goodbye, computer.
— a little tune by April Clucks that’s “dedicated to the first machine i loved, before they were unloveable” #More Objects from Films
— Marcus Merritt’s ongoing series of ink drawings of lamps, phones, televisions, and other objects found in movies via @marcusjmerritt.com #Fill Harmonics
— Parker Higgins made a crossword puzzle-inspired drum machine for 10k Drum Machines #Interviewing the couple in the Will Smith AI crowd video: “The sign was real. The emotions were real too”
Two weeks ago, I wrote about how everyone got the viral Will Smith AI video wrong.
Most people believe that Will Smith’s team used AI to generate fake crowds and fake fans, presumably to cover for low turnouts, but the reality was much more mundane: they used AI to turn real photos into short video clips for a montage. The crowds were real, but everyone was convinced they were fake.
The focus of the internet’s suspicions was a couple holding a sign saying that a Will Smith song helped them to survive cancer, which Futurism called “nightmare fuel” with an expression “never before seen on a living human face.” Redditors called it “pathetic,” “vile,” and “sad and weird.”
After writing my post, I was left wondering what this uniquely-modern experience was like for these two people.
How did it feel to have millions of people think that you didn’t exist and were generated by AI? What was the story behind their sign, and what did that moment mean to them?
So I tracked them down to ask them.
DOOMscroll
— a game you play just by scrolling, the NYT headlines ripped from their homepage are a clever touch #Gina Trapani returns to blogging after a decade away
— Lifehacker’s founding editor, Thinkup cofounder, former Postlight CEO, and one of my favorite people via @ginatrapani.org #Wikipedia is resilient because it is boring
— great Verge feature on how Wikipedia evolved policies to resist attacks on its neutrality via @molly.wiki #Vole.wtf’s Reload Clicker
— a clicker game designed to implode any web server, try it before Matt Round takes it offline #Kowloon Walled City in Minecraft
— a detailed approximation based on books, photos, and videos via jwz #After 22 years, Typepad shutting down with one month’s notice
— they turned off new signups at the end of 2020, but were still reassuring users as recently as last March #Will Smith’s concert crowds are real, but AI is blurring the lines
This minute-long clip of a Will Smith concert is blowing up online for all the wrong reasons, with people accusing him of using AI to generate fake crowds filled with fake fans carrying fake signs. In the last day, the story’s been covered by Rolling Stone, VIBE, NME, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Mail, The Independent, Mashable, and Consequence of Sound.
And it definitely looks terrible! The faces have all the characteristics of AI slop, with familiar artifacts like uncanny features, smeared faces, multiple fingers/limbs, and nonsensical signage. “From West Philly to West Swig̴̙̕g̷̤̔͜y”?
But here’s where things get complicated.
The crowds are real. Every person you see in the video above started out as real footage of real fans, sourced from multiple Will Smith concerts during his recent European tour.
Bluesky blocks all of Mississippi over new age verification law
— the next stage of the Splinternet: every social site must now somehow verify the identity of every user or block entire states/countries #Kristie De Garis on community protest and solidarity in Wplace
— their server has been down for days, but the pixel-art layer drawn over the world map tells a thousand stories #“I’ve got a solution: wolves”
— improve every stupid newspaper op-ed headline with this one simple trick #Reddit will block the Internet Archive
— they say because AI companies are scraping data from the IA instead of paying Reddit directly #Vote on the 2025 Tiny Awards Finalists
For the third year, the Tiny Awards have released their list of finalists that represent “the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web.” Voting is now open and runs until the end of this month, closing on September 1.
I was on the judging committee this year, returning after a year away to focus on the final XOXO, and helped narrow down the finalists from 176 nominated websites.
I love this little low-stakes contest, and the experience of being bombarded with so many great weird experimental projects is an honor for me.
Like my roundup two years ago, here’s a little about each of this year’s 11 finalists to help inform your vote.