles’: Inside the Mystery of the New York City Manhole Prowlers

‘Doo Doo Water and a Few Needles’: Inside the Mystery of the New York City Manhole Prowlers

Published by skeptic

In recent days, a fantastical question has captured the attention of New Yorkers and local tabloids: Who is popping in and out of manholes across the city, and what are they doing in the sewer system? On May 5, security footage showed three people wearing hip waders entering a manhole in Queens. Then, in the early morning hours of May 29, another camera captured a group of people exiting a manhole in Brooklyn. The same day, a different group was seen emerging from another Brooklyn manhole, miles away from the first location. Some wore headlamps, and some were carrying what appeared to be shovels and flashlights. The New York Police Department has speculated that the men are scavengers looking for jewelery, guns, or other valuables. But no one knows for sure, so WIRED consulted with several urban exploration content creators active in New York City. On platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, “urbex” creators—typically teenage boys or young men who film together in small groups—explore abandoned or difficult-to-access spaces like defunct factories, dilapidated mansions, and …

OnlyFans’ First-Gen Creators Are Retiring—and Some Are Begging You to Forget They Exist

OnlyFans’ First-Gen Creators Are Retiring—and Some Are Begging You to Forget They Exist

Published by skeptic

On April 28, just before noon, Win White logged onto X and posted a series of messages to his 65,000 followers who, until that moment, were mostly unaware of his past as an OnlyFans creator. “I’m asking humbly that we all refrain from sharing content from before. If you see it, save it … cool,” he wrote. “I know where I’ve been and I think I’m entitled to a life after that at least.” That morning White, 29, had received several DMs about an old clip of him making rounds. Though he has done his best to separate his old life from his new one—last year he deleted his OnlyFans account and the separate X account where he posted content—it often has a habit of catching up with him. “All that work that I did for OnlyFans, I did out in California. I don’t really talk about it on this page. So I panicked,” White tells WIRED. Still, he had a hunch how his request might be received, and how nasty the responses could get. …

Can Listening to ‘Subliminals’ Make You Beautiful? Plenty of Women Believe It

Can Listening to ‘Subliminals’ Make You Beautiful? Plenty of Women Believe It

Published by skeptic

“Do you think about me?” So asks a disembodied voice at the beginning of a TikTok from user @velvet.mind. The question is followed by hypnotic synth pulses, hissing static, and sped-up, garbled human speech. An accompanying visual: a montage of immaculately made-up and stylish women who could all be models—indeed, some of them probably are. The text overlaid on the video reads “extreme beauty subliminal.” The minute-long clip has nearly 300,000 likes and 1.4 million views. Why all this engagement for a bit of vaporwave ephemera? Because an online community of young women sincerely believe that sustained exposure to these sounds and images will improve their physical appearance. According to the creator, the indecipherable words are a series of affirmations that include “My face is naturally symmetrical, balanced, and breathtaking” and “I have flawless, poreless, glowing skin.” Listeners are meant to subconsciously internalize and manifest such ideals; they echo that language in their replies, speaking their beauty goals into existence. “I am drop-dead gorgeous,” one comment reads. Welcome to the world of “subliminals,” a subculture …

The Men Behind Your Favorite AI Gay Thirst Traps

The Men Behind Your Favorite AI Gay Thirst Traps

Published by skeptic

With his deep brown eyes, wide grin, and almost comically chiseled body, Jae Young Joon is the platonic ideal of a hunky male influencer. On Instagram, where he has more than 320,000 followers, he regularly posts himself trying on sheet masks at home, enjoying soju and karaoke with his friends, or posing in front of the Ferris wheel at Coachella. Occasionally, he’ll promote his music, including his recent LP Pressure Release, which features a BDSM-inspired album cover, his back muscles rippling underneath a harness and chains. It’s an impressive online presence, and Jae’s fans eat it up: his comments are filled with fire and heart-eye emoji and people praising his music. It’s not until you go back to his profile and look at his bio, which says “Human mind. AI generated,” that you realize Jae isn’t real. His friends aren’t real. His music career isn’t real. Even his trip to Coachella isn’t real. Jae is the brainchild of Luc Thierry, a soft-spoken Canadian man in his early thirties who has been growing Jae’s account for …

YouTube Terminates Clavicular’s Channels for ‘Repeated Violations’

YouTube Terminates Clavicular’s Channels for ‘Repeated Violations’

Published by Daniella Wilson

YouTube has terminated “Looksmaxxing” influencer and streamer Clavicular‘s two channels for “severe or repeated violations.” The controversial creator, whose real name is Braden Peters, took to X on Thursday to ask his fans to help recover his @LiveWithClav and @ClavLooksmax accounts. “Very sad news this morning. My YouTube channels @ LiveWithClav & @ ClavLooksmax were terminated this morning with no warning or explanation,” he wrote. “The channels consisted of livestream VODs and free courses created by me to help empower young men to be the best versions of themselves.” The streamer continued, “Me and my team worked hard to ensure we followed YouTube’s TOS very strictly, blurring out all inappropriate language and sensitive topics. Could you please help in recovering my accounts?” Though Clavicular claims YouTube didn’t give him an explanation for the move, in the emails he received from the video platform, it clearly listed community guideline violations as the reason. The platform also gave Clavicular the same explanation for removing both accounts. “We have reviewed your content and found severe or repeated violations …