And in the end, the ratings just weren’t strong enough, especially for a Star Wars project. The Acolyte garnered 11.1 million views over its first five days (and 488 million minutes viewed)—not bad, but below Ahsoka‘s 14 million views over the same period. But those numbers declined sharply over the ensuing weeks, with the finale earning the dubious distinction of posting the lowest minutes viewed (335 million) for any Star Wars series finale.
Writing at Forbes, Caroline Reid noted thatThe Acolyte was hampered from the start by a challenging post-pandemic financial environment at Disney. It was greenlit in 2021 along with many other quite costly series to boost subscriber numbers for Disney+, contributing to $11.4 billion losses in that division. Then Bob Iger returned as CEO and prioritized cutting costs. The Acolyte‘s heavy VFX needs and star casting (most notably Carrie Ann Moss and Squid Game‘s Lee Jung-jae) made it a pricey proposition, with ratings expectations to match. And apparently the show didn’t generate as much merchandising revenue as expected.
As the folks at Slash Film pointed out, The Acolyte‘s bloated production costs aren’t particularly eye-popping compared to, say, Prime Video’s The Rings of Power, which costs a whopping $58 million per episode, or Marvel’s Secret Invasion (about $35 million per episode). But it’s pricey for a Star Wars series; The Mandalorian racked up around $15 million per episode, on par with Game of Thrones. So given the flagging ratings and lukewarm reviews, the higher costs proved to be “the final nail in the coffin” for the series in the eyes of Disney, per Reid.
Enlarge/ A still from Wolfs, an Apple-produced film starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt.
Apple
For the past few years, Apple has been making big-budget movies meant to compete with the best traditional Hollywood studios have to offer, and it has been releasing them in theaters to drive ticket sales and awards buzz.
Much of that is about to change, according to a report from Bloomberg. The article claims that Apple is “rethinking its movie strategy” after several box office misfires, like Argylle and Napoleon.
It has already canceled the wide theatrical release of one of its tent pole movies, the George Clooney and Brad Pitt-led Wolfs. Most other upcoming big-budget movies from Apple will be released in just a few theaters, suggesting the plan is simple to ensure continued awards eligibility but not to put butts in seats.
Further, Apple plans to move away from super-budget films and to focus its portfolio on a dozen films a year at lower budgets. Just one major big-budget film is planned to get a wide theatrical release: F1. How that one performs could inform future changes to Apple’s strategy.
The report notes that Apple is not the only streamer changing its strategy. Netflix is reducing costs and bringing more movie production in-house, while Amazon is trying (so far unsuccessfully) to produce a higher volume of movies annually, but with a mixture of online-only and in-theater releases. It also points out that movie theater chains are feeling ever more financial pressure, as overall ticket sales haven’t matched their pre-pandemic levels despite occasional hits like Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine.
Cinemas have been counting on streamers like Netflix and Apple to crank out films, but those hopes may be dashed if the media companies continue to pull back. For the most part, tech companies like Apple and Amazon have had better luck gaining buzz with television series than with feature films.
Ana de Armas stars as dancer/assassin Eve Macarro in From the World of John Wick: Ballerina.
John Wick fans hoping for a fifth film in the hugely popular action franchise will at least be able to return to “Wick-World” next year with the release of a spinoff film, Ballerina, set between the events of 2019’s Chapter 3—Parabellum and Chapter 4 (2023). (The full title is the decidedly unwieldy From the World of John Wick: Ballerina.) Lionsgate just dropped the first trailer, and it has all the tight action choreography and eye-popping visuals we’ve come to expect from the franchise—including a cameo by none other than the Baba Yaga himself (Keanu Reeves).
(Spoilers for John Wick Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 below.)
Parabellum found Wick declared excommunicado from the High Table for killing crime lord Santino D’Antonio on the grounds of the Continental. On the run with a bounty on his head, he makes his way to the headquarters of the Ruska Roma crime syndicate, led by the Director (Anjelica Huston). That’s where we learned Wick was originally named Jardani Jovonovich and trained as an assassin with the syndicate. The Director also trains young girls to be ballerina-assassins, and one young ballerina (played by Unity Phelan) is shown rehearsing in the scene. That dancer is the main character in Ballerina, now played by Ana de Armas.
Screenwriter Shay Hatten sold a spec script featuring the ballerina character to Lionsgate in 2017 and ended up contributing to the Parabellum screenplay and serving as lead writer on Chapter 4. While Chad Stahelski has directed all four John Wick films, for Ballerina the studio brought on Len Wiseman (the Underworld franchise). But Stahelski is still a producer on the film and worked closely with Wiseman on those all-important action sequences.
Winston (Ian McShane) recruits a young Eve as a child.
YouTube/Lionsgate
She loves the ballet.
YouTube/Lionsgate
Sharon Duncan-Brewster plays Nogi, who trains Eve and the others to be assassins.
YouTube/Lionsgate
Firearms training.
YouTube/Lionsgate
Lance Reddick makes his last (posthumous) appearance as Charon.
YouTube/Lionsgate
Winston still looking suave.
YouTube/Lionsgate
The young assassin in action.
YouTube/Lionsgate
John Wick (Keanu Reeves) finally makes an appearance.
YouTube/Lionsgate
Huston returns as the Director, Ian McShane is back as Winston, and Lance Reddick makes one final (posthumous) appearance as the Continental concierge, Charon. New cast members include Gabriel Byrne as main villain the Chancellor, who turns an entire town against the titular ballerina, Eve Macarro (de Armas); Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Nogi; Norman Reedus as Pine; and Catalina Sandino Moreno and David Castaneda in as-yet-undisclosed roles.
Attendees at Cinemacon in April were treated to a teaser trailer; much of that footage seems to be in the trailer. We see Winston recruiting a young orphaned Eve with some scenes of her learning boxing, martial arts, and gun and knife skills. She’s looking for her father’s killer and naturally encounters some opposition, requiring her to fight a lot of nasty people, some armed with flamethrowers. Finally, she comes face to face with Wick, asking how she can start doing what he does. His response: “Looks like you already have.” De Armas looks fierce as hell and up to the physical challenges of her role. We’re looking forward to this one.
From the World of John Wick: Ballerina hits theaters on June 6, 2025.
In August, he moved into a two-bed, two-bath rental unit on the second floor of a building in Greensboro, North Carolina.
On September 15, his father, Ryan Routh, was found in the bushes of the sixth hole of Trump International Golf Club with a scope and a rifle, apparently in a bid to assassinate Donald Trump, who was golfing that day.
As part of the ensuing federal investigation, the FBI raided the junior Routh’s apartment on September 21. A Starbucks bag labeled “Oran” still sat on a dresser in one of the bedrooms while agents searched the home and Routh’s person, looking for any evidence related to his father’s actions. In the course of the search, they found one Galaxy Note 9 on Oran’s person and another Galaxy Note 9 in a laptop bag.
On September 22, the FBI obtained a warrant to search the devices. The investigation of Oran Routh quickly moved in a different direction after the FBI said that it found “hundreds” of videos depicting the sexual abuse of prepubescent girls on an SD card in the Note 9 from the laptop bag.
The other Note 9, the one that Oran had with him when raided, contained not just downloaded files but also “chats from a messaging application that, based on my training and experience, is commonly used by individuals who distribute and receive child pornography,” said an FBI agent in an affidavit. (The messaging app is not named.)
According to the agent, whoever used the phone had been chatting as recently as July with someone on the Internet who sold access to various cloud storage links. When asked for a sample of the linked material, the seller sent over two files depicting the abuse of young girls.
On September 23, Routh was charged in North Carolina federal court with both receipt and possession of child pornography. According to the court docket, Routh was arrested today.
Are you not entertainment? We’ve got a shiny new trailer for Gladiator II.
When the first trailer for Gladiator II dropped in early July, it racked up more than 180 million views in its first 48 hours, so clearly there’s an audience for Ridley Scott’s long-awaited sequel to his 2000 blockbuster Gladiator. And no wonder; as I noted at the time, the film “promises to be just as much of a visual feast, as a new crop of power players (plus a couple of familiar faces) clash over the future of Rome.” We’ve now got a shiny new trailer, and I stand by that initial assessment—especially since this trailer confirms what had previously been hinted about the protagonist’s biological father.
(Some spoilers for Gladiator below.)
Gladiator II centers around Lucius Verus (Paul Mescal), son of Lucilla and former heir to the Roman Empire, given that his father (also named Lucius Verus) was once a co-emperor of Rome. Lucius hasn’t been seen in Rome for 15 years. Instead, he has been living in a small coastal town in Numidia with his wife and child. Like Maximus before him, he is captured by the Roman army and forced to become a gladiator after the death of his family. Per the official premise:
Gladiator II continues the epic saga of power, intrigue, and vengeance set in Ancient Rome. Years after witnessing the death of the revered hero Maximus at the hands of his uncle, Lucius is forced to enter the Colosseum after his home is conquered by the tyrannical Emperors who now lead Rome with an iron fist. With rage in his heart and the future of the Empire at stake, Lucius must look to his past to find strength and honor to return the glory of Rome to its people.
Pedro Pascal plays Marcus Acacius, a Roman general who trained under Maximus, tasked with conquering North Africa. Although the young Lucius once idolized Maximus, Marcus Acacius apparently will be a symbol of everything Lucius hates. Connie Nielsen reprises her Gladiator role as Lucilla, who does not recognize her son when she first sees him fighting in the arena as a gladiator. But she figures it out, since we see her urge Lucius to “take your father’s strength. His name was Maximus, and I see him in you.”
Derek Jacobi also returns as Senator Gracchus, who is opposed to growing corruption in the Roman court. Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger play young co-emperors Geta and Caracalla. Denzel Washington rounds out the cast as Macrinus, an arms dealer who keeps a stable of gladiators. Tim McInnerny plays Thraex, Alexander Karim plays Ravi, and Rory McCann plays Tegula.
Gladiator II hits theaters on November 22, 2024, in the US. Internationally, it will premiere on November 15, 2024. Scott recently said that he is already developing a third film, Gladiator III, which would also star Mescal as Lucius. So we already know Lucius will survive, which might be why Scott has compared the ending of this film to The Godfather: Part II (1974).
Florence Pugh heads an assembly of misfits in Marvel’s Thunderbolts*.
Marvel Studios has dropped an extended teaser trailer for the final feature film in its Phase Six slate: Thunderbolts*, now with a mysterious asterisk to the title. The studio has touted the film as having a different tone from other recent MCU offerings—thanks in part to hiring “a crew of indie veterans who sold out” to make the film—and judging from the teaser, it looks like they just might deliver on that.
As previously reported, Thunderbolts* is a follow-up of sorts to 2021’s Black Widow. It’s directed by Jake Schreier and stars Wyatt Russell as US Agent/failed Captain America from TheFalcon and the Winter Soldier, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Contessa Valentina Allegra, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier, David Harbour as Alexei/Red Guardian, Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr/Ghost, Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster, and Lewis Pullman as Bob/The Sentry.
In addition, Geraldine Viswanathan plays Valentina’s assistant, Mel, and Harrison Ford will appear as Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, aka Red Hulk, aka the US president. (Ford’s character will also appear in February’s Captain America: Brave New World.) Laurence Fishburne and Rachel Weisz will reprise their MCU roles as Bill Foster and Melina Vostokoff, respectively.
There’s no official synopsis yet, but the studio describes the film as “an irreverent team-up featuring depressed assassin Yelena Belova alongside the MCU’s least anticipated band of misfits.” It’s basically the MCU’s version of The Suicide Squad; in fact, James Gunn was originally attached to direct Thunderbolts but bowed out after making The Suicide Squad because he felt the projects were just too similar.
Enlarge/ “Look at you. So adorable.” Valentina Allegra de Fontaine assembles the Thunderbolts.
Marvel Studios
The three-and-a-half-minute teaser trailer appears to be similar to the footage shown to attendees at San Diego Comic-Con. It opens with Yelena visiting Alexei, who initially thinks it’s a DoorDash order. Alexei is clearly not doing well despite insisting that he has plenty of work and is “so full, so filled.” But Yelena confesses feeling empty despair since Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow) died in Avengers: Endgame, despite throwing herself into her assassination work. As she describes herself as drifting and lacking purpose, we see Bucky and US Agent looking similarly depressed.
We see Yelena doing her work with impressive efficiency until she walks into what appears to be a trap. As she battles US Agent and Ghost, they stumble upon a nebbishy Bob lurking in the background—and then the room locks down. Cue Valentina shown at a fancy gala as she ruminates about the long-standing belief in good guys and bad guys. “But eventually you come to realize that there are bad guys and there are worse guys, and nothing else,” she says. Naturally she wants all those depressed assassins and antiheroes for her own warped version of the Avengers.
There’s plenty of action and lots of wisecracking humor, including an amusing shot of Bucky removing his arm from the dishwasher and reattaching it. And unlike Alexei’s “bulletproof-ish” car, Bob turns out to be truly bulletproof (thanks to a hefty infusion of super soldier serum).
Enlarge/ Guys, it was just a group chat! Over fantasy football!
John Lamb | Getty Images
Philadelphia has learned its lesson the hard way: football makes people a little crazy. (Go birds!) Police here even grease downtown light poles before important games to keep rowdy fans from climbing them.
But Matthew Gabriel, 25, who lives in Philly’s Mt. Airy neighborhood, took his football fanaticism to a whole ‘nother level. For reasons that remain unclear, Gabriel grew incensed with a University of Iowa student who was also a member of Gabriel’s fantasy football group chat.
So Gabriel did what anyone might do under such circumstances: He waited until the student went to Norway for a study abroad visit in August 2023, then contacted Norwegian investigators (Politiets Sikkerhetstjeneste) through an online “tip” form and told them that the student was planning a mass shooting. Gabriel’s message read, in part:
On August 15th a man named [student’s name] is headed around oslo and has a shooting planned with multiple people on his side involved. they plan to take as many as they can at a concert and then head to a department store. I don’t know any more people then that, I just can’t have random people dying on my conscience. he plans to arrive there unarmed spend a couple days normal and then execute the attack. please be ready. he is around a 5 foot 7 read head coming from America, on the 10th or 11th I believe. he should have weapons with him. please be careful
Police in both Norway and the US spent “hundreds of man-hours” reacting to this tip, according to the US government, even though the threat was entirely bogus. When eventually questioned by the FBI, Gabriel admitted the whole thing was a hoax.
But while the government was preparing to prosecute him for one false claim, Gabriel filed another one in March 2024. This time, it was a bomb threat emailed to administrators at the University of Iowa.
“Hello,” it began. “I saw this in a group chat I’m in and just want to make sure everyone is safe and fine. I don’t want anything bad to happen to any body. Thank you. A man named [student’s name] from I believe Nebraska sent this, and I want to make sure that it is a joke and no one will get hurt.”
Gabriel then attached a screenshot pulled from his group chat, which stated, “Hello University of Iowa a man named [student name] told me he was gonna blow up the school.” This was no fake image; it was in fact a real screenshot. But it was also a joke—made in reaction to the previous incident—and Gabriel knew this.
The government found none of this humorous and charged Gabriel with two counts of “interstate and foreign communication of a threat to injure.”
This week, at the federal courthouse in downtown Philly, Gabriel pled guilty to both actions; he will be sentenced in January. (Though he could have faced five years in prison, local media are reporting that he reached a deal with the feds in which they will recommend 15 months of house arrest instead.)
Gabriel’s lawyer has given some choice quotes about the case this week, including, “This guy is fortunate as hell to get house arrest” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “I don’t know what he was thinking. It was definitely not smart” (NBC News), and “I’m an Eagles fan” (Inquirer again—always important to get this out there in Philly).
US Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero offered some unsolicited thoughts of her own about fantasy football group chat behavior, saying in a statement, “My advice to keyboard warriors who’d like to avoid federal charges: always think of the potential consequences before you hit ‘post’ or ‘send.'”
At least this international bad behavior isn’t solely an American export. We import it, too. Over the summer, the US Department of Justice announced that two men, one from Romania and one from Serbia, spent the last several years making fake “swatting” calls to US police and had targeted 101 people, including members of Congress.
Robert Pattinson’s character didn’t read his contract’s fine print in Mickey 17, director Bong Joon-ho’s latest film.
It has been five long years since director Bong Joon-ho’s film Parasitetopped Ars’ list for best films of the year, whose prior work on Snowpiercer and Okja are also staff favorites. We’re finally getting a new film from this gifted director: the sci-fi comedy Mickey 17, based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Judging by the trailer that recently dropped, it feels a bit like a darkly comic version of Duncan Jones’ 2009 film Moon, with a bit of the surreal absurdity of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) thrown in for good measure. And the visuals are terrific.
Ashton’s inspiration for the novel was the teletransportation paradox—a thought experiment pondering the philosophy of identity that challenges certain notions of the self and consciousness. It started as a short story about what Ashton called “a crappy immortality” and expanded from there into a full-length novel.
Ashton told Nerdist last year that Bong’s adaptation would “change a lot of the book,” but he considered the director a “genius” and wasn’t concerned about those changes. The basic premise remains the same. Robert Pattinson plays the space colonist named Mickey Barnes, who is so eager to escape Earth that he signs up to be an “expendable” without reading the fine print.
Expendables are basically disposable employees (aka “second-hand baloney boys”). If they happen to die on the job, their consciousness is uploaded to a new body, and the cycle starts all over again. When a multiple unexpectedly survives while on an expedition to colonize the ice world Niflheim, Mickeys 17 and 18 discover that the policy in such cases is to exterminate all the multiples, and they must fight for their right to keep existing.
In addition to Pattinson, the cast includes Steven Yeun as Berto, Toni Collette as Gwen Johansen, Mark Ruffalo as Hieronymous Marshall, Naomi Ackie as Nasha Adjaya, Holliday Grainger as Red Hair, Angus Imrie as Shrimp Eyes, and Steve Park as Agent Zeke. Anamaria Vartolomei, Thomas Turgoose, Patsy Ferran, and Daniel Henshall have also been cast in as-yet-undisclosed roles. Perhaps one of them plays the person in the giant pigeon costume who briefly appears in the trailer.
Mickey 17 hits theaters in the US on January 31, 2025. It will premiere in other countries on January 28, 2025. Ashton penned a sequel, Antimatter Blues, which was published last year, so maybe Bong Joon-ho will adapt that one, too.
Tom Hardy returns for one more round as host of an alien symbiote, in Venom: The Last Dance.
Tom Hardy is back for one last hurrah as investigative journalist Eddie Brock, host of an alien symbiote that imparts superhuman powers to its host, in the final trailer for Venom: The Last Dance. The trailer has all the wise-cracking “buddy cop” vibes and fast-paced action we’ve come to expect from the franchise, including a trip to Vegas where Venom discovers the addictive allure of slot machines. But there are also hints of an inevitable bittersweet farewell—because this time they’ll face off against Knull, god-creator of the symbiotes.
(Spoilers for Venom and Venom: There Will Be Carnage below.)
As previously reported, the first film in the franchise served as an origin story for our antihero. A bioengineering firm called the Life Foundation discovered a comet covered with symbiotic lifeforms and brought four samples back to Earth. Brock’s then-fiancée, Anne Weying (Michelle Williams), showed him classified documents revealing that the foundation was conducting human/symbiote experiments. The symbiotes needed oxygen-breathing hosts to survive, but they invariably ended up killing those hosts.
Brock ended up infected with one of the symbiotes, named Venom. Venom revealed that the symbiotes are intent on taking over Earth by possessing/devouring all humans, but Brock ultimately struck up a bargain with Venom, and they decided to protect Earth instead. Together, they took on Life Foundation CEO Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), infected with a symbiote called Riot. Naturally, they won.
Venom was released in October 2018 and was roundly panned by critics, several of whom specifically bemoaned the lack of a Spider-Man connection. Audiences, however, begged to differ. Venom racked up $856 million globally. Hardy had already committed to two sequels, and a mid-credits sequence featured Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady taunting Brock (who was interviewing Kasady for a story) from his cell. Kasady vowed to escape and bring “carnage,” leaving little doubt as to the villain’s identity in a sequel.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage, directed by Andy Serkis, was released in 2021, also to mixed reviews and a strong box office, grossing $506.9 million worldwide. That film ended with Brock and Venom victorious over Kasady and heading off for a well-deserved vacation while the duo pondered their next steps. In a post-credits scene, Venom told Brock that he and his fellow symbiotes knew about other universes, at which point there was blinding light, and they were transported into the Marvel Cinematic Universe—a direct result of the spell cast by Doctor Strange in Spider-Man: No Way Home.(At the time, there were plans for a future crossover film with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man.)
“With you to the end”
Serkis was unable to return as director for The Last Dance, but Kelly Marcel, who wrote the screenplay for Carnage, stepped in to make her directorial debut. Per the official premise:
In Venom: The Last Dance, Tom Hardy returns as Venom, one of Marvel’s greatest and most complex characters, for the final film in the trilogy. Eddie and Venom are on the run. Hunted by both of their worlds and with the net closing in, the duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie’s last dance.
In addition to Hardy, Peggy Lu is back as convenience store owner Mrs. Chen, who befriended Eddie and Venom early on. Also returning is Stephen Graham as Detective Patrick Mulligan, who figured prominently in There Will Be Carnage and is now infected with his own symbiote named Toxin.
Cristo Fernández will reprise his role as the bartender in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man. Rhys Ifans played Curt Connors/Lizard in that film but will play a man named Martin in The Last Dance. Is there a secret connection? We’ll have to wait and see. (It seems after two outings, Williams won’t be reprising her role as Anne in the third and final film.) The cast also includes Chiwetel Ejiofor as a soldier intent on capturing Venom; and Alanna Ubach and Clark Backo in as-yet-undisclosed roles.
Venom: The Last Dance hits theaters on October 25, 2024.
Enlarge/ The state of New York says that this guy is the “assman,” not me. Show him the butt ads!
Seinfeld
According to my research, everyone has a butt.
But that doesn’t mean, when I’m imbibing my morning cuppa and reading up on the recent presidential debate, that I want to see an ad showing an illustrated derrière with a bar of soap clenched firmly between its two ripe cheeks.
Yet there it was, a riotous rump residing right in the middle of a New York Times article this week, causing me to reflect on just how far the Gray Lady has stooped to pick up those ad dollars lying in the gutter.
It’s not the first time this sort of thing has sullied the “paper of record.” In 2022, I was forward-thinking enough to grab a screenshot of the Times helping to sell me some sort of wipe with the tagline: “When your butt doesn’t smell like butt.” It was also marketed as deodorant for “your pits and lady bits.”
Enlarge/ Would Don Draper have written “smell like butt” on one of his ads?
Not having any “lady bits” to deodorize, this was not particularly compelling, but the true high point of ass-related irrelevancy at the Times came when I was served an ad featuring a mournful-looking dog who pointed the business end of his hindquarters directly at the camera. “It’s time to leave your dog’s anal gland problems behind,” I was told.
I have never owned a dog, nor—to my children’s continuing dissatisfaction—ever will. It was therefore left to Ars Technica’s Managing Editor Eric Bangeman, who is a noted canine lover and a true “friend to all creatures, even rats,” to explain to me just what this baffling advertisement meant.
Enlarge/ Now I really don’t want a pet in the house.
Once you start looking for these oddly direct ads in self-consciously “classy” media outlets, you see them everywhere, including in The Atlantic, where a bidet ad once promised that it would make my “butt crack smile.”
(Perhaps this last ad can be blamed on my boss, who has spoken in such glowing terms about high-end Japanese toilet technology that I Googled it—probably marking myself as some kind of “ass man” for life.)
Whatever the reason for seeing one of these ads, all of them looked cheap, and none of them felt relevant. I have nothing against the noble bidet, but having “holy sthis thing’s a gamechanger!!!” appear in the middle of my screen while pondering some chinstroker of an article was not exactly why I had visited The Atlantic.
Enlarge/ The game, it has been changed. By this stream of water. Shooting at your butt.
The great irony of online advertising these days is that it’s often claimed to be “targeted,” mining our personal and demographic information to serve us the ads that we allegedly want to see. Wouldn’t I prefer to view ads “relevant to my interests”? Maybe. But I can say with confidence that after two decades of being “extremely online” for work, the number of ads I have voluntarily and enthusiastically clicked upon must number in the low double digits.
Instead, the engines powering these ad networks continue to bombard me with two kinds of ads: 1) those that are wholly irrelevant to my interests and 2) those that are relevant to my interests because they display the exact product I once looked at in some online store. Ad targeting companies may “know a lot about me,” but they don’t know me in any truly useful way.
They don’t know, for instance, why I looked at some product online, or if I already made a decision not to buy it (or to buy it elsewhere), or if I just wanted to better understand my boss’s love of Japanese bidets. They don’t know whether I have (or want) a dog. And they (clearly) don’t know that I would be repulsed by an edible product shaped like a human ear and featuring both bite marks and Mike Tyson’s name.
(Fortunately, you can completely opt out of ads at some sites, including Ars Technica, by subscribing for a few bucks a month—and contributing directly to our bottom line.)
The US government recently announced multiple charges against the alleged leaders of the “Terrorgram Collective,” which does just what it sounds like—it promotes terrorism on the Telegram messaging platform. In this case, the terrorism was white racial terror, complete with a “hit list” of US officials and activists, a homemade “White Terror” video glorifying “saints” who had killed others, and instructions for taking down US infrastructure such as electrical substation transformers. (Read the indictment.)
Chaos was the point. Terrorgram promoted “white supremacist accelerationism,” which believes that society must be incited into a civil war or apocalyptic confrontation in order to bring down the existing system of government and establish a white nationalist state.
The group’s manifestos and chat rooms sometimes felt suffused with the habits of the extremely online: hand-clap emojis between every important word, instructional videos on how to make bombs, the language of trolling, catchphrases so over the top they sound ironic (“HAIL HOLY TERROR” in all caps).
Despite using technology to organize and publicize its ideology, though, the group was skeptical of technology—or at least of certain kinds. “Do not let those technophiles have a day of rest!” said one post encouraging its readers to go after the local power grid.
“LEAVE. YOUR. PHONE. AT. HOME,” said another. “Death to the grid. Death to the System,” concluded a third. The group’s accelerationist manifesto was called “Hard Reset.”
Enlarge/ An “encyclopedia” of killers, produced by Terrorgram.
But they were apparently happy to use other tech to spread the word. One Terrorgram publication was called “Do it for the Gram,” and Terrorgram admins created audiobooks of shooter manifestos, such as “A White Boy Summer to Remember.”
But Telegram, which combines the wider reach of channels and chat rooms (unencrypted) with the possibility of direct messaging (which can be encrypted), was a favorite spot for recruiting and sharing information. According to the government, Dallas Humber (34) of Elk Grove, California, and Matthew Allison (37) of Boise, Idaho, were the leaders of Terrorgram, which they appear to have run out in the open.
The group constantly encouraged violence, and it stressed the need for attackers to mentally prepare themselves to kill so as not to chicken out. But neither Humber nor Allison are accused of violence themselves; they seem to have been content to cheer on new martyrs to their cause.
The government traces several real-world killers to the Terrorgram community, including a 19-year-old from Slovakia who, in 2022, killed two people at an LGBTQ+ bar in Bratislava before sending his manifesto to Allison and then killing himself in a park. The manifesto specifically listed “Hard Reset” in its “Recommended Reading” section.
You can’t just ask the Internet to vote on something and assume you’ll get a “normal” result.
The town of Fort Wayne, Indiana, learned this the hard way in 2011, when an online vote to name a new government center in town went with “Harry Baals.” Though Mr. Baals was in fact a respected former mayor of the town back in the 1930s, contemporary officials weren’t convinced that his name was chosen out of merely historical interest.
Or there was the time in 2015 when the British Columbia Ferry Service asked Internet users to name its newest ships and perhaps win a $500 prize. Contest entries included:
Spirit of The WalletSucker
The Floating Crapsickle
Royal Docksitter
The Coastal Corruption
HMS Cantafford
Queen of the Damned
Or again—and perhaps most famously—there was the UK government’s gloriously naive decision in 2016 to let the Internet pick a new name for a £200 million polar research vessel. And 124,109 members of the general public chose… Boaty McBoatface. (This was later overridden by the government, which named the ship the RRS Sir David Attenborough instead, but one of the boat’s remotely operated underwater vehicles was named Boaty McBoatface as a consolation prize.)
Even the not-quite-bleeding-edge-of-tech New York Times recognized in its headline on the story that this is “What You Get When You Let the Internet Decide.”
So, despite many years of cautionary tales, the state of Michigan this year launched a contest to design some new “I Voted” sticker designs. (NB: For our non-American readers, these stickers are often given out when you vote in elections so that you can shame any nonvoting friends, family, and colleagues with your civic virtue.)
The state commissioned designs from local school kids, no doubt anticipating that said designs would feature things like heartwarming drawings of the Michigan mitten. And they let the Internet weigh in on the results.
More than 57,000 people did so—and that’s why voters across the state, once they cast a ballot in this year’s presidential election, might be handed a round sticker featuring a werewolf ripping its own shirt to shreds as it throws its head back and howls like a maniac in front of an American flag. And it is glorious.
Why not?
This piece of inspired artwork came from the mind and pen of 12-year-old Jane Hynous of Grosse Pointe Farms. Though the contest selected nine winners, Hynous’ design beat every other entry by a wide margin. (See all winners here.)
The New York Times called Hynous to talk about the sticker and received this terrific quote:
“I didn’t want to do something that usually you think of when you think of Michigan,” she said. “I was like, ‘Why not make a wolf pulling his shirt off?'”
Why not, indeed? Clearly, the Internet has delivered on this one.
Enlarge/ Election clerks can also order the traditional design. But why?
Michigan plans to print a million stickers, which will feature all nine winning designs, and local election clerks will need to order specific designs from the state. (They can also order the original, boring American flag “I Voted” stickers. But why would they?)
So if you live in Michigan, and if this November you want your shirt adorned with an insane werewolf celebrating the vote you just cast, now is the time to let your local clerk know.
Still, despite these great designs, I can’t help but feel that an opportunity was lost. No “Votey McVoteface”? Perhaps in 2028.
