Culture

Crime

They Made D4vd a Star. Now They Want Him Convicted of Murder

A legion of young fans propelled the singer D4vd to viral fame. Now that he’s been charged with the murder of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, they say the clues were in their Discord all along.

Jennifer Swann

robots.txt

The Pope’s Warnings About AI Were AI-Generated, a Detection Tool Claims

Miles Klee

Bot or Not

This Scammer Used an AI-Generated MAGA Girl to Grift ‘Super Dumb’ Men

Ej Dickson

Digital Culture

War Memes Are Turning Conflict Into Content

The jokes were funny. The systems behind them—and the reasons we keep passing around war memes as entertainment—are more serious.

Rand Al-Hadethi

The Influencers Normalizing Not Having Sex

From a celibate porn star to an asexual ex-Mormon, the internet is full of people who are abstaining from sex—and it’s not just incels.

Skye Battles

X’s Big Bot Purge Wiped Out a Lot of People’s Secret Porn Feeds

The platform’s large-scale crackdown on automated accounts is also impacting people who’ve spent years curating niche porn on secret X accounts.

Jason Parham

The Screenmaxxers Who Spend Every Waking Hour on Their Phones

As debates over social media addiction rage, people with extreme screen times tell WIRED they have no plans to cut back.

Miles Klee

Video Games

Gamers’ Worst Nightmares About AI Are Coming True

From the global RAM shortage driving up console prices to job loss in the industry, gaming is shaping up to be one of the AI boom's biggest casualties.

Helen Vogelsong-Donahue

Roblox’s AI-Powered Age Verification Is a Complete Mess

Kids are being identified as adults—and vice versa—on Roblox, while age-verified accounts are already being sold online.

David Gilbert

The Avatar Game Is So Good, They Don’t Need to Make the Movies Anymore

See the new movie Avatar: Fire and Ash if you’d like. But if you really want to experience the big blue world of Pandora, the video game is where it’s at.

Boone Ashworth

A New Las Vegas Attraction Serves Up Alien Foxes, Exoplanets, and VR Carl Sagan

Interstellar Arc is an immersive sci-fi experience that uses recent advances in headset tech to break new ground in virtual reality. And it all happens inside an empty-looking room in Las Vegas.

Ben Dowsett

Movies and TV

The 8 Best Movies to Stream This Month

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Crime 101, and Deathstalker are among the films deserving of your eyeballs this month

Matt Kamen

The Last Airbender Leaked Online. Some Fans Say Paramount Deserves the Fallout

After the full movie leaked, animators mourned the chance to release their work as intended. Others feel the leak is justified in light of Paramount’s marketing blunders and association with Trump.

Miles Klee

The 10 Best TV Shows to Stream This Month

The Boys, The Testaments, and Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 are just a few of the TV shows we’re bingeing this month.

Jennifer M. Wood

The FCC Has a Fast Lane for Complaints About Trump’s Media Critics

Internal emails obtained by WIRED reveal how a conservative legal group with a direct line into FCC chairman Brendan Carr’s office built the case against Jimmy Kimmel and his employees.

Dell Cameron