‘You Can’t Kill Meme’ is a Genuine Attempt to Pull the Curtain on Meme Magic

Chaos Magic, 4chan, the 2016 election, and Egyptian gods were not the things I ever thought I would experience all at once but in You Can’t Kill Meme, a documentary film by Haley Garrigus that explores the idea of memes being magic and the magicians who use them. My third eye has been opened and I am looking deeper into the images I find funny and retweet on the internet.

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Fantasia Film Fest 2020 Review: ‘The Columnist’

I’ve had my many run-ins with cyberbullying. The thought has, and will probably continue to cross my mind, that if I ever met some of these bullies I’m going to give them a piece of my mind. Avo Van Aart’s new film The Columnist takes that sentiment to a whole different level. Actress Katja Herbers stars as an author, former columnist, and homicidal maniac that uses murder to cure writer’s block. This absurdist black comedy goes deep into the psyche of a woman who is tired — tired of patriarchy and tired of cyberbullying.

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Southern Fried Asian: Jamie Noguchi

Happy Holidays! Not only is it Christmastime, but this is also Jamie Noguchi week on Hard NOC Media! Before he guests on a special Rise of Skywalker focused edition of Hard NOC Life, Jamie is also Keith’s guest on this month’s Southern Fried Asian.

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I Hate My Blog, II: MC Frontalot, Baddd Spellah, Lex The Lexicon Artist, and Gm7 on ‘Net Split’

MC Frontalot’s new album Net Split: Or, The Fathomless Heartbreak of Online Itself dropped this weekend. (Or, is it still dropping? Is the moment of album-drop an indivisible quantum thing? Probably no one cares.) Five years in the making, Net Split is in some sense a concept breakup album, in which the Godfather of Nerdcore Rap wrestles with all the aspects of the Internet that are increasingly awful: memes, trolls, dating, stalking, dating/stalking, and of course, comments. It’s hooky and at times heart-wrenching, and here I chat about it with Frontalot, co-producer/beatsmith Baddd Spellah (Dave Cheong), guest verse-ologist Lex the Lexicon Artist, and frequent collaborator/keyboardist Gm7 (Gaby Alter).

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The Process in Making ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet’

It has been six years since we’ve seen Ralph and Vanellope on the big screen in 2012’s Wreck It Ralph. Now, to fit with the changing times, Ralph and Vanellope are going on the World Wide Web with Ralph Breaks the Internet. The Nerds of Color were invited behind the scenes of Ralph Breaks the Internet with the directors and creative team behind the animation.

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‘Searching’ for a New Kind of Thriller with John Cho

After a long weekend of interviews, John Cho walked into a room full of Asian and Asian American reporters anxiously waiting to talk to him about his new film Searching, a mystery thriller that not only uses a new medium of filming via the lens of your everyday devices, but is, also, the first of its genre to star an Asian American lead… ever. This movie is important to us and Cho knows it.

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EXCLUSIVE: Dante Basco Joins Creative Team for Homestuck Webcomic

Homestuck, a popular multimedia webcomic series, announces that Dante Basco (Hook, Avatar: The Last Airbender) has joined the Homestuck creative team to bring the series to Hollywood. The webcomic follows four teenagers that became friends on the internet and their fight to save the world after playing a computer game that inadvertently triggers the apocalypse. Since its launch in 2009, Homestuck has gained a large online following in the millions, reportedly reaching about 600,000 visitors daily. In 2012, Homestuck fans — often called “Homestucks”– pledged over $2.4 million through a Kickstarter campaign for the development of a Homestuck Adventure Game.

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Don’t Be Silent! Things You Can Do about GamerGate

by Patrick Miller | Originally posted on Tumblr

I have spoken to a lot of people in the games industry who are frustrated about GamerGate but shaky on the prospect of speaking out themselves; they’re worried about receiving death threats, or drawing unwanted attention to their employer, or just overextending themselves getting involved in an exhausting conversation.

All of these are valid concerns! The problem is that good people being silent on the matter is what enables this to continue; many of the folks who organize under the GamerGate banner (both harassers and non-harassers) genuinely believe that they’re speaking up for the silent majority who share their beliefs but aren’t brave enough to speak out. (Personally, I tend to assume that people are jerks despite their good intentions until proven otherwise; IMO the hard part of being a good person isn’t thinking the right thing, it’s doing the right thing). In other words, silence is interpreted as implicit permission to continue.

So, here’s the thing. Speaking out doesn’t mean you have to wake up every morning and only get out of bed after reading the previous night’s GamerGate stuff for twenty minutes and getting angry. (I will say it’s pretty good at getting me out of bed, though). There are a bunch of different ways that you can make your voice heard, depending on how your personal HP/MP are doing.

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