Netflix has nearly 222 million subscribers around the world, more than any other streaming company, and just last month it was forecasting eventually growing to half a billion. Now the arrow is pointing in the opposite direction. - The Atlantic
They mostly (excepting Joe Rogan) fly beneath mainstream radar, but "rightwing satirists, podcasters and standups … feature on each other's podcasts, TV shows and social media feeds, sharing ideas and audiences. … Many are masters of Reddit-style trolling and meme-making, helping them reach vast internet audiences." - The Guardian
I don’t imagine that one will wake up and open Twitter and see it magically transformed into a total cesspool of hate, harassment, and false information. But I can imagine a “going bankrupt” quality to Twitter’s degradation—it might happen slowly, then all at once. - The Atlantic
The showrunner for The Chosen, Dallas Jenkins (son of a co-author of the Left Behind novels), put up billboards advertising the show that were faux-vandalized, ostensibly by The Devil. Some fans thought the graffiti was real and were very offended, but the billboards reeled in new viewers. - Slate
To help you get a sense of how vague and complex a term “the metaverse” can be, here's an exercise: Mentally replace the phrase “the metaverse” in a sentence with “cyberspace.” Ninety percent of the time, the meaning won't substantially change. - Wired
Gestures such as incorporating a Ukrainian flag into one’s username may be merely symbolic, but when users lobby politicians online, donate money, or even offer up their own homes to refugees, their engagement with the war begins to have real-world consequences. - The Guardian
Or, to put it more clearly, how the new streaming service — into which the previous bosses had poured hundreds of millions — was shut down ten days after CNN officially became part of the newly-merged Warner Bros. Discovery conglomerate (and why Discovery couldn't signal its concerns beforehand). - The New York Times
"Some of those experiments, like Headline News (now HLN), paid off in a big way; others were here and gone in about a year. But all of them started ... from the roots of a network that itself was a wild bet when it first started." - Tedium
Think Keanu Reeves in Always Be My Maybe, Anna Faris in Keanu (unrelated to Reeves, kind of), LeBron James in Trainwreck ... the list goes way back. - Time
Much like the recent Eternals, banned in a variety of countries for a gay relationship and kiss, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness with its out lesbian superhero America Chavez won't be welcome in countries that have laws banning homosexuality. - Los Angeles Times
"The movie’s deep, sometimes unnervingly honest explorations of racism ― not to mention colorism, white supremacy, colonialism and displacement ― still feel groundbreaking 30 years later." - HuffPost
And he wants it enough to launch a whole project, with Film Foundation, to show one each month for free. (Which, let's face it, is pretty amazing - classic films, or even anything before, say, 2015! - are ancient according to a lot of film fans today.) - IndieWire
Arthouses are in trouble (see the previous article). But Everything Everywhere All at Once is proving surprisingly robust - and what makes it "a bonfire at arthouses is that it’s aimed squarely at the demo that has been fueling the box office rebound ... 18- to 34-year-olds." - Deadline
