Topic: Internet culture (Page 2)
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π Greenland Crisis
Since 2025, the second Donald Trump administration of the United States has sought to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark (itself in the European Union), triggering an ongoing international diplomatic crisis. This escalated in early 2026 after Trump refused to rule out the use of military force to annex Greenland and threatened a 25% import tax on European Union (EU) goods unless Denmark ceded Greenland. Trump's statements sparked a confrontation with Denmark and the EU (supported by several other NATO members), reigniting earlier concerns of a USβEU trade war. On 21 January, Trump reversed his position at the 2026 Davos conference, pledging not to use force or tariffs to annex Greenland.
Trump had unsuccessfully tried to purchase Greenland during his first presidency. After his 2024 re-election, in January 2026, he said "it may be a choice" whether to preserve NATO or seize Greenland and that he "no longer [felt] an obligation to think purely of Peace" after not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. A report by the Danish Defence Intelligence Service mentioned the United States (US) as a potential threat to national security for the first time in its history, and Danish officials raised concerns about reports that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had assigned agents to spy on Greenland.
The Greenlandic and Danish prime ministers rejected any US takeover, saying they would defend Greenland in the event of an attack. Both NATO and EU members would be obliged to assist Denmark in the event of an attack. Denmark and eight NATO allies deployed forces to defend the territory. In response, Trump threatened a trade war against the EU, leading European politicians to suspend a proposed EUβUS trade agreement and consider placing sanctions on the US.
Trump's threats led to large-scale protests in both Greenland and Denmark. A YouGov poll found only 8% of Americans supported an invasion of Greenland, with 73% opposed. Trump's actions faced heavy opposition in Congress from both major parties, with Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson describing Trump's threats as "completely inappropriate" and a bipartisan congressional delegation traveling to Copenhagen to support DenmarkβUS relations. The crisis was described as one of the most erratic episodes involving a US president, prompting scrutiny of Trump's age and fitness for office.
On 21 January, Trump reversed course, first ruling out military force and then abandoning tariff threats after talks with NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte reached what Trump called a "framework of a future deal". Greenland and Denmark ruled out any deal altering the sovereignty of Greenland and Denmark, with Trump's comments referring to pre-existing commitments from a 1951 USβDenmark treaty.
Discussed on
- "Greenland Crisis" | 2026-01-19 | 129 Upvotes 90 Comments
π Usenet personality
A Usenet personality was a particular kind of internet personality who gained a certain level of notoriety from posting on the Usenet discussion forum. Since its inception, Usenet newsgroups have attracted a wide variety of users. Some posters achieved a certain amount of fame and celebrity within Usenet circles because of their unusual or humorous writings.
Discussed on
- "Usenet personality" | 2026-01-26 | 112 Upvotes 84 Comments
π Usenet β A worldwide distributed discussion system
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to Internet forums that are widely used today. Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSs, though posts are stored on the server sequentially. The name comes from the term "users network".
A major difference between a BBS or web forum and Usenet is the absence of a central server and dedicated administrator. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of servers that store and forward messages to one another via "newsΒ feeds". Individual users may read messages from and post messages to a local server, which may be operated by anyone.
Usenet is culturally and historically significant in the networked world, having given rise to, or popularized, many widely recognized concepts and terms such as "FAQ", "flame", sockpuppet, and "spam". In the 1990s, before access to the Internet became commonly affordable, Usenet connections via Fidonet's dial-up BBS networks made long-distance or worldwide discussions and other communication widespread, not needing a server, just (local) telephone service.
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- "Usenet β A worldwide distributed discussion system" | 2018-08-05 | 104 Upvotes 87 Comments
π Surveillance Capitalism
Surveillance capitalism has a number of meanings around the commodification of personal information. Since 2014, social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff has used and popularized the term.
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- "Surveillance Capitalism" | 2021-07-27 | 16 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "Surveillance Capitalism" | 2020-04-12 | 71 Upvotes 38 Comments
- "Surveillance Capitalism" | 2019-03-13 | 14 Upvotes 2 Comments
π COVFEFE Act
The Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement Act (COVFEFE Act) is a bill introduced into the United States House of Representatives in 2017 (on June 12), during the 115th United States Congress.
The bill would amend the Presidential Records Act to preserve Twitter posts and other social media interactions of the President of the United States, and to require the National Archives to store such items.
U.S. Representative Mike Quigley, Democrat of Illinois, introduced the legislation in the wake of Donald Trump's routine use of Twitter, stating "In order to maintain public trust in government, elected officials must answer for what they do and say; this includes 140-character tweets. If the president is going to take to social media to make sudden public policy proclamations, we must ensure that these statements are documented and preserved for future reference." If enacted, the bill "would bar the prolifically tweeting president from deleting his posts, as he has sometimes done."
If the bill were enacted, it would see US law treat US presidents' personal social media accounts (such as Trump's "@realDonaldTrump" Twitter account) the same as "official" social media accounts (such as the "@POTUS" Twitter account).
Discussed on
- "COVFEFE Act" | 2019-09-11 | 24 Upvotes 15 Comments
- "COVFEFE Act" | 2017-08-14 | 113 Upvotes 29 Comments
π OiNK's Pink Palace was shut down 16 years ago
Oink's Pink Palace (frequently stylized as OiNK) was a prominent BitTorrent tracker which operated from 2004 to 2007. Following a two-year investigation by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the site was shut down on 23 October 2007, by British and Dutch police agencies. These music industry organisations described OiNK as an "online pirate pre-release music club", whereas former users described it as one of the world's largest and most meticulously maintained online music repositories. About a month before the shut-down, music magazine Blender elected OiNK's creator, British software engineer Alan Ellis, to their The Powergeek 25 β the Most Influential People in Online Music list. Alan Ellis was tried for conspiracy to defraud at Teesside Crown Court, the first person in the UK to be prosecuted for illegal file-sharing, and found not guilty on 15 January 2010.
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- "OiNK's Pink Palace was shut down 16 years ago" | 2023-11-16 | 92 Upvotes 82 Comments
π The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet
"The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" (also known as "Like the Wind", "Blind the Wind", "Check It In, Check It Out" or "Take It In, Take It Out" after lines in fan-interpreted lyrics; acronymed as TMMSOTI or TMS) is the nickname given to an unidentified song recording, most likely composed in the 1980s.
The song was reportedly recorded from a Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) broadcast sometime in the mid-1980s, likely during or after 1984. Since 2019, this song has been the subject of a viral Internet phenomenon, with many users of sites such as Reddit and Discord involved in a collaborative effort to search for the origins of the song. Through the search, other unknown songs were discovered. Users have coined the term "Lostwave" to describe songs of this nature.
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- "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" | 2023-06-23 | 129 Upvotes 42 Comments
π A list of April Fools' Day RFCs
A Request for Comments (RFC), in the context of Internet governance, is a type of publication from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Society (ISOC), usually describing methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected systems.
Almost every April Fools' Day (1 April) since 1989, the Internet RFC Editor has published one or more humorous Request for Comments (RFC) documents, following in the path blazed by the June 1973 RFC 527 called ARPAWOCKY, a parody of Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem "Jabberwocky". The following list also includes humorous RFCs published on other dates.
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- "April Fools Day Request for Comments" | 2024-04-01 | 16 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "UTF-9 and UTF-18" | 2015-02-05 | 109 Upvotes 11 Comments
- "A list of April Fools' Day RFCs" | 2010-03-31 | 17 Upvotes 2 Comments
π One red paperclip
One red paperclip is a website created by Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald, who bartered his way from a single red paperclip to a house in a series of fourteen online trades over the course of a year. MacDonald was inspired by the childhood game Bigger, Better. His site received a considerable amount of notice for tracking the transactions. "A lot of people have been asking how I've stirred up so much publicity around the project, and my simple answer is: 'I have no idea'", he told the BBC.
Discussed on
- "One red paperclip" | 2020-12-25 | 93 Upvotes 41 Comments
- "One red paperclip" | 2018-04-19 | 14 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Dead Internet Theory
The dead Internet theory is a theory that asserts that the Internet now consists almost entirely of bot activity and automatically generated content, marginalizing human activity. The date given for this "death" is generally around 2016 or 2017.
In 2012, YouTube removed billions of video views from major record labels, such as Sony and Universal, as a result of discovering that they had used fraudulent services to artificially increase the views of their content. The removal of the inflated views aimed to restore credibility to the platform and improve the accuracy of view counts. The move by YouTube also signaled a change in the way the platform would tackle fake views and bot traffic.
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- "Dead Internet Theory" | 2025-09-24 | 10 Upvotes 6 Comments
- "Dead Internet Theory" | 2024-09-28 | 14 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "Dead Internet Theory" | 2024-07-12 | 11 Upvotes 3 Comments
- "Dead Internet Theory" | 2023-03-16 | 51 Upvotes 48 Comments