SpaceX launched the world’s first all-civilian spaceflight on Wednesday night, taunting everyone else with the illusory hope of one day escaping this planet — if only temporarily.

Launched at 8:02 p.m. from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Inspiration4 mission was propelled by SpaceX’s partially reusable Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket and utilized the autonomous Crew Dragon Resilience. Though the Crew Dragon spacecraft is actually capable of carrying up to seven people, only four climbed aboard this expensive joyride to space.

Most importantly, all of them are civilians, making the Inspiration4 the first spaceflight not to include any professional astronauts.

The crew aboard the Inspiration4 mission consists of Shift4 Payments founder and CEO Jared Isaacman, physician assistant Hayley Arceneaux, aerospace data engineer Chris Sembroski, and geoscientist Dr. Sian Proctor. Isaacman is acting as commander of the mission, which basically puts him in charge of making sure no one presses any buttons they shouldn’t.

This isn’t the first time civilians have been shot into space, but it is the first time they’ve reached orbit. While Virgin Group billionaire Sir Richard Branson and Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos famously boarded private rockets earlier this year, the Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin space flights were suborbital and only scraped the edge of space for a few scant minutes.

In contrast, the Inspiration4’s crew are expected to remain in orbit at an altitude of 360 miles for three days, circumnavigating the globe once every 90 minutes. The amateur astronauts will also have a spectacular view while they’re up there. As the Crew Dragon won’t need to connect to any space stations, the docking port at its nose has been replaced with a domed window for this mission.

Once the space ride is over the Inspiration4’s crew will hurtle back to Earth and splash down somewhere off Florida’s coast.

The Inspiration4’s launch fortunately went smoothly.
Credit: spacex

The overall cost of this offworld tourist trip hasn’t been revealed, but mission bankroller Isaacman previously stated it was under $200 million. Inspiration4 also aims to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, though asking the public to donate to sick children in order to justify a billionaire’s space holiday is still weird. In addition to soliciting donations, the fundraising effort includes selling NFTs. Because of course it does.

TikTok’s obsession with berries and cream shows that DeepTok isn’t actually that far from mainstream TikTok.

The tag #berriesandcream has roughly 327 million views on TikTok as of Wednesday, and #berriesandcreamtok has 1.6 million. Over 132,7000 videos use one iteration of the sound, pulled from a 2007 Starburst commercial, and 27,500 videos use another upload of the sound from a different clip of the commercial.

In one berries and cream TikTok, creator howe_about_no pokes fun at her haircut, comparing it to that of the Little Lad. In another video, taylor_.the_.creator does the “Little Lad Dance” to the beat of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP.”

Choreographer and director Jack Ferver, who played the character known as the Little Lad, is now a TikTok celebrity for their portrayal of the perma-adolescent berries and cream enthusiast. Blunt bangs and frilly collared shirts, like the look worn by the Little Lad, are now considered berries and cream-core. Delighted users are further spreading the trend by imitating the Little Lad’s clapping dance to pop songs that have been remixed with the Little Lad’s song about berries and cream.

“WAP” remixed with berries and cream is the stuff of fever dreams.

Credit: tiktok / taylor_.The_.creator

Blunt bangs? It’s berries and cream-core now.

Credit: Tiktok / howe_about_no

The trend is derived from a series of Starburst commercials that aired in 2007, which feature a character called “The Little Lad” who adores berries and cream. In one commercial, The Little Lad explains that when he was younger, his mother made him do the “Little Lad Dance” if he wanted berries and cream. His mother is gone now, he tells the viewer, and abruptly demonstrates how to hop and clap in place while singing about berries and cream. In another ad, The Little Lad overhears two bystanders discussing the Starburst’s new berries and cream flavor, and launches into his ecstatic dance in front of the nonplussed strangers.

The commercial was fodder for viral videos when it initially aired. Remixed versions of the song were popular during YouTube’s early days, as well as skits parodying the commercial.

The commercial made its way back to TikTok in January, when podcaster Justin McElroy posted an excerpt with the caption “Please make great art with this sound, it’s what we all need.”

It didn’t immediately catch on like he hoped. The commercial seemed to exist in a limbo of bizarre aughts humor that few remembered. In response to McElroy’s March tweet about the sound, one person described the commercial as “some weird fever dream.”

Another responded, “You can’t force a sound to be popular…all you can hope is that it’ll catch on in about 8 months.”

And it did. Searches for “berries and cream” skyrocketed in late August, according to Google Trends data. The sound, which TikTok users described as only existing in “DeepTok,” is now all over the app.

Though it failed to pick up on mainstream TikTok for months, the sound would occasionally rear its head on DeepTok. DeepTok describes the nonsensical videos that don’t necessarily align with any online trends, but do appeal to very online humor.

The phrase “Straight TikTok” is often used to disparage the mainstream dance trends, beauty videos, and heteronormative content that rule the app. DeepTok content that uses surreal visuals, alternative aesthetics, and absurdist humor is also described as “AltTok,” “Gay TikTok,” or “Elite TikTok.” Being on DeepTok is like being in on a massive inside joke — if you’re on DeepTok, you’re in the club.

Outside the fray of conventional TikTok trends ruled by popular creators like Addison Rae and members of the infamous creator collective The Hype House, DeepTok content is believed to be more authentic because it isn’t considered mainstream.

The Little Lad’s singsong chant about berries and cream may have taken a while to gain popularity, but it’s far from a DeepTok secret. TikTok users joked that they had to be especially disturbed to see so many remixed berries and cream sounds on their For You Pages. However, the sound has been remixed into so many songs, it’s not particularly niche.

Popular remixes include Flo-Rida’s “Low” and the theme song from The Nightmare Before Christmas. An already viral clip of Miley Cyrus performing “Twinkle Song,” in which she belts “What does it mean? What does it mean?” was also remixed with The Little Lad singing about berries and cream. The account misc_mashups, which has 20,500 followers and nearly a million collective likes, has posted 15 remixes of berries and cream.

The trend’s popularity inspired Ferver themself to join TikTok, in character as The Little Lad.

DeepTok trends like berries and cream are gaining traction as traditional influencers fall out of favor. Dance trends, which used to be TikTok’s bread and butter, are declining. The majority of popular dances have been choreographed by Black creators, but after years of not receiving credit for their routines, many went on “strike” this summer to protest the lack of recognition. Influencers who gained popularity by performing dance routines on TikTok are moving away from that content — Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae have pivoted to lifestyle vlogging.

Lifestyle influencers are also falling out of favor, and their once-aspirational content has been soured by their privileged behavior during the pandemic

But lifestyle influencers are also falling out of favor, and their once-aspirational content has been soured by their privileged behavior during the pandemic. An Insider poll found that all but one beauty YouTuber had a favorable public rating. The YouTuber, known as MannyMUA, has been distancing himself from the drama that once fueled the beauty community in favor of social activism content. Family vlogging, a wildly lucrative genre of lifestyle content, is being called out as exploitative as viewers express concern about the wellbeing of children featured in these videos.

Though Straight TikTok is still flourishing, it doesn’t birth trends the way it once did. Lifestyle content and choreographed dance trends are far from unpopular — plenty of creators are still successful in making traditional content. But fatigued by the last year of social distancing, and fed up with sponsored content, public demand for conventional lifestyle content is waning.

The content that comes out of DeepTok, however, can easily be imitated and passed around online. Dance trends were so popular because any user could replicate them. Trends like berries and cream are similarly imitated, adapted, and shared. The DeepTok content that was considered niche on TikTok last year is starting to take over the dances, family vlogs, and lifestyle videos that used to populate Straight TikTok.

Get used to DeepTok content. Virality is cyclical, and as TikTok evolves, so does the content that makes it popular.

For more than a decade, I’ve carried on with a number of truly pathetic, one-sided DMs. I type, send links, share photos, and pour my heart out in these chats, but I’ve never once received a response.

It sounds embarrassing, but don’t worry, I’m not being ghosted or anything. I’ve just been DMing myself.

OK, now that I’ve typed it out, I realize that does sound a little embarrassing. Before you judge, let me explain.

People who send direct messages on social media primarily use them to communicate with friends, family members, acquaintances, even strangers. While I do exchange messages with other people, I also frequently use the DM features on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to send myself messages. Occasionally, I’ll text or Slack myself too. I send posts that intrigue or resonate with me, articles I want to read in the future when I have more time, and sometimes I DM content from my phone to my laptop if it’s easier than using iMessage or AirDrop.

Sliding into my own DMs is a convenient, practical, helpful way to collect and save information. The problem is, I never remember to check back and read all of the DM-worthy stuff I send myself. As a result, robust feeds of personally curated, long-forgotten content are tragically relegated to digital black holes of my own creation.

So I set out on a journey to catch up on years’ worth of messages to make things right with my past selves and restore integrity to the self-DM process. I learned a lot about myself.

If you self-DM, you could too. If not, maybe you should.

Ghosts of forgotten DMs past

The realization that I never check my DMs to myself hit recently, when I accidentally clicked my own Twitter direct message thread and was greeted by a tweet I’d sent a few days prior. I’d loved the tweet, wanted to revisit it at some point, and was afraid it would get lost in my ever-growing sea of liked tweets, so I took the extra step of DMing it. The tweet was only a week old yet, sadly, I’d already forgotten it. That made me wonder what other long-lost treasures were hiding in the stack of DMs to me, from me.

I scrolled up from 2021 DMs to the very first Twitter message I sent myself, in June 2017. Among the archives were helpful threads of advice, ideas for pitches I’d intended to flesh out further, relatable reaction screenshots shared from out-of-context TV accounts like @nonewgirlcontxt and @nocontextroyco, what claimed to be a recipe for the best gluten free chocolate chip cookies, and roughly 25 tweets about Chris Evans’ sweater in Knives Out. It was a trip down memory lane so fascinating that I had to keep the journey going.

Highly recommend DMing yourself “Ted Lasso” clips for easy viewing.
Credit: SCREENSHOT / TWITTER

Next up? Instagram. I scrolled back to the first DM I sent myself in June 2016 — past an array of sentimental photos, gorgeous art, and inspiring quotes. I’d sent myself lists of small businesses to buy from, accounts to follow, books to read, tips for managing anxiety, and that one deeply soothing Cillian Murphy Calm ad, so I’d always have it on hand. It was like Content Christmas.

I know what you’re probably thinking: Can’t I just save Instagram posts to folders? It’s easier and only requires a single tap, whereas DMing myself requires me to hit the share button on a post, type my own name in the search bar, and hit send. The answer is yes, I could just save to folders. But I like the absurdity of sending myself a message, and it’s become a habit I can’t seem — or don’t want — to shake. Consider this: If we weren’t meant to send ourselves DMs, then why have the social media gods made it possible?

If we weren’t meant to send ourselves DMs, then why have the social media gods made it possible?

I can’t remember the first time I sent myself a message. Maybe I used my silver Motorola Razr to text myself important reminders in middle school. Or perhaps I blew up my own DMs during my AIM, Myspace, or Tumblr years. The earliest self-DM I could locate was on Facebook, the social media platform I’ve begrudgingly been using the longest.

On June 23, 2008, I Facebook messaged myself a perplexing Kanye West lyric that what would later become my high school yearbook quote. I sent an article about Michael Phelps dominating the Olympics that year, a StubHub confirmation for concert tickets to Beyoncé’s 2009 I Am… World Tour, an essay I wrote for a Spanish class in 2010, a variety of emo song lyrics I probably intended to set as my status some day, a 2013 Buzzfeed listicle about John Krasinski, and other oddities.

Much to my surprise, the trip into my DMs, which started as a joke, left me overcome with emotion. I was prepared to feel foolish after seeing just how many messages I’d sent myself and forgot to read over the years. What I hadn’t expected was the swell of nostalgia that would come from scrolling back through years of my digital life. I mean, I Facebook messaged myself the final copy of my 16th birthday party invites. Talk about a blast from the past. (Also, semi-formal? Teen Nicole, please!)

All you need is a light jacket!
Credit: SCREENSHOT / FACEBOOK

Revisiting special collections of content that touched me over the years was like gazing into digital time capsules or reading old diaries. I was so thankful I’d sent myself all those DMs. I only wished I’d checked them sooner.

Was this a me problem? I wondered. Or did other people out there DM themselves and forget to check the chats, too?

The common, chaotic practice of self-DMing

I put a call out on Twitter with a poll to learn if other people slide into their own DMs. Of the 297 votes cast, more than 66 percent of people said they DM themselves all the time. Phew.

Tweet may have been deleted

It was reassuring to learn the practice is somewhat common, and several people replied to admit that although they constantly message themselves, they too forget to check their own DMs. Chaos. At least our intentions are pure.

For those who love DMing themselves or want to start, I recommend setting aside specific times in your schedule to check your DMs on a regular basis. Consider setting reminders so you don’t miss out on this impactful content. One Twitter user who said she usually forgets to check her DMs shared that she’ll read them whenever she gets stuck or feels like she’s hit a creativity lull. She uses them as an “inspo thread,” an idea I adore and intend to start doing myself.

If sending self-DMs isn’t for you, people also shared some helpful alternatives in the tweet replies. Try texting or emailing yourself instead of DMing, that way you can easily pin or mark your messages as unread, which may make you more inclined to give them a look. You can also try bookmarking pages that you want to revisit to your browser or use any bookmark or save features that are built into social media platforms. (Keep in mind you still have to remember to check those.)

If all else fails, you could download an app like Pocket, which lets you sync your personal accounts and save content from different devices, social media platforms, and publishers in one handy place.

A single app for all my saved content sounds super convenient, but I know myself. I’m not going to magically remember to check another app just because all my favorite tweets, Instagram posts, and articles are in one place. More importantly, I don’t want to. I like the excitement, the challenge, the unconventional nature of sliding into my own DMs, and I’m not ready to ditch the self-DM life just yet.

Plus, I’m not about to ghost myself. That’s just rude.

On the heels of the unveiling of the new iPhone 13 models, we decided to take a look back at every iPhone ever. Dating back to the first model in 2007, Apple has released 33 versions of the iPhone.

Many were smaller than the giant iPhone 13 Pro Max. Some were bigger than the iPhone 13 mini. But, overall, they were a lot less expensive than the current models. Ah, the good ol’ days.

Every iPhone ever.
Credit: IAN MOORE / MASHABLE

Every iPhone 13 compared.
Credit: Ian Moore / Mashable

Confused why the comment sections on TikTok are flooded with chair emojis? You’re not alone.

In the past week TikTok users have started replacing the laughing emoji with the chair emoji. Yes, the unassuming chair emoji released in 2019.

A week ago TikTok user @blank.antho posted two videos to his over one million followers announcing his inside joke of replacing the laughing emoji with the chair emoji. He welcomes users into the joke by saying “if you’re watching this you’re part of the inside joke.”

This video has over 120,000 views and 17,000 likes.

Credit: Screenshot: tiktok @blank.antho

@blank.antho has tried to launch other inside jokes on TikTok before, but none have caught on like the chair emoji has.

Credit: screenshot: tiktok @blank.antho

While it isn’t the funniest joke, it has successfully caused lots of confusion and trolled some TikTok users.

Tweet may have been deleted

Twitter users speculated that this use of the chair emoji started as an inside joke between popular YouTuber and TikTok user @ksi and his followers because he posted two videos with the chair emoji as the caption to his over seven million followers. Distractify also pointed to @ksi’s YouTube video from November 2020 where he laughs as at a chair to prove his laugh is contagious as possible evidence for his involvement in the inside joke.

Tweet may have been deleted

But looking back at @blank.antho’s first TikTok announcing the inside joke, @ksi appears to be @blank.antho’s first target. The video ends with @blank.antho saying “we will be raiding the legend himself @ksi.” However, @ksi was tagged in the caption of the video, so he and @blank.antho may have been in cahoots from the start.

Two days after @blank.antho posted his first chair video, he posted a video announcing that @ksi is in on the inside joke.

This video got over six million views and 900,000 likes.

Credit: screenshot: tiktok @blank.antho

Taking over TikTok feels a little dramatic.

Credit: screenshot: tiktok @blank.antho

Considering there is lots of confusion over who started the chair emoji joke, the new use of the chair emoji may have extended beyond the confines of the inside joke.

Of course an emoji can mean various things, so no one single usage is correct.

This isn’t the first time emojis have strayed from their intended meaning. Gen Z uses the skull emojis to represent laughter and there are also a slew of emojis that have taken on NSFW meanings, including the chair.

It’s unclear how popular this use of the chair emoji is or how long this inside joke will last, but it has definitely caused confusion. In the meantime, we will be sitting back and sticking with the traditional laughing emoji.

When it comes to ripping off investors, decentralized technology still hasn’t managed to disrupt the tried and true methods pioneered on Wall Street.

OpenSea, the self-described “largest” non-fungible token marketplace, admitted Wednesday that an employee had been secretly buying NFTs in advance of their listing on the site’s front page. Using this non-public information, the employee was able to swoop up NFTs before their prices skyrocketed, and presumably make a hefty profit flipping them at a later date.

Think of it as investor front-running, but for the digital pixel-art age.

“We are taking this very seriously and are conducting an immediate and thorough review of this incident so that we have a full understanding of the facts and additional steps we need to take,” read an OpenSea blog post.

Notably, OpeSea suggests that it was only after this incident was discovered that the company implemented internal policies to ban this kind of behavior.

“OpenSea team members are prohibited from using confidential information to purchase or sell any NFTs, whether available on the OpenSea platform or not,” the company explained.

We reached out to OpenSea in an attempt to determine which employee used confidential information to game its system, and whether or not they are still employed at OpenSea. We also asked how many NFTs the employee flipped in this manner and how much profit they made doing so.

We received no immediate response.

Meanwhile, the NFT community has pointed its collective finger at Nate Chastain, OpenSea’s head of product. We reached out to Chastain over Twitter direct message to ask him about the allegations, but received no immediate response.

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

OpenSea is a vital piece of the multi-billion dollar NFT market, giving investors and collectors a forum to buy and sell the digital tokens. Noted NFT projects, like CryptoPunks, have seen sales as high as $7.5 million.

That one of the largest players in the cryptocurrency-adjacent space had a problem with insider data access should come as no surprise. In 2017, the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase was forced to issue a statement concerning insider trading following speculation related to price surges in Bitcoin Cash immediately before it hit the exchange.

And in March of 2021, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission reported that an early Coinbase employee had artificially driven up interest in the cryptocurrency Litecoin. Perhaps coincidentally, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee was Coinbase’s director of engineering from July 2015 to June 2017.

SEE ALSO: So you spent millions on an NFT. Here’s what you actually bought.

It seems that even in the complex modern world of cryptocurrency and NFTs, the old tricks still work best.

LG made a humungous TV. Let’s talk about it.

If you go all the way to the top of LG’s new Direct View LED home cinema line, you’ll see a 325-inch 8K behemoth that costs a cool $1.7 million. (LG confirmed to Mashable that is indeed the real price.) The dollar amount is obviously eye-catching, but let’s not ignore the physical mass of the TV. It’s 27 feet across diagonally and weighs more than 2,000 pounds. Good luck convincing a friend to help you move it.

LG’s DVLED screens range in price from $70,000 to $1.7 million depending on screen size and resolution. They come as “small” as 108 inches and come in every resolution from HD to 8K.

The reason they’re so expensive is the DVLED technology. Without getting too bogged down in technical details, these TVs are made up of tiny lights that are both significantly larger in number and smaller in size than those in a typical living room TV.

This is most likely not a product that will show up in living rooms across the nation this holiday season, but it is a neat glimpse at what a TV that costs more than 1 million dollars looks like. The good news is that you can get something that’s still pretty good for just a few hundred bucks.

Hulu’s upcoming original series Dopesick examines how one company triggered the worst drug epidemic in American history. Dopesick looks at the opioid epidemic from a variety of angles, from the boardrooms of Purdue Pharma, who marketed OxyContin as non-addictive, to a distressed Virginia mining community witnessing the horrors of addiction first-hand.

Based on the book by Beth Macy, Dopesick is executive produced by Danny Strong (Empire) and Michael Keaton, who also stars. Keaton is joined by Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, Will Poulter, John Hoogenakker, Kaitlyn Dever, and Rosario Dawson.

The first three episodes of Dopesick premiere on Hulu Oct. 13, with new episodes streaming weekly.

When Facebook spent $1 billion to buy Instagram in 2012, it sought the customers key to its continued growth: teenagers.

As adolescents and young adults fled Facebook for platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, Facebook knew its long-term survival depended on winning over that demographic. But the savvy business move had a different, less public price tag.

Caught up in recommendations from a powerful algorithm designed to keep them engaged, some teen girls found Instagram worsened their body image, according to a new Wall Street Journal investigation. Users even pinned feelings of increased depression, anxiety, and suicidal thinking on the app.

The Journal found that studies conducted privately by the platform to better understand how Instagram affects young users led to alarming results. Internal research documents from the past few years, which the Journal reviewed, revealed that a third of teen girls who already felt bad about their bodies said Instagram made them feel worse. For teens who expressed suicidal thinking, 6 percent of U.S. users and 13 percent of British users identified their experience on Instagram as a reason for those feelings.

“Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves,” read one slide posted to an internal Facebook message board.

“Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves.”

Evidently, Facebook, which prefers to point to its lofty ideal of doing good by connecting the world while minimizing the platform’s real and potential harms, has known since at least 2019 that its product does real damage to some young people, particularly girls. Aside from acknowledging that some users said “like” counts made them feel anxious, the company disclosed almost nothing about its research. In a statement published in the wake of the Journal‘s revelations, an Instagram executive said the company wanted to be more transparent about internal research in the future.

For years, child safety advocates and journalists, including myself, have tried to offer youth and their parents guidelines for using social media wisely, and coping skills for when things go wrong. But that approach has limits. The Journal‘s reporting makes clear that children and their caregivers are up against a ruthless business model in which Facebook, the companies that advertise on Instagram, and the influencers who stand to make a fortune from amassing impressionable followers all profit off the vulnerability and insecurity of its teen users.

What’s happening on Instagram for young girls is the age-old marketing tactic of inviting the customer to compare their life to someone else’s and compete for the better existence, but on steroids.

While there are numerous products that simultaneously trigger feelings of self-confidence and self-loathing, there is no parallel to Instagram. Fashion and beauty magazines aimed at teen girls have historically sold triumphant narratives to its readers while also peddling self-improvement through consumerism. Yet a reader cannot find her friends chatting in real-time, in ways that could include or exclude her, in those same pages. Hollywood television series and movies, which often depict unattainable looks and lifestyles for teen girls, stop after a certain length of time. Viewers don’t wait for a glamorous celebrity to speak directly to the crowd, then chime in with their own comment and wait eagerly for someone to notice.

Instagram likes to think of these dynamics as simply a reflection of our shared reality.

“Issues like negative social comparison and anxiety exist in the world, so they’re going to exist on social media too,” Karina Newton, Instagram’s head of public policy, said in the company’s statement.

Yet, Instagram has arguably changed real life itself by ratcheting up the stakes of teen girls’ digital social lives and interactions. The Journal interviewed teens who said, among other things, that Instagram intensified the feeling that high school is a popularity contest, and drew them to content that heightened negative emotions about their body.

One 19-year-old said that when she searched Instagram for workouts and found examples she liked, the algorithm kept surfacing photos of how to lose weight on her Explore page.

“I’m pounded with it every time I go on Instagram,” she told the Journal.

While every family can do its best to learn about digital safety and well-being, the truth is that those efforts are hardly a match against a company that has designed an addictive, ever-present product capable of making users feel both good and bad. The users, meanwhile, never know which experience they’ll get on any given day, or hour.

Still, teens return day after day for reasons that Facebook and Instagram cite as a defense of their product. They want to socialize with their friends. They’re participating in activism and social change. They found a community that accepts them for who they are. There may lots of benefits and no harm in these scenarios, but Facebook and Instagram haven’t been particularly interested in letting users know when the platform causes pain. In fact, it seems content to withhold its own internal findings while emphasizing the uncertainty of independent scientific research that fails to establish a causal relationship between social media use and poor well-being. (Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg reportedly called such research contradictory.)

The evidence presented by the Journal suggests that Facebook can and will conceal its teen users’ negative experiences if they threaten the company’s bottom line. Instead, Instagram has partnered with nonprofits to create content promoting “emotional resilience.” According to the Journal, one video made as part of that project recommended teens use a daily affirmation — “I am in control of my experience on Instagram” — for a more positive experience.

The Journal‘s reporting, however, makes it obvious that users aren’t really in control. Through Instagram, Facebook has provided a platform for advertisers and influencers to leverage an algorithm to take advantage of girls’ insecurities in ways that simply weren’t possible in the past. Everyone is in it for the money — except for the girls.

If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, Crisis Text Line provides free, confidential support 24/7. Text CRISIS to 741741 to be connected to a crisis counselor. Contact the NAMI HelpLine at 1-800-950-NAMI, Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. ET, or email info@nami.org. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Here is a list of international resources.

Is Nightbooks for kids? For grown-ups? After the fifth genuine jump-scare within 20 minutes, I’m scratching my head while covertly turning the sound down (an expert scare management move).

But whoever it’s for, my heart rate is up, folks.

Based on J. A. White’s 2018 book of the same name, Nightbooks focuses on a kid called Alex (Winslow Fegley) who writes scary stories, but is determined to burn them all of a sudden. But before he gets the chance, he’s lured into a magical apartment with a piece of pumpkin pie and The Lost Boys, then locked into a situation that has him writing for his life.

An evil but exceptionally style-conscious witch, Natacha (a gleefully over the top Krysten Ritter), orders him to write a new scary story every night or it’ll be The End for him. When he meets fellow prisoner Yasmin (Lidya Jewett), they’ve got to try to figure out a way out of this travelling apartment that has an insidious habit of trapping kids forever.

It’s a solid premise for a scary fairy tale, and (intentionally) one that’s been done many times before. Brightburn director David Yarovesky brings to life Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis’ script, and for a film that seems aimed at younger viewers (or at least starring two of them), it wields some genuinely scary scenes. Perhaps I’ve forgotten how frightening things were as a kid (I was afraid of even the X-Files theme song), but this feels like something you might want to be ready for kids to have nightmares about. It’s no surprise that the film was produced by Evil Dead horror legend Sam Raimi. No spoilers, but there’s a shot involving candy-hued projectile vomit that feels extremely Evil Dead. Plus, the film is filled with jump-scares. While they aren’t quite at the constant, hammering level of Yarovesky’s superpower horror Brightburn, these scares will catch you unawares.

The strength of Nightbooks, aside from the set decoration which we’ll get to, is the cast. Ritter spectacularly leans into the campy chaos as the witch, Natacha. The first scene in which we meet her is quite frankly terrifying, and somehow Ritter delivers a consistent level of genuinely murderous threat to Alex and Yasmin while being impossibly…cool. Thanks to Leslie Ann Sebert’s glitter-loving makeup team and costume designer Autumn Steed, Natacha boasts one of the most covetable, sequinned villain wardrobes out there. Sorry, Cruella, I’ll take one pink raincoat with winged combat boots and parasol, please. Or a pearl cage collar/neckpiece and pink platform combat boots.

Casual.
Credit: netflix

Attempting to escape from Ritter are the two young leads, Fegley and Jewett, who both deliver strong, balanced, fun performances as Alex and Yas — in fact, between moments of terror and battling satisfyingly squishable adversaries, they both get emotional monologues that are utterly convincing amid their ridiculous magical surroundings.

Nightbooks, being a film about writing scary stories, pays notable respect to their long history and the core of what makes a good one. If you didn’t absolutely hate the Goosebumps movie (whatever, fight me) and its wild ride through the source material and the idea of “writing for your life,” you might enjoy how Nightbooks plays with this — and the theatrical way Alex’s nightly stories are presented. Natacha even “edits” Alex’s stories as he reads, chastising him for not sticking to the rules already established in scary tales. “Every good story hints at truth,” says Natacha, criticising one of Alex’s stories that got a little too creative. “The more truth, the more powerful the story. From now on, get your facts straight.”

Alex (Winslow Fegley) and Yas (Lidya Jewett).
Credit: netflix

Finally, while the film’s context may be pretty dark at times, Nightbooks‘ set decoration is an absolute treat, with much of it set in a towering library decked out with spiral staircases and cobwebbed books. There’s a fluorescent “night nursery” for magical plants (perfect for throwing glowing splatters everywhere), a sweetly familiar-looking house you might have read about, and even a pink, glittering, cake of a prison at one point. It’s honestly the most delicious looking cell you’ll ever see on screen.

Amid all this glitz and witch-battling, Nightbooks reminds us that the things that really haunt us aren’t necessarily always magical. Buuuuut yeah, sometimes they are, in which case, you’d better read up on how to beat ’em or be able to write your way out of it.

Nightbooks is now streaming on Netflix.

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