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The internet is awash in conspiracy theories. No matter how major tech companies like YouTube, Facebook, and Google belatedly try to throttle or ban such content, people sharing misinformation and disinformation find loopholes to spread what they understand as the truth.

Thanks to algorithms that reward engagement over facts and a global pandemic that sent anxious people in search of answers, numerous conspiracy theories about COVID-19 have burrowed their way into American life. In some surveys, about half of respondents endorse one or more popular theories about the virus and vaccine. These beliefs have become so ubiquitous and emotionally consuming that some people are talking about them in therapy.

Therapists and psychiatrists know that conspiracy theory beliefs aren’t a mental illness. At the same time, their clients and patients may obsessively focus on those ideas, neglecting work, sleep, or relationships for online research. Conspiracy theories may prompt people to retreat from loved ones who don’t share their views, leading to disconnection and isolation.

Depending on which mental health provider you ask, they may have seen no change or observed a sudden, significant shift in which their clients or patients are preoccupied by conspiracy theories. Either way, for many of them, this is murky territory. If they push someone to defend their beliefs, it could ruin the delicate trust that therapists forge with their clients or patients. If they say nothing, it could make them complicit while hobbling their ability to address how fervent belief in conspiracy theories can make people miserable by increasing feelings of paranoia and anxiety.

The American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association, key professional organizations for mental health providers, told Mashable they do not have guidance related to responding to conspiracy theories as they arise in treatment. It’s easy to imagine why professional groups would be hesitant to tackle the subject. Members may not be pushing for such guidance, which must be informed by evidence-based research. Additionally, since many COVID-19 conspiracy theories are associated with conservative politics or movements like QAnon, professional organizations weighing in could create the perception that certain partisan beliefs are pathological.

So therapists and psychiatrists encountering conspiracy theories in their practice have to develop their own approach. A roundup of strategies published earlier this year by the nonprofit educational organization Psychotherapy Networker focused on the importance of curiosity, compassion, empathy, and patience. In other words, therapists summon an emotional generosity that many non-believers exhausted long ago. Surely it helps that they’re being paid for their time and work, but such an approach holds valuable lessons for people who’ve lost loved ones to the thrall of conspiracy theories and don’t know how to bridge their divergent realities.

How conspiracy theories come up in therapy

For Allen Lipscomb, Psy.D., a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in treating Black men grappling with trauma and grief, conspiracy theories have become a reoccurring theme of his sessions since the pandemic began. In the Before Times, they never came up. Instead, his clients talked about race-related microaggressions, fulfilling their roles at work and home, stress management, and self-preservation practices. Those subjects remain central to his clients’ concerns, but they’re also suspicious of what authorities say about the pandemic.

Drawing on debate over the origins of the novel coronavirus, they wonder why the Chinese government would try to create a virus that could kill millions of people. (U.S. intelligence agencies concluded COVID-19 wasn’t developed as a biological weapon.) Once the vaccine became available, Lipscomb’s clients told him the injection could monitor or track its recipients. Some suspect the vaccine is a Trojan horse with the capacity to kill its recipients, particularly Black people, once the government decides to flip the proverbial switch, some years into the future.

While there’s no evidence to support either of these theories, the Black men in Lipscomb’s care generally distrust the government. Their worldview is shaped not only by daily reminders of how American institutions fail them and their loved ones, but also historic acts of betrayal. They recall experiments conducted on Black people, like the physicians who purposely withheld treatment for men infected with syphilis and the researchers who studied cells taken from Henrietta Lacks without her consent before she died of uterine cancer. They don’t believe public health officials will protect them from harm, and in fact, may intentionally hurt them instead.

Lipscomb sees how his clients’ conspiracy theory beliefs are fueled by historic and ongoing oppression, as well as general uncertainty and anxiety. But rather than provide relief, conspiracy theories tend to heighten their sense of distrust and paranoia.

Conspiracy theory beliefs, says Lipscomb, are “priming them in such a way where they’re more susceptible to anxiety, and then because of the level of anxiety or paranoia it becomes debilitating.”

As a mental health provider, this dynamic matters a lot to Lipscomb. He aims to help clients heal, teach them coping skills, and improve their well-being. Left unaddressed, conspiracy theories can delay or impede that progress.

“Honoring allows me to go with it versus putting them in the position to teach, prove, and educate [me], which is a lot of labor.”

Lipscomb tries to strike a careful balance. He doesn’t ignore or interrogate conspiracy theories when they’re affecting a client’s well-being. His tactic is to “honor” them by acknowledging that the client feels angry, anxious, and distrustful. He invites the client to describe how their views shape their day-to-day experiences. They might find it difficult to sleep after reading disinformation on social media, or feel lonely because they refuse to get vaccinated but also continue to stay distant from others in order to avoid contracting COVID-19. These insights help Lipscomb know how to support his clients.

“Honoring allows me to go with it versus putting them in the position to teach, prove, and educate [me], which is a lot of labor,” he says.

Lipscomb developed the BRuH Approach to Therapy, which rests on four principles: bonding, recognition, understanding, and healing. While emphasizing the role of broken economic and political systems that contribute to his clients’ trauma and grief, Lipscomb also introduces coping skills like mindfulness, grounding techniques, and cultural and spiritual practices that foster resilience. Through narrative writing, he helps clients explore their experiences, putting them in the context of oppressive systems and policies, so they don’t reduce complex feelings to self-blame.

Overall, the idea is to help his clients function well so they’re not knocked off balance by incidents like racial profiling at a grocery store or encountering an alarming conspiracy theory online. As his clients’ coping strategies multiply, Lipscomb says they become less anxious and suspicious, even if they don’t disavow or abandon certain conspiracy theories. He believes that guidance on how to work with clients who express belief in conspiracy theories from professional organizations like the American Psychological Association would be “extremely helpful” provided it’s “critically racially conscious” as well as “antiracist and anti-oppressive.”

Understanding the spectrum of beliefs

Dr. Ziv Cohen, founder and medical director of Principium Psychiatry in New York City, says that it’s common for his practice’s patients — of which there are more than a thousand — to casually mention conspiracy theory beliefs. The trend he’s observed started after the Sept. 11 attacks. Patients often reference misinformation suggesting that the U.S. government orchestrated the events.

In Cohen’s experience, there’s a spectrum of belief. On the most mild end are people who believe, or partially believe, various conspiracy theories. They’re open to the idea that the “official narrative is not the real narrative,” but typically treat such skepticism as a form of entertainment. They don’t think much about conspiracy theories at the end of the day.

In the middle is a group of people who become obsessed. They might stay up late to solve QAnon riddles with others on Parler or wait for messages from conspiracy theory influencers to pop up on Telegram. They become consumed by wanting to know the latest theories and begin to exhibit conspiratorial thinking, which Cohen describes as holding a fixed belief they’re unwilling to change based on evidence.

“The problem here is they’re skeptical of everything except their conspiracy theories,” he says. Additionally, those in the first group who dabble in such beliefs can become fixated on them with enough exposure, joining the ranks of the obsessed.

The third cohort comprises people who become radicalized by a conspiracy theory. Perhaps already prone to violence, they’re eager to act when a conspiracy theory — like the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen — is used to justify an armed or paramilitary response. Cohen, a clinical and forensic psychiatrist, both treats patients and evaluates convicted criminals and those accused of crimes. Though he hasn’t evaluated anyone who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection, Cohen has conducted mental health assessments of right-wing extremists who cite conspiracy theories as a defense of their actions.

Loosening the grip of conspiracy theories

In Cohen’s experience, some people with pre-existing mental health issues are at much higher risk of centering their lives around conspiracy theories. Their focus on those beliefs can aggravate conditions like anxiety and depression partly by fueling feelings of insecurity and reinforcing negative perceptions of others. When a conspiracy theory has minimal, if any, impact on a patient’s life, Cohen says it makes sense not to focus on it in treatment.

“Other times it can be squarely getting in the way of what’s important for that patient in terms of their goals,” he says.

Cohen says therapists must be careful about aggressively questioning patients’ conspiratorial views and thinking. Otherwise, they might become suspicious of the therapist, seeing them as if they’re just another sheep in the flock. Instead, Cohen recommends that therapists identify how conspiracy theory beliefs might help someone by creating a sense of certainty in an unpredictable world, providing secret knowledge that others don’t possess, and offering access to a community of like-minded people.

“Conspiracy theories initially make people feel safe, because they think they know what’s really going on, and it gives them that illusion that quote-un-quote knowledge will protect them,” he says.

Cohen might start with supportive therapy, with an emphasis on empathizing with a patient’s loneliness, depression, or anxiety, while also exploring healthy behaviors that help them cope. Once the patient is better able to handle their emotions, Cohen turns to psychodynamic therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy, which involve identifying thoughts and influences that shape people’s choices. These approaches often yield insights about what led a patient to embrace conspiracy theories in the first place.

“We really need to treat conspiracy theories as a public health problem.”

As treatment progresses and his bond with the patient deepens, Cohen notices that their demeanor shifts. The patient becomes more secure and less defensive. They’re no longer in the tight grip of conspiracy theory beliefs. In some cases, patients spontaneously realize “they’ve been had” and want help “regaining control of their mind,” says Cohen. They feel ashamed of their beliefs and want psychotherapy to help process the experience.

Whatever a patient’s trajectory, Cohen believes that the mental health profession needs to develop new paradigms for recognizing conspiracy theories as a potential threat to people’s well-being and then create appropriate treatment approaches. He would like to see the field’s professional organizations become more active in educating the public and mental health providers about the way conspiracy theories can affect people’s psychological and emotional well-being, but understands they may be worried about the perception of partisanship.

“The world has become so complicated that that’s created a lot of anxiety in individuals,” says Cohen, referencing the destabilizing effects of climate change, the pandemic, globalization, and other social and economic forces.

“We really need to treat conspiracy theories as a public health problem.”

Assuming the rumors are true, Google’s answer to Apple One bundled service subscriptions also includes annual smartphone upgrades.

Get your salt shakers ready, because none of this is yet confirmed. But in the midst of the Pixel leak deluge we’ve watched unfold in recent weeks, This Is Tech Today’s M. Brandon Lee has a detail-filled Twitter thread that runs through a number of new details, the highlight of which is Pixel Pass.

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“This appears to be a blend of the iPhone upgrade plan where you can get a new phone every year and the Apple One subscription,” Lee writes. He adds that the services side of the rumored Pixel Pass subscription includes YouTube Premium, Google One, and Play Pass. You also get some kind of extended warranty and some involvement from Google’s phone service option, Google Fi.

Based on a screenshot included with Lee’s tweet — the source of which isn’t clear, it should be said — Pixel Pass subscribers won’t be locked into Fi. Customers will also have the option of signing up through the Google Store to get a carrier-unlocked phone that works with any provider.

The only catch is that this offer may be available for U.S. customers only.

The thread also contains some details on color options for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, as well as info about a second-generation wireless charging Google Pixel Stand and some pricing speculation based on a leaked sweepstakes sheet. So it’s worth a closer look for Pixel users. But Pixel Pass is the big reveal here, assuming it’s real.

The past few days have delivered a pile of surprising and unintended Pixel reveals. On Friday, a video surfaced detailing the entire Pixel 6 assembly process. Then, just hours later, screenshots from an apparent accidental posting on a retail website brought new information about the upcoming smartphone’s cameras, battery, and more.

There’s still more than a week to go before Google is likely to make any of these details official. The big reveal event is set for Oct. 19. So stay tuned for more soon enough.

I gotta admit: I was already exhausted by the baggage of Far Cry 6 before I even picked up the controller to review it.

Having played every game in the franchise to date —while following the near decade-long discourse critiquing its flawed politics, ideological cowardice, and colonialist mindset — I admittedly came in with some assumptions about what to expect.

I expected Far Cry 6 to be (like nearly every other recent title in the franchise) dumb, mindless, well-polished AAA fun, with a vapid story that uses the aesthetics of real-world issues to overinflate its own sense of self-importance. Yet to my utter shock, Far Cry 6 flipped nearly every one of those expectations on its head — at times to its benefit but more often to its detriment.

I’m not prepared to call Far Cry 6 a great game by any means. As far as gameplay, it’s actually one of the least polished Ubisoft titles I’ve played in a while. Yet unlike the franchise’s recent predecessors, Far Cry 6‘s story at the very least has a pulse. Hell, it even offers some nuanced takes on the lose-lose nature of revolutions, as guerilla warrior Dani (or Danny, depending on gender preference) grapples with the inherent ugliness, corruption, and impossibility of saving your country from the perceived comforts of authoritarianism.

But before diving into why it’s still #complicated with Far Cry 6, let’s recap how this franchise became such a battleground for the contentious, never-ending debate over politics in video games.

To grossly oversimplify: Over the years Ubisoft has placated the “keep politics out of games” camp of fans by insisting that its titles explicitly inspired by real-world political conflicts don’t actually make any political statements. The publisher has also simultaneously tried to appease critics of this mealy-mouthed excuse by claiming that while its games weren’t “political” per se, they still weren’t wholly “apolitical” either, even admitting in 2019 to a desire to do better next time.

But when “next time” came in the lead-up to Far Cry 6‘s release, Ubisoft reverted to the same old tired doublespeak. First, the publisher assured fans that the game makes no political statements about Cuba (the country its fictional setting is inspired by) or the recent civilian uprisings that are heavily mirrored in the game’s story. Then, just days later, narrative director Navid Khavari finally admitted that OK, yes, it is obviously a political game.

Despite its myriad flaws, ‘Far Cry 6’ breathes life back into a franchise many were ready to dismiss as dead on arrival.

Are you exhausted yet?

After sighing through half of Far Cry 6‘s familiarly uninspired formula, I suddenly found myself getting won over by the game as at least a step in the right direction. Despite its myriad flaws, Far Cry 6 breathes life back into a franchise many like myself were ready to dismiss as dead on arrival.

For starters, it’s the first Far Cry game to feature a protagonist who’s native to the “exotic” country’s conflict (unless you count Far Cry 5‘s version of Montana as “exotic” or white American settlers as “native” — which you should not). That is obscenely overdue progress for the franchise, and so is finally being able to play as a woman who actually says stuff. My heart still can’t help but root for those steps toward a better Far Cry (and for lady Dani, truly one of the best protagonists in the series’).

(Editor’s note: Far Cry 4 also featured a protagonist who was native to the game’s setting in Ajay Ghale. The difference there was Ajay was born in Kyrat but raised in America, and he was therefore not native to the conflict in the country where he was born.)

On a deeper level, though, the Caribbean island of Yara also isn’t the maddeningly apolitical “both sides” Trumpian America of Far Cry 5.

Sure, the game very strategically evades naming exactly which political ideology Yara’s fascist dictator, Anton Castillo (played by Giancarlo Esposito, Hollywood’s favorite Black Danish-Italian American actor cast in every Afro-Latino role) ascribes to. There are at best only hints of Fidel Castro’s communism to be gleaned from reading between the lines of Castillo’s propagandist speeches about building a Yaran “paradise” together, or by squinting hard enough at the billboards with glorified scenes of harsh manual labor.

But these characters are not the usual pan-Latin stereotypes I’m accustomed to seeing in AAA games like Cyberpunk 2077, kept on the sidelines of a protagonist’s story just to shout the occasional colorful Spanish expletive. I’m not Cuban, nor Hispanic, so I very much cannot speak to the “authenticity” of the country’s portrayal. But I am Brazilian, and felt at home in the beautiful chaos of the different guerilla groups, each with its own fired-up leader espousing her own unique vision for saving this country they shit-talk as much as they adore.

Far Cry 6 certainly perpetuates the franchise’s masterful avoidance of saying literally anything about any specific political ideology, and that’s a huge problem. But through the story’s focus on human conflicts between the guerillas, it does make a different but equally important statement: The personal is always political.

Politics isn’t something that happens between governmental leaders alone. Politics play out among the people, through the everyday lives of folks trying to live under said ideologies. A central queer relationship in the game highlights this well, when it’s rocked by the unavoidable reality that the trans partner faces far greater risks if he stays in Yara. (Content warning note: That trans character does get misgendered by a villain at one point, though there is no deadnaming like in Last of Us 2.)

Far Cry 6 even wrestles with the inherent traumas of the Latin-American diaspora.

In the beginning, Dani is attempting to escape the island to pursue the “dream” of low-wage employment in the U.S. But as Clara (leader of Libertad, the main revolutionist group) helps her realize, “The American dream doesn’t come in my color.” Even if it did, Far Cry 6 makes you sit with the impossible choice many would-be immigrants face: Is it better to let little pieces of yourself die every day for security in a hostile foreign country, or to die fighting for the survival of the hostile country where you were born?

Political threads in ‘Far Cry 6’ still leave *plenty* to be desired.

Unlike most other Far Cry games, many missions don’t end in success here. You fail as much as you win, since victory too often comes with the loss of those all-too-human characters you grow to love. The game map even reflects this zero-sum game, with snapshots of each fascist leader you kill and celebratory captions about their deaths — next to the far greater number of Polaroids of your fallen guerrilla friends, captioned only with a solemn “descanse en paz” (rest in peace).

Don’t get me wrong: Far Cry 6‘s political threads still leave plenty to be desired.

Slavery is mentioned often and even brutally depicted on missions where you free citizens from labor camps. But their pain is only used as gruesome backdrop to emphasize Castillo’s evil, with the story never bothering to give a voice to the nameless enslaved people.

The issue of imperializing foreign governments interfering with the island’s politics is also a central theme of one villain’s plotline, but the writing strategically does not blame America for its real-world actions. Instead, it casts the corporate politician in question as Canadian for some reason. (I mean, come on Ubisoft!)

Even when its politics are present and poignant, there’s always that inherent catch-22 of Far Cry’s high-minded aspirations clashing with its nonsense. Khavari described it in his blog post as the brand’s DNA of “mature, complex themes balanced with levity and humor. One doesn’t exist without the other, and we have attempted to achieve this balance with care.”

But the reality of those wildly conflicting tones creates the exact opposite effect, if you ask me.

There’s no way of getting around the deeply unsettling friction between Far Cry 6‘s serious political commentary being undercut by its silly, compulsory Far Cry-ness. I mean, how am I supposed to feel about taking my varsity sweater-wearing, gold-toothed crocodile companion named Guapo to attack soldiers — who just so happen to be beating enslaved people in a labor camp to a pulp?

Well let me tell ya, I don’t feel good about it, and not in the productive “I’ve learned something uncomfortable but necessary” kind of way. Unlike the balance struck in a title like Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, the famed 2010 game’s beloved zombie DLC, the ridiculous, hyper-reality comedy doesn’t serve as telling satire. In Far Cry, it’s instead deployed as sugarcoating to make the medicine go down easier, but it doesn’t even do that either

To the credit of those who clearly worked hard to write a Far Cry story that actually counts for something, balancing those tones in a franchise like this one feels like an impossible task. Despite impressive moments of actually pulling off that tonal dissonance, the end result is still an experience that doesn’t do service to either side of the equation, the disparate strands of the series’ DNA detracting rather than contributing to one another.

The game wants to be everything at the same time, throwing whatever it can at a wall and only then slapping good stories onto that mess. Rather than achieve the aspiration of being everything at once, it winds up feeling like a whole load of nothing overall. Guapo the crocodile (bless his heart) is not in the same game as the enslaved people in Yara’s labor camps. Unlike the hopes of its narrative designers, the two coming together doesn’t make for a well-rounded experience. Instead, it comes off as several different games happening simultaneously, thrown into the same stew for no discernable reason.

The risk of the attempt is far more exhilarating than getting just one more perfectly boring game.

Far Cry 6‘s story is still too cowardly, in the ways one might expect of a AAA game caught in the crosshairs of hostile, toxic fandom. But it also does lots of interesting, surprising things. too. Many of those surprises aren’t necessarily successful, or as impactful as they could be. But the risk of the attempt is far more exhilarating than getting just one more perfectly boring game.

Yet another part of me wonders — or rather, worries — if some of this disconnect between the story versus the “fun” aspects doesn’t speak to a more harsh, fundamental truth about the politics-in-games debate: What if you really can’t have both? What if the trolls were kind of right, and mindless fun needs to be separated from explorations of serious political issues?

Now, in my heart of hearts, I don’t believe this to be true. Games like Papers, Please showed how it can be done on a micro indie scale, and The Last of Us showed it on a blockbuster scale. But when it comes to the kind of smooth-brain, no thoughts, frictionless bigness of Ubisoft’s approach to fun in games, I think we’re gonna need more halfway successes like Far Cry 6 before we figure it out comfortably.

What Far Cry 6 is trying to do is new. One might say Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs series also tried to marry mindless video game fun with politics, too. But what sets Far Cry 6 apart from other games is just how sincere its attempt at politics feels. This isn’t Watch Dogs, where the “politics” reads more like trying to pretend you’re “with the times” because it’s bad press to be otherwise.

But the marriage remains an estranged one, and I do not envy the people who are presumably building Far Cry 7 even now the monumentally difficult challenge of making it a whole, tonally cohesive experience.

Many times throughout Far Cry 6, characters describe guerilla warfare as “fun.” It’s portrayed as a game. A game with high stakes and real consequences, sure. But it’s still a game. Every time that language was used, I’d think back to the horrifying protest videos I saw on social media back in July 2021 under the #FreeCuba hashtag. My stomach turned at the notion of characterizing even fictionalized, Cuban-inspired people in a desperate fight for their survival, for enough food to eat, for freedom from labor camps, and to express dissent without getting kidnapped, as “fun.”

Neither I nor Far Cry 6 have the answer to the conundrum of what role politics should play in video games. But at the very least, it’s a game that makes the never-ending fight to figure it out feel worthwhile.

There’s not a whole lot to report here, so let’s just get to it.

It’s been a relatively quiet pandemic-era weekend for New York Comic-Con, but waves were made on Sunday when the annual fan event became the stage for our first real look at Wonka. The upcoming musical re-telling of Roald Dahl’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory stars Timothée Chalamet in the role of eccentric candy magnate Willy Wonka.

And that’s what our first look brings: Chalamet in full costume, looking pensive, while a movie camera sits in the foreground. It’s not a fully revealing body shot, but it’s more than enough to give curious fans a sense of what this new take on Wonka will look like.

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That’s it! No trailer, no footage. No sense of what the character will actually be like in this take, just what he’s going to be wearing. The movie is currently set for a March 2023 release, so it’ll likely be some time before we get any of that.

But in case there were any doubters left, Wonka really is coming and here’s all the proof you need.

Nevermind the fact that Animaniacs premiered in 1993. In this, our first look at Season 2 of Hulu’s reborn Animaniacs, we get a parody take on the Thundercats opening theme song where the title of the show is “80s Cats”. Why? Why not!

This is what Animaniacs does. Wherever you fell with Hulu’s 2020 revival, the 13 episodes making up Season 1 were certainly true to the spirit of an afternoon cartoon series for kids that embraced adult references and mature humor. Season 2 should deliver more of that, and pretty darn soon.

Animaniacs returns to Hulu on Nov. 5.

It’s the year 2021 and MySpace has somehow found itself in the Saturday Night Live cold open.

With the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen in the news after her testimony in front of Congress on Tuesday, SNL decided to seize the moment and excoriate the old, out-of-touch Senators for asking Haugen tech-dumb questions.

The punchline at the end involves an appearance from cast member Pete Davidson playing the “OG social media king” Tom Anderson from MySpace.

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The SNL live audience erupted in cheers at the moment Davidson appeared on screen portraying Tom in his classic MySpace avatar with his white t-shirt, face turning toward the camera, standing in front of a whiteboard.

“I’m Tom from MySpace,” Davidson says. “Remember me? I was harmless.”

Really? MySpace was harmless?

Listen, I get it. It’s a joke on a comedy show. A Tom appearance apparently gave the in-studio audience what they wanted and it all fit the sketch. If that was it, so be it.

But the idea that MySpace was the “good old days” of the internet is an idea that exists in earnest.

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It’s some bizarre reimagining of time where a social media company was not chasing profits, selling users out, and retiring after they made a modest sum of money.

And it’s wrong as wrong can be.

One of the most common points of criticism for Facebook and the other modern day social media platforms revolves around user data. These companies collect information about you and lure advertisers in with all of that money-making information.

MySpace collected your data for ads too. You filled out those profiles, provided the company with your personal information, a lot of you even poured your hearts out on that website with even a lot more than your name, age, and location.

What did Tom from MySpace do with your precious personal data? He handed it all over Rupert Murdoch, the guy who runs Fox News, for a $580 million payday.

Funny enough, after a slew of subsequent acquisitions over the years, your MySpace data (or whatever’s left of it — we’ll get to that in a moment) sits in the hands of an advertising tech company called Viant.

As for what kind of access advertisers had to your data: It was enough that they could personally identify each individual by their full name with only a user ID.

And remember those stories about Facebook workers spying on its users? MySpace employees did that too.

It’s not just data privacy, either. Many of today’s ills on social media can actually be traced back to Tom’s creation.

Where do you think toxic social media culture came from? MySpace was one of the earliest instances of a web platform creating problematic internet celebrities. Jeffree Star, the controversial makeup artist who has been accused of sexual assault, is the perfect example of someone who is a somebody thanks to MySpace.

With the Senate’s latest Facebook hearing being about child safety on its platforms, SNL‘s “Tom from MySpace” punchline is even more outlandish. When it comes to the harm social media does to young people, MySpace is the OG.

For years, MySpace had issues with sex offenders using the platform to prey on children. There were stories about teens being assaulted in real life by adults they met on the platform. Tackling the issue on MySpace was one spearheaded by Connecticut’s attorney general at the time, Richard Blumenthal. If that name sounds familiar it’s because Blumenthal is currently a sitting U.S. Senator, the one who went viral for misunderstanding the term “finsta” at the recent Facebook hearing.

MySpace was also full of models posting the same type of problematic body image content one could find today on Instagram. Are we seriously going to pretend a site known for its emo and scene kid users didn’t have issues with self-harm? Young suicidal girls on the platform were a huge media issue at the time, as well. In one well documented case, a 49-year-old mother faced trial over her bullying on MySpace which allegedly resulted in the suicide of a 13-year-old girl.

Of course, depression and self-harm weren’t MySpace problems. But the idea that these issues did not exist with MySpace is divorced from reality.

In 2020, when one of those tweets about how great MySpace was went viral, Vice pointed out how we — the former MySpace user base — were just younger then and choosing to reminisce on only the fond memories.

Nostalgia has an amazing way of changing the way we remember things from the past. In the SNL sketch, Davidson went on as Tom from MySpace saying how they barely maintain the website, and you should “come on by and check out your friend’s band from 20 years ago.”

But here’s the weird part: Have you been to MySpace in recent years? SNL clearly hasn’t because you can’t even do that! In 2019, MySpace said “screw your nostalgia” when its current owners rebooted the platform and deleted 12 years worth of photos, music, and more.

Today, you can go to Facebook or Twitter or any modern social media platform and request a nice archive of all your data — posts, photos, videos, etc. — so you can access them offline regardless of what happens to those platforms. MySpace didn’t even care to give you a heads-up that it was trashing your memories. Your friend’s band from 20 years ago better still have copies of their recordings because their music on MySpace is long gone.

MySpace shouldn’t get a pass because current platforms are worse off, or because certain issues didn’t exist yet in MySpace’s heyday. Tom took his money and fucked off, relinquishing any responsibility for the monster he created. That’s not a thing to admire.

Tom from MySpace was not your friend. In fact, Tom from MySpace sold you out.

By now, stories about racist AI and facial recognition leading to false arrests have become way too commonplace.

Those examples of bias aren’t even getting into implications in other areas of our lives, such as with the issues of healthcare algorithms discounting certain diseases in marginalized groups. The Biden administration is aware of the impact these evolving technologies are having. In fact, in a recent op-ed published in Wired, the White House made mention of those examples and more while calling for a “Bill of Rights for AI.”

“Powerful technologies should be required to respect our democratic values and abide by the central tenet that everyone should be treated fairly,” reads the piece written by White House Office of Science and Technology Policy science advisor Eric Lander and its deputy director for science and society Alondra Nelson. “Codifying these ideas can help ensure that.”

Lander and Nelson point out that there really are no rules or safeguards governing the uses of AI technology. The two point out that there are certainly issues where the tech is being abused but there’s also a huge problem with unintentional biases.

For example, a company selling its facial recognition system to law enforcement may not intend for its product to falsely identify an innocent person as a perpetrator, but its creation is doing so. The fact that developers unintentionally used flawed data to rush out a product doesn’t really matter much to the people who face real world harm as a result.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has officially put out a “public request for information” for experts who work in the field or utilize AI technologies. They are also urging anyone who’d like to have a say about the matter to reach out via email to ai-equity@ostp.eop.gov.

In its summary of the issue, Axios pointed out that the U.S. Bill of Rights, a 230-year-old document that’s 652 words, is still the subject of tenacious debate.

The White House team acknowledges that it’s going to be a challenge though. Yet AI and facial recognition technology need to be held to a standard.

“Developing a bill of rights for an AI-powered world won’t be easy, but it’s critical,” they write.

If your holiday wish was for a picture-perfect tale about celebrating our individuality while trashing someone’s house with their own red wine and decorations, consider Robin Robin a wish granted.

Created and directed by Dan Ojari and Mikey Please through Wallace and Gromit studio Aardman Animations, Robin Robin is a truly wondrous and impressively ambitious stop-motion film made for the holidays — but it’s just as easily enjoyed year round. Premiering at the BFI London Film Festival and coming to Netflix in November, the 30-minute film is one that will likely find itself firmly planted in holiday viewing lineups for folks of all ages.

Having fallen from her nest in the egg, Robin (Bronte Carmichael) has been raised by a family of mice. Led by their loving mouse dad (Adeel Akhtar), the family scurries into houses perfecting the art of stealth, pilfering crumbs of food and paraphernalia — if you loved Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox in this respect, you’ll love this as well. Not quite having the delicate touch of her family members, Robin struggles with her abilities in stealth and questions her place.

As a stop-motion film, Robin Robin is both incredibly beautiful and super playful in the medium. Crafted not of plasticine but of needle felt (a material not known for its malleability), this production is magical in its ambition — from a splattering snowball fight to an explosive fireworks display and a fast moving icy river. Every last frame of Robin Robin is a feast for the eyes, especially when there’s a literal feast being covertly ransacked by animals onscreen.

If you look closely at each scene, you can spot little Easter eggs — for example, the mouse family home, with its tree root bunks and leaf blankets, is filled with tiny bits and pieces humans would throw away, like the Grinch’s house but less brimming with banana peels and general hatred. Plus, it’s all beautifully scored by English duo The Bookshop Band, with a handful of truly memorable songs.

Christopher Robin star Carmichael is delightful voicing Robin, a character so determined to become a “real” mouse like her family that she fashions adorable mouse ears from her feathers. Not content to steal mere crumbs when she could aim for a whole juicy sandwich to prove her worthy of mousehood, Robin tries to infiltrate a house on her own, meeting new characters (both helpful and hungry) along the way — namely voiced by Gillian Anderson and Richard E. Grant.

Of course, you need a villain somewhere in this sweet tale. Anderson is perfectly chilling as classic bird/mouse nemesis Cat, without being too scary for young’uns. Lurking in her house of doom, she gets a nervously funny song about fitting in…her belly that is. “It’s what’s inside that counts” quite literally for Cat.

But stealing the entire show (and aiming for a certain “magic shiny wishing star”) is Grant as Magpie, collector of all things shiny and newfound friend to Robin. At the first screening of Robin Robin, the room absolutely erupted amid Magpie’s version of Robin’s song about the rules of stealing, grown-ups and kids alike. And Magpie gets his own song about loving THINGS which is reminiscent of Jermaine Clement’s Bowie-like “Shiny” as the villainous crab in Moana, combined with…well…Mr Burns’ “See My Vest” from The Simpsons. You’ll hear it.

Robin Robin is an ambitious, beautiful, technical triumph, a moving story of celebrating our individual strengths and differences, and a delightful tale that should be installed firmly on your holiday viewing rotation for life.

Robin Robin lands on Netflix on Nov. 27.

Saturday Night Live Weekend Update hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che are hardly hurting for targets here. Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, R. Kelly and Bill Cosby, Fox News and… well, Fox News is singularly terrible, it doesn’t need a pairing.

But the biggest beneficiary of this Weekend Update’s rapid-fire barrage of one-liners is none other than Mitch McConnell. The U.S. Senate’s obstructionist minority leader gets an extended torching, with Jost scoring two big laughs as he paints an exaggerated picture of the Kentucky Senator’s penchant for evil doings.

Surely you’ve heard by now that Kim Kardashian West and Kanye West are divorcing. So when Kim hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time, a sketch parody of The Bachelorette had to crank up the fun factor to 11.

In this sketch, Kim faces a crew of in-some-cases-questionably eligible bachelors as she selects who’s going to head outside to the hot tub and move on in the competition. There’s just one twist: With the exception of SNL cast member Kyle Mooney, the entire crew of would-be bachelors is a who’s who of very famous, very conventionally attractive, and very rich men.

These aren’t SNL cast members playing roles. That’s actually John Cena, and Chace Crawford, and Jesse Williams, and Chris Rock, and and and. Just a pile of guests. Amy Schumer even sneaks in and has a moment with Kim. The loser of the sketch is never in doubt (sorry to Mooney’s Zeke), but the eye candy-laden journey that gets us there is why you’re watching.