Warning: If you thought shopping for women in general was hard, just know that it gets harder. Try shopping for a teenage girl.
Juuls, Tide Pods, Converse (but only the white ones), and saying LOL (ironically) — yup, we’re talking about the ever-changing hell that is teenage girl trends. It can be tricky to choose a gift that she’ll like and use for longer than a month, but does that mean you throw in the towel and plop a gift card in an envelope? That’s basically code for “I don’t get you at all.”
Instead of resorting to looking like an old, there is a way to show the teenage girl on your gift list that you “get them.” We’re talking music tech, phone accessories, room decor, artsy cameras, and more — all things to help her live her best life with her friends, branch out and be social, and help her figure out her passions. (Also known as gifts that won’t be met with an eye roll or her tweeting about you.)
Even if her “thank you” is sauced in sarcasm, receiving a gift that she can use over and over again that she knows you put thought into will have her feeling appreciative. (I would know — I was a picky teenage girl.)
Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer has opened up about the health problems that have led to speculation about his future with the program.
Meyer told Yahoo Sports’ Pete Thamel that a congenital arachnoid cyst in his brain, which required surgery in 2014, has been the source of severe headaches at various points in his career.
“Over the last few years, I’ve felt better and, with the help of my doctors, learned to manage it and monitor it with medication,” Meyer said. “I’m optimistic that this time won’t be any different.”
Meyer’s physician, Dr. Andrew Thomas, told Thamel his office has worked closely with Meyer to manage his symptoms.
“The past four years, we’ve been working closely with Coach Meyer to monitor and manage the symptoms that have risen from his enlarged congenital arachnoid cyst,” Thomas said. “This includes aggressive headaches, which have particularly flared up the past two years.”
There was a moment on the sidelines during Ohio State’s 49-26 win over Indiana on Oct. 6 in which Meyer was seen kneeling down and clutching at his head:
Timothy Burke @bubbaprog
He seems fine now, but a few minutes ago Urban Meyer appeared to be having some kind of issue on the sideline https://t.co/0MGQSEErUL
Meyertold reportersafter the game the incident was related to a headache, not a collision on the sideline that wasoriginally reportedon the Fox television broadcast.
ESPN’s Paul Finebaum said on Outside the Lineslast week he was “hearing a lot of whispers” that Meyer wouldn’t return to Ohio State after this season.
Meyer ended any speculation about his long-term plans during Monday’s press conference,telling reporters he will be back with the Buckeyes in 2019.
Now in his seventh season at Ohio State, Meyer has led the program to a 77-9 record since 2012. The 54-year-old has won two Big Ten titles (2014, 2017) and the 2014 College Football Playoff Championship with a 42-20 victory over Oregon.
The MacBook Air, formerly the neglected stepchild among Apple laptops, is reborn: It’s still basically the same wedge-shaped computer Steve Jobs introduced in 2008, but it’s sporting USB-C ports, a retina display, and a modern chip inside.
Importantly, it fills another hole in Apple’s lineup: the midrange. When Apple refreshed its MacBook Pros in the summer, it didn’t bother updating the non-Touch Bar model, meaning for anyone who didn’t want to shell out $1,800+ didn’t really have an option if they wanted something with the latest Intel chip tech.
They do now. The new MacBook Air essentially obsoletes the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro, sporting the same ports — two USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports and a headphone jack — and better features (including the secondary T2 chip that helps secure Touch ID and until now has been reserved for Apple’s high-end machines) while undercutting the price: The fresh Air starts at $1,199, or $100 less than the weakest Pro.
Image: Pete Pachal/Mashable.
That effectively downranks the skinny MacBook to entry level in Apple’s lineup, since it starts at $1,099. The revised lineup, stepping from MacBook to Air to Pro, feels right, although it’s hard to overlook that Apple has decided in 2018 that its customers should pay more for all their products. That shouldn’t be too surprising in a year Apple released a $1,449 smartphone, but it doesn’t make it easier to swallow.
All that said, Apple technically hasn’t discontinued the old MacBook Air. The screen is low-res, and the silicon is wildly outdated, but it’s still available for $999, if you want it.
Air time
I took the 2018 MacBook Air for a spin right at the close of Apple’s Brooklyn event. From a distance, the aluminum finish is unmistakably a MacBook. It comes in three finishes: space gray, gold, and traditional silver. My favorite is probably space gray, though the gold is quite nice. It has just a hint of coral, making it closer to the current gold iPhone XS rather than the gold skinny MacBook of old.
Image: Raymond Wong/Mashable
First, the keyboard. Apple says it’s the same third-generation butterfly keyboard found in this year’s MacBook Pros. Typing things out on a couple of the models at the hands-on area, I felt the experience was subtly different from the Pro keyboard, though. They keys appeared to have a little more cushion, requiring ever-so-slightly more pressure to type.
That’s a little surprising, since both models should theoretically have the same experience, since both have the extra membrane beneath the keys (which Apple says is to make it quieter, but is probably mostly there to improve reliability). The area was noisy, so it was hard to get a sense of how quiet the keyboard was, but it definitely felt like the keys didn’t have the same “slap” as the ones on my daily drive, a 2017 MacBook Pro (2nd-gen butterfly), so it wouldn’t surprise me if it was a hair quieter.
Image: Raymond Wong/Mashable
I wish I could marvel at the screen. Apple’s 13.3-inch 2,560 x 1,600 display on the Air looks great, certainly. I checked out photos, websites, and various apps, and details (like tiny text) looked crisp and colors looked fantastic in photos. However, the brightness struggled to compete with the studio lights in the hands-on area (iPhones looked fine), so it’s not superhuman.
Moreover, it’s catch-up. Pretty much any screen these days looks better than the old MacBook Air non-retina display. If Apple has upgraded this screen to the point where it deserves to be called “Liquid Retina”… well OK, I guess, but, to the eye, it’s hard to see how the Air is any better than the display on the Surface Laptop, or the Google Pixelbook, or even Apple’s own MacBook Pros. It’s a retina display, great. What else ya got?
Image: Raymond Wong/Mashable
Better speakers, for starters. Even in a crowded demo room, I could tell the Air’s speakers were doing a decent job of playing the audio of a clip from Ready Player One. I’ll have to more fully test them out in a full review, but better sound is a welcome upgrade for those of us who spend a great deal of time on conference calls.
There’s also the Force Touch trackpad. I don’t use Force Touch much at all, but I used the new Air to Force-select an address in Notes to call up Apple Maps. Nice, though it’s not persuading me to use the feature. The trackpad itself is a fine upgrade, but again — catch-up. It’s nice and large (if a bit smaller than the trackpad on the MacBook Pros), but also unremarkable.
Image: Raymond Wong/Mashable
As for performance, the new MacBook Air did a fine job. It competently ran a bunch of apps, Safari loaded a half-dozen highly visual websites, and generally didn’t lag. App-switching from Xcode to Maps to Photos and back was quick. Touch ID appeared to work as fast as it does on my regular 2017 MacBook Pro.
Mistaking catch-up for progress
If you think I’m using the word “fine” too much, you’re probably right. The new MacBook Air looks like a great midrange machine, and Apple’s seemingly ticked all the boxes in giving the current Air owners what they want in a modern laptop.
Image: Raymond Wong/Mashable
The thing is, there are plenty of modern laptops. If you’ve already got an Air (or a lower-end Pro) and are looking to upgrade, everything I experienced suggests this is the machine you want. But for anyone else? It’s hard to pinpoint where the MacBook Air stands out to the point where you’d buy it over, say, a Lenovo Yoga.
Ten years ago, Apple’s original MacBook Air set a new bar for laptops. It got a new lease on life today, but this time as a follower, not a leader.
There was a big Apple event on Oct. 30. Perhaps you watched it.
If you did tune in, you would have caught all kinds of Mac Mini, iPad, Apple Pencil, and Lana Del Rey news. What you would not have seen, however, is any announcement regarding AirPower or the next generation of AirPods.
Despite announcing AirPower, “an Apple-designed wireless charging accessory,” in September 2017, we’ve yet to see any inclination that the product will be available before the end of this year. And the glaring omission of any AirPower mention during today’s promotional event only serves to drive home the message that we’re likely not getting the charging pad anytime soon.
And that’s not the only product mysteriously absent from the Tim Cook-helmed presentation. Notably, we heard nothing about the long-promised next generation of AirPods. AirPods were originally unveiled more than two years ago, and there’s been plenty of speculation since about when the company planned to release a follow up product.
Today, Apple came up empty on both counts. We were, however, presented with a new Lana Del Rey song.
Image: screenshot / apple
So what’s the hold up? It’s possible that reported manufacturing problems with AirPower have delayed the release of a second generation of possibly wireless charging AirPods. After all, you can’t release a product that has no way of being charged.
Or, it’s also possible that AirPower has been straight up canceled — AppleToolBox has reported as much — forcing some kind of redesign of the forthcoming second generation of AirPods.
Either way, we don’t know, and Apple sure isn’t saying. But maybe, just maybe, that Lana Del Rey performance closing out the Apple event made the lack of AirPower and AirPods news go down just a tad bit easier.
Maryland Terrapins head football coach DJ Durkin is reportedly expected to return after being placed on administrative leave in August amid an investigation into an alleged “toxic” culture within the program.
On Tuesday, Rick Maese of the Washington Post reported Durkin and athletic director Damon Evans both received recommendations from the University System of Maryland Board of Regents to return despite objections from president Wallace D. Loh, who will now retire in June.
“It was made clear that if he wanted to remain in his position, he had no option [but to reinstate Durkin],” a source told Maese. “He ultimately felt it would’ve been tremendously disruptive to the entire campus if he was to be terminated simply because he wouldn’t put the coach back on the field.”
The source added the board couldn’t make a final ruling on the coach’s fate but made it clear to Loh that allowing Durkin to coach again was their “highest priority.”
A news conference is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon to discuss the situation and expected reforms that stem from the investigation, which found numerous issues within the program.
An Aug. 10 report from ESPN.com’s Heather Dinich, Adam Rittenberg and Tom VanHaaren, based on interviews with multiple sources close to the program, alleged Durkin, 40, created a “coaching environment based on fear and intimidation” that featured “extreme verbal abuse of players.”
“I would never, ever, ever allow my child to be coached there,” a former Maryland staff member told ESPN.com.
Evans released a statement one day after the report announcing Durkin was being placed on leave while “fully investigating the program.” He also noted the school continued to review the June 13 death of offensive lineman Jordan McNair.
“The safety and well-being of our student-athletes is our highest priority,” Evans said. “These alleged behaviors are not consistent with the values I expect all of our staff to adhere to and we must do better. You will be hearing from me as our work continues to rebuild the culture of respect in our football program.”
McNair suffered heatstroke during a May 29 Terps offseason workout and died two weeks later after collapsing and being hospitalized, per Jonas Shaffer of the Baltimore Sun.
“It shows a cultural problem that Jordan knew that if he stopped, they would challenge his manhood, he would be targeted,” a current Maryland player told ESPN. “He had to go until he couldn’t.”
Loh told reporters Aug. 14 the school informed the McNair family it “accepts legal and moral responsibility for the mistakes” that led to his death. The university also accepted the resignation of assistant athletic director for sports performance Rick Court.
In mid-October, Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic reported a group of football players’ parents had bonded together in an effort to keep Durkin from returning to the Terps.
“We are worried that this narcissistic sociopath is going to come back,” one parent told Auerbach. “To me, he should never coach again.”
Offensive coordinator Matt Canada was named interim head coach when Durkin was placed on leave. The Terps own a 5-3 record, including a 3-2 mark in Big Ten play, so far in 2018.
Durkin has posted a 10-15 record across two years at Maryland. It’s unclear when he would return to the sideline if granted clearance Tuesday.
The Ku Klux Klan is a white supremacist group founded in the 19th century [Justin Kernoghan/Photopress Belfast]
A group of at least eight people dressed as Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members posed outside an Islamic centre in a Northern Irish town over the weekend, in an incident that is being treated by police as a hate crime.
A picture published on social media showed the group, also carrying crucifixes, close to the Bangladesh Islamic Centre in Newtownards, east of Belfast, on Saturday.
A pig’s head was left outside the same centre in August last year, according to British media.
“We are treating this as a hate crime,” Inspector Richard Murray, from the Police Service of Northern Ireland, said in a statement on Tuesday.
The KKK is a white supremacist group founded in the 19th century after the abolition of slavery in the United States.
The group also posed for pictures at a pub in the town with Sharon Mellor, the girlfriend of Tony Martin, leader of the fringe far-right group National Front, the Belfast Telegraph reported.
‘Dressed up for Halloween’
The newspaper published a picture showing Mellor with someone dressed in a KKK costume spattered with blood holding a beer.
She told the paper the people were “random strangers”.
“A few blokes were dressed up for Halloween, no idea who they were,” she said.
The paper said Mellor “joked” three years ago about having tried to set fire to the Islamic centre in the town.
One of the pubs the group entered on Saturday night was The Spirit Merchant owned by the JD Wetherspoon chain.
Wetherspoon spokesperson Eddie Gershon said: “We can confirm that a group dressed in KKK clothing came to our pub.
“They were refused entry by door staff, but pushed past them into the pub. They were told by bar staff that they would not be served. They remained in the pub for five minutes, unserved and then left.”
“It means something to have representatives who look like the people we’re here to represent,” Democratic House candidate and Virginia State Sen. Jennifer Wexton said on Tuesday. | Alex Wong/Getty Images
There are early signs of a wider turnout gap between the genders than is typically seen in midterm elections.
STERLING, Va. — If Jennifer Wexton and fellow Democrats ride a midterm “blue wave” to take back the House, it’ll be in swing districts like this one — and in large part because of the women who showed up last weekend to canvass for her.
Many of the 100-plus volunteers who volunteered for the Democratic candidate on Saturday were women, reflecting what polls show is a significant advantage for the party among college-educated women in the most hotly contested districts. A midterm cycle that’s already seen record numbers of female nominees for Congress is also bringing signs of a significant boost in women donating to campaigns and ample anecdotal evidence of more women engaging in grassroots activism.
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Women have historically voted at higher rates than men, and it remains to be seen whether that gender gap will grow further this year as even more women turn out to vote. But Wexton, who’s challenging Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) in a district long held by the GOP, said she’s been seeing more women participating in campaigns since last fall, when Democratic women snagged 11 of the 15 state House of Delegates seats that the party took from Republicans.
“It means something to have representatives who look like the people we’re here to represent,” Wexton said in an interview after she and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright snapped a selfie with volunteers.
“And these women who have come together — not just to run, but also to advocate and to create networks and to help elect people or to help advocate for particular issues — I don’t think that’s going away, no matter what happens on Nov. 6.”
To the extent that the anecdotal uptick in women’s involvement on the ground can be measured, the lion’s share of it appears to be boosting Democrats’ prospects in the midterms. One Wexton volunteer, Renise Leresche, said attendance at an annual women’s summit run by an activist group she works with leaped from 350 to 750 this year.
The group, Network NoVA, is “for electing Democratic — hopefully, women,” Leresche said. “But we have a lot of men who are involved in the efforts.”
College-educated women favor Democrats over Republicans in 69 swing House races by 27 percentage points, according to a Washington Post/Schar School poll released earlier this month. And 78 percent of Democratic women reported themselves as “very motivated” to vote in an average of the past three weeks of POLITICO/Morning Consult polling — greater than for Republican women (65 percent), Democratic men (72 percent) or Republican men (72 percent).
Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said that while it’s tough to predict whether women will turn out at higher rates, she sees women more engaged in this election “than they have been in the past. … This enthusiasm among women is not just for women candidates.”
The fact that the 2018 campaign has become a referendum on President Donald Trump’s polarizing first two years in office is stoking enthusiasm among the entire electorate, not just women. An average of 68 percent of women and 69 percent of men said they are “very motivated” to vote.
But the enthusiasm edge among Democratic women tracks with what Laurie Wolfe, 43, is seeing on the ground as a co-chair of the liberal group Indivisible’s chapter in Minnesota’s 3rd District.
Wolfe recalled in an interview that while she is a longtime voter, she “wasn’t active politically before the 2016 election.” Now, she added, “I’m leading a whole group of activists, mainly women, in our district.”
That effort is benefiting a male Democrat, Dean Phillips, whom polls show leading Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.). As the pollster Greenberg observed, women’s high level of enthusiasm isn’t just helping women candidates such as Wexton, one of a record 235 female House nominees from both parties this year.
At the liberal activism network Swing Left, which focuses on routing grassroots energy into battleground races, political director Adrienne Lever said that volunteers have “a general understanding that it’s not just about supporting women. It’s [also] about supporting male candidates who are supporting women.”
Though no single metric can gauge female Democrats’ motivation levels ahead of next week’s midterms, a Swing Left survey of its members who most regularly respond to calls for phone banking, canvassing and other volunteer efforts found that 73 percent were women. It’s not just volunteering that women are doing in greater numbers: The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics found in March that 31 percent of donations to House candidates were from women, a high-water mark since the group began tracking data in 2000.
What pollsters won’t know until after next week’s votes are tallied is whether signs of heightened enthusiasm among women yield higher turnout. In the previous midterm election, in 2014, men voted for Republican House candidates by a 16-point margin, 57 percent to 41 percent, according to exit polls. Women, meanwhile, tilted blue, giving 51 percent of their votes to Democratic candidates, compared with 47 percent to Republicans.
The gender gap — the difference in vote preference between men and women — could be even larger in 2018. This year, polls show men are close to evenly split between the two parties, while women go for Democrats by double-digit margins. A recent New York Times Upshot/Siena College poll of Wexton’s race in Virginia found Comstock with a 2-point lead among men, 45 percent to 43 percent. But the Democrat had a 17-point lead among women, 54 percent to 37 percent.
While women have historically voted at higher rates than men, the difference in turnout rates is smaller in midterm elections than in presidential years. In both the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, the turnout rate for women was 4 percentage points greater than for men. The gap between the two genders was roughly half of that, however, in the two most recent midterms: 2014 (2.2 points) and 2010 (1.6 points).
Democrats’ advantage among college-educated women, and the signs of rising female enthusiasm for the midterms, is likely to pay off more in the House’s suburban battlegrounds than in the deep-red states where five Democratic senators are struggling to hang on. In Montana, one of those states that Trump carried by double-digits, Democrat Kathleen Williams recently downplayed her reliance on female voters even as she touts her aim to bring “stateswoman-ship” to Congress.
“Women are motivated. I think men are motivated. I think young people are motivated,” Williams, who’s challenging Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.) in an at-large House race that recent polls show statistically tied, said in an interview in Billings. “That’s the coalition we need: Progressives, independents, moderates and Republicans.”
Still, Williams said the contrast with a GOP congressman who body-slammed a reporter last year has been kind to her. When Trump praised Gianforte, she recalled, she was flooded with money: “Boy, did I get a lot of donations from across the nation.”
Whether it’s Gilgamesh or urban legends, the art of storytelling has been around for thousands of years. In the case of creepypastas, just replace the campfire with a computer screen.
For those that have never experienced this internet genre of storytelling, creepypastas are horror-related stories, images, or videos. The name is based off the term “copypasta” because the stories are typically copied and pasted all over the internet.
But over the past few years, the popularity of the genre has dwindled after tragic events caused the community to reel itself back and stifle creation.
Despite its struggles, creepypasta hasn’t quite met its own horror movie ending, but rather turned into something else. Shifting from its home in the corners of the /x/ board of 4Chan and r/NoSleep subreddit, the genre has made its way to TV screens across the country thanks toChannel Zero, a SyFy television series created by Nicholas Acosta that expands on the plot of creepypastas on the internet.
The early days of creepypasta
Some older and popular creepypastas includeJeff the Killer, a serial killer with no eyelids and a terrifying smile who murders his family; and BEN Drowned, a story by YouTuber Alex Hall that revolves around a haunted cartridge of the video game The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.
Hall included videos of the ordeal to further enhance the creepypasta.
“I saw that a lot of creepypastas only had one element to them — the writing — and I felt that if it had a visual component as well it would make it that much more engaging,” Hall wrote.
Jadusable encountering an in-game statue that’s supposed to be Ben
Image: jadusable / alex hall / youtube
BEN Drowned follows the story of a college student who goes the username Jadusable. The character buys a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask from a mysterious old man at a garage sale, that turned out to be haunted by a malevolent spirit named Ben.
“The genre itself was still pretty young when I wrote it in 2010,” Hall wrote. “I didn’t know what it was at the time. I saw a few creepy video game stories in the wild, and I wanted to try my hand at writing something similar. It just happened to evolve organically from there.”
A glitched version of Link that appears when Jadusable starts up a game file.
Image: jadusable / alex hall / youtube
Creepypastas get bigger—and more visual
The infamous Slender Man creature — who was birthed from a creepypasta — helped propel the community into the spotlight with his unnaturally elongated limbs and pale face lacking eyes, mouth, or a nose. Slender Man got so big that he had video games, YouTube web series, and a feature film based on him.
For content creators like Adam Rosner, making YouTube videos based on this figure was a cathartic hobby that eventually grew into a fully fleshed out web series called TribeTwelve.
“I started making videos back in 2010,” Rosner said. “That type of raw horror was something that really appealed to me. It’s a lot of what creepypasta lore really is.”
Rosner’s TribeTwelve series was well received by the community. In the series, Rosner plays the role of Noah Maxwell, a college student who is being tormented by a group of evil entities known as The Collective, and of course, Slender Man.
“When I started out I didn’t have a big plan,” Rosner said. “I only wanted to have a few episodes and have a joke ending. But then people started posting in forums about my stuff, and they were really into the plot and visuals of the series.”
An image of The Collective from TribeTwelve
Image: Courtesy of adam rosner
As one of the large figures in the “Slenderverse,” Rosner joined the ranks of other series creators like Marble Hornets and EveryManHYBRID, whose YouTube channels are dedicated to creating Slender Man videos.
Creepypastas take a dark turn
In 2016, a 12-year-old girl named Katelyn Davis livestreamed her suicide on Live.me. According to a blog post Davis wrote in December 2016, she had fallen in love with the the character Ben from Hall’s creepypasta.
“I NEED his love. I NEED his warmth. It has been several months since I last spoke with him,” Davis wrote. “He went by Ben Drowned. He claimed that he was the real Ben Drowned. Right now, I don’t care.”
In an interview with Kotaku last year, Hall commented on the event.
“I don’t feel responsible,” Hall said. “I feel like if it wasn’t my story, it would’ve been something else. Someone would have impersonated someone else or whatever, from another story, to lead her down that path or whatnot.”
Davis’ suicide was not the only tragedy surrounding creepypastas. Perhaps the most infamous case came in the form of an attack by two young girls in order to appease Slender Man.
In 2014, Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, lured their friend Payton Leutner into the woods in Wisconsin where they stabbed her 19 times and left her to die. All of the girls involved were 12-years-old at the time of the attack.
Multiple reports during the incident highlighted the girls’ obsession with the creepypasta figure as a motive. Because of this, many felt Slender Man and the creepypasta community were guilty by association.
One of the two accused attackers in the Slender Man stabbing appearing in a courtroom hearing on Nov. 12, 2014 in Waukesha, Wis.
Image: WAUKESHA FREEMAN, CHARLES AUER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thankfully, Leutner survived the attack after she dragged herself to a nearby road and was found by a cyclist. She was taken to the hospital to recover from her injuries, and her attackers were tried as adults in a court. Both Weier and Geyser pleaded guilty of attempted homicide. Weier was committed to 25 years and Geyser was committed to 40 years. Both of the teenagers are serving their sentences in psychiatric institutions.
“The stabbing was pretty discouraging for a lot of people,” Rosner explained. “It felt like a lot of media outlets were looking for someone to point a finger at, and they just didn’t understand the community at all.”
Considered these two tragic events both involved young children, the community was hit hard.
Despite setbacks, creepypastas move to TV
Despite the backlash and decline in new stories, Nicholas Acosta saw potential in the genre, and revitalized the dying genre through his television show, Channel Zero.
“We wanted to honor the genre and give it our own twist,” Acosta said. “The original stories are very short and it’s necessary to bring a lot of stuff into it, so we wanted to give them more life with characters and a larger plot.”
An image of “Pretzel Jack” a creature in the new season of Channel Zero
Image: courtesy of syfy
Channel Zero expands on creepypastas by using it as a platform to create an entire universe, characters, and a plot lines based off the original stories.
The show has been received well by critics and audiences. It’s slated to premiere its fourth season, Dream Door, based on a creepypasta that was posted on the NoSleep subreddit last year. All of the original authors of the creepypastas were credited and paid.
“I have faith in the genre,” Acosta said. “I think as long as people have fears in the modern world, they’re going to continue to read, write, and watch this stuff.”
Image: courtesy of syfy
Will creepypastas continue to thrive?
At the moment, creepypastas are still being produced online, but not nearly at the same rate as they were previously. There also haven’t been any standout creatures recently, such as Ben or Slender Man.
“I haven’t really seen too many newer ones crop up organically,” Hall said. “I think a lot of the really popular ones came out in the first half of the decade and we’re waiting for the next big author out there to put their own spin on the genre.”
Although the written aspect of creepypasta has declined over the past few years, the versatility of the internet has allowed it to retain its spooky value regardless of medium.
“It has a ridiculous amount of variety,” Rosner said. “The community has so much to offer and I don’t think it’s ever going to go away, it’ll just change forms.”
Image: courtesy of syfy
Whether it’s on TV, in a YouTube video, or written form, you can’t escape a good urban legend or spooky story. As long as there are innovators in the community producing quality creepypasta for the internet, the genre is set to keep us up at night for more years to come.
“I’m excited to see where it goes in the future,” Hall wrote. “I think there’s someone out there with an idea involving multiple mediums that’s going to set the internet on fire and I can’t wait for him or her to realize it.”
A Monday post from one of the forum’s moderators spells out a new rule that bans any discussion of Trump support from RPGnet. The reasoning behind the ban is made abundantly clear right at the outset.
The following policy announcement is the result of over a year of serious debate by the moderation team. The decision is as close to unanimous as we ever get. It will not be the subject of further debate. We have fully considered the downsides and ultimately decided we have to stay true to our values. We will not pretend that evil isn’t evil, or that it becomes a legitimate difference of political opinion if you put a suit and tie on it.
The strongly worded statement goes on to state that Trump’s “public comments, policies, and the makeup of his administration are so wholly incompatible with our values that formal political neutrality is not tenable. We can be welcoming to (for example) persons of every ethnicity who want to talk about games, or we can allow support for open white supremacy. Not both.”
The post then goes on to outline the fine points of the policy — for example, conservative views aren’t banned, and retroactive bans won’t be handed down to anyone who’s voiced support for Trump in the past.
It concludes with a list of “citations” meant to illustrate the many forms Trump’s reprehensible behavior has taken. There’s even an entry devoted to pointing out that “globalist” is typically a racist dog whistle used to target Jews. It’s hardly a complete accounting (newsflash, Trump is an awful person) but it does paint a picture.
I don’t personally frequent many online forums like this. But in the almost two years since Trump’s inauguration, I can’t recall seeing any other website introduce a policy that takes such a specific, strong stance Trump-related discussion.
It’s a welcome breath of fresh air, frankly. As the current administration finds new lows to sink to virtually every day — just a few days ago, Trump blamed the horrific synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh on that congregation’s lack of a security presence — people and interests should be taking a stand like this.
As RPGnet’s new policy lays out, there’s a difference between political discourse and openly fostering hateful ideologies. Trump and his cronies frequently engage in the latter, and it’s less and less subtle with each new day.
There isn’t any place in the current political discourse for a rational defense of Trump. RPGnet smartly recognized that, and stepped up to take action. Here’s hoping other community-centric websites see this and follow suit.
Lastly: Bravo to RPGnet for taking a stand that will surely result in no small amount of social media fallout. It’s a courageous decision, and courage is something the world could use more of these days.
James Palmer of the NFL Network noted that the Texans weren’t the only team interested in the veteran wideout:
James Palmer @JamesPalmerTV
It’s been Pats, Titans, Eagles, Texans all interested to some extent in Demaryius Thomas.
Thomas, 30, is a four-time Pro Bowler, last playing in the all-star showcase after the 2016 season. The past two years without Peyton Manning at quarterback have been more difficult for Thomas, however.
During last year’s QB carousel, the receiver dipped below 1,000 yards for the first time since 2011, registering 83 receptions for 949 yards and five touchdowns. While Case Keenum has been an upgrade this season, Thomas has still only posted a modest 36 receptions for 402 yards and three scores, as Emmanuel Sanders has emerged as Keenum’s most trusted target.
And Thomas perhaps hasn’t helped his own cause, struggling with drops in recent seasons:
Kevin Seifert @SeifertESPN
Most drops since 2015, per @ESPNStatsInfo:
Michael Crabtree: 26
Demaryius Thomas: 24
Mike Evans: 22
Amari Cooper: 22
And when trade rumors began buzzing in October, Thomas said he understood the chatter but liked playing for the Broncos.
“That’s a good thing if somebody is interested because then I can still play ball,” he said, per Mike Klis of 9News. “I still got a chance, if I get traded. I want to be here, but I’ve been hearing it the whole season now so I feel like somewhat it is true. My time here is coming up.”
Given Sanders’ strong season and Courtland Sutton’s emergence at the position, Thomas became expendable for a Broncos team that isn’t one of the AFC’s top contenders.
While he is perhaps no longer the dynamic threat and touchdown machine he was earlier in his career, he’ll still be a big body (6’3″, 229 lbs) and veteran presence for the Texans, who should upgrade their receiving corps. And if he develops a quick rapport with Deshaun Watson, he could be a key component for Houston, which is looking to make a playoff push.
Plus, he’ll help fill the void left by the injured Will Fuller V, who’s out for the season with a torn ACL.
His days as an elite weapon are likely over. But if Thomas can be a reliable target in Houston, the Texans will be more than justified in swinging this deal.
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