Judge John Hodgman decides a case of towering nerdiness: “Jordan, a lifelong comic book fan, and his friend Charles were discussing the DC comics villain Mr. Mxyzptlk and made a wager: if Jordan’s friends could trick him into saying his own name backwards, he’d owe them five dollars.”
At Aeon Magazine, Will Wiles considers creepypasta, an anonymous group effort to create dark urban legend, “Indeed, this might be what creepypasta aspires to be: urban legend, dark social memes with just enough familiarity to give a frisson of awful possibility. Much of it is spread with little […]
At The Atlantic, Nolan Feeny writes a piece on the impact of zines, fan writers (including Steven Moffat, Paul Cornell and the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi) and fandom on Doctor Who. “If you had an opinion and wrote well, you aspired to write for the best zines, and […]
At How Not To Suck At Game Design, Anjin writes about marketing, cycles of exclusion and what to do about it: “Yes, excluding people based on demographic data makes sense to a lot of people in marketing. It’s considered a best practice and it actually is a pretty […]
At NPR’s Monkeysee blog, Linda Holmes writes about enthusiasm, the outloud internet, broadcast television, premium cable, the Man and many things worth thinking about. “[T]here is a better way forward. Fall in love with things. Try things; dislike some of them. Love people who love things you can’t […]
Leigh Alexander writes about the gaming community, PAX’s proposed “Diversity Lounge” and providing safe, inclusive spaces: “But the ‘Diversity Hub and Lounge’ is vaguely insulting as a concept: What marginalized people want from games events is not necessarily to have special zones just for them, but to feel […]
Find t-shirts, mugs, totes and more at our new Guttermart location at Teepublic!
The Cultural Gutter 