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Elizabeth Minkel

@elizabethminkel.bsky.social

2.5K followers 270 following 1.4K posts

Writing about digital communities, books, and fandom. Co-host/editor of Fansplaining & co-curator of The Rec Center ✨ elizabethminkel.com // fansplaining.com // https://buttondown.email/the-rec-center

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 21d

Why yes, I did respond to @bookshop.bsky.social's news about no longer being at Vox with a) a great deal of sympathy and support b) a very loud WOULD YOU WRITE FOR ME. 😅 I'm thrilled to publish such sharp reporting on these complicated fandom intersections—all editors should do the same!

Fansplaining @fansplaining.bsky.social · 21d

Our September piece is live! 💞 @bookshop.bsky.social digs into the smash success of Kpop Demon Hunters, the complicated state of the K-pop industry, and why, despite media narratives, the fictional and real streams of K-pop might not actually be crossing.

Read or listen to a full audio version:

K-Pop’s Demons, Real and Fictional — Fansplaining

Netflix's KPop Demon Hunters has seen massive mainstream success in the U.S. What does that mean for real K-pop artists and their fans?

www.fansplaining.com

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Holly Anderson 🍇 @hollyanderson.bsky.social · 1h

you fucked around and now the Episcopalians are doing memes. are you happy now. are you

Screenshot of a Facebook post featuring three of the Portland protesters wearing inflatable frog costumes with the following text:

Episcopalians on Facebook
Elizabeth Rose Elrod • 22h •
Exodus 8:2-6
"But if you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs...
The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your officials."

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ProfKFH @profkfh.bsky.social · 5h

“these groups see Substack as "a legitimizing tool for sharing content" specifically because the Substack brand—which is widely used by independent journalists, top influencers, cherished content creators, and niche experts—can help them "convey the image of a thought leader."

Lora Kolodny @lorak.bsky.social · 6h

writer, blogger, newsletter writer... arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Substack’s “Nazi problem” won’t go away after push notification apology

Substack may be legitimizing neo-Nazis as “thought leaders,” researcher warns.

arstechnica.com

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Rob MacWolf, Werewolf Hitchhiker @robmacwolf.thevoice.dog · 22h

When we write or draw porn or erotica, we get banned from having a bank account and our livelihoods get seized even if we give it away for free.

When billionaires steal what we've written or drawn to churn out a slop-approximate of porn, they're allowed to charge for it.

Matt Burgess (WIRED) @mattburgess1.bsky.social · 1d

Oh good, ChatGPT is getting "erotica for verified adults" later this year

We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.

Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.

In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing).

In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.

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Daniel Kibblesmith @kibblesmith.com · 1d

Nice joke you’ve got there. Be a real shame if I repeated the content of it back to you with aggressively pedantic sincerity.

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 1d

Yes! This also connects back to fanworks, where we communally create and share stories. Reporting on Character.ai, I was struck by people putting their dialogues in the character tags on Tumblr, as if anyone else would remotely care about their boring OOC chat. Fundamentally anti-social technology.

Steve @smread.bsky.social · 1d

and also the idea that there will be a social component to sharing these goofy videos. why would i care about someone else's marylin monroe on a dragon video when it takes me as little effort as they spent to make my own

Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 1d

It's not the tools; it's the people. Companies can build the most elaborate LLM-fueled story systems in the world to actually make your "Marilyn Monroe on a dragon" (also...gross & pathetic example) have a story, but it will be the lowest-common denominator basic-ness. Shallow from start to finish.

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 1d

To be kind of mean about it, I think one reason we see so little interesting work coming out of prompt-land is the kind of person interested in making something via that route doesn't have any deeper thoughts than that. Like, a wacky what-if in the hands of a good fic writer isn't about the prompt.

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 1d

Reading beyond the headline, I'm mostly struck by how much the purported wide-open horizons here resemble the way people outside of fanfiction describe it, e.g., "Fan fiction writers put Batman on the bridge of the Enterprise." The shallow wacky mashup or what-if that basically stops there.

Want to See Marilyn Monroe in Game of Thrones? AI Could Make It Soon

Despite early, and familiar, copyright growing pains, Sora may be the prelude to AI-generated on-demand TV and movies

www.scientificamerican.com

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Mythy the Kitty @mythiot.bsky.social · 1d

Nice argument, unfortunately I have already depicted you as the soyjak doomscroller Bob and myself as the chad organizer Sensei Sergio.

Bob Ferguson from One Battle After Another

Sensei Sergio from One Battle After Another

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Adam Bonin @adambonin.bsky.social · 1d

This line from Mamdani's father just really struck me. Great profile:

“I was an Indian in Uganda. I was a Muslim in India. And I was all of these things in New York City,” Mahmood Mamdani explained to his son. And “to be a minority is also to see the truth of the place amidst the promise of it.”

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

we’ll see how his mayoral tenure shakes out but i am convinced that Mamdani has the juice. not just the charisma to win an election but the temperament to govern and the measured pragmatism of someone who genuinely believes what they’re saying and wants to accomplish real things.

Inside the Improbable, Audacious and (So Far) Unstoppable Rise of Zohran Mamdani

www.nytimes.com

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Natasha Simonova @philistella.bsky.social · 1d

ONLY migrants though, no one else is to study English because it's a rip off and a waste of time, am I getting this right.

András Forgács W @andraswf.bsky.social · 1d

Well this will certainly do it www.gov.uk/government/n...

Migrants will be required to pass A Level standard of English

Migrants will be required to pass tough new English language requirements under a law introduced in Parliament today.

www.gov.uk

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Sean T. Collins @seantcollins.com · 1d

Disgusting Nazified Time magazine cover touting the triumph of Trump's will in Gaza

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 1d

🎃 Sleepy Hollow 🎃

Photograph of the Headless Horseman riding through the mist on a black horse.

Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 1d

lol he counts as Italian American if he emigrated but I don’t think we should name our day after him

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Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 2d

The reason people started protesting about Israel committing genocide in Gaza early on is because Israeli leaders began openly declaring genocidal intent early on.

Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 2d

Front page of Scottish newspaper The National today.

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 2d

I see some of you naming Italian-Italians; stop this! Italian Americans only.

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 2d

I've long argued for Marisa Tomei Day, but I would also offer up

Photograph of Fiorella La Guardia waving his hat and looking upwards.

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 2d

when she said she used to be an English teacher I said, "God" out loud lol

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Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 2d

This is a pretty good ad about screen addiction up until the only woman on earth with a phone asks it to tell her which flowers are prettier because she doesn't want to use her eyes to make that decision for herself and also she's the hero and everyone is jealous. www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...

Google Pixel 10 Launch | Vanilla

YouTube video by Made by Google

www.youtube.com

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 3d

This is today! ✨

Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 20d

It's been FOREVER since I've been to New York Comic-Con, so I was very pleased when I was asked to be on a panel this year! If you'll be there, please put this one on your calendar. 🥰

Black, green, and red graphic for a NYCC panel flier. Date in green: October 12, 2025. Time and room in white: 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM | Room 409. Title in big white letters: THE FANDOM EFFECT: How Fans Shape Pop Culture. Logos of NYCC, Wattpad, and Webtoon at the bottom.

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Katelyn Boo-urns @katelynburns.com · 4d

I wrote a little about some of the little details you might have missed in this video and why it hit me so hard as a trans person this morning:

www.burnsnotice.com/you-have-to-...

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 4d

As the TikTok deal closes, I do find it horrifying how many people continue to center their worlds—and their activism—on the platform. So much energy spent guessing at and coming up with goofy euphemisms for words and it's like...the people who will own this are quite open about their beliefs.

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 4d

I highly recommend listening to the interview (and the whole episode, bleak as it is):

Authoritarianism, but Make It Look Normal. Plus, the Family Taking Over American Media. | On the Media | WNYC Studios

The Supreme Court has returned to the bench and is poised to hear major cases on tariffs and federal firings. On this week’s On the Media, how a century-old legal theory may help us u...

www.wnycstudios.org

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 4d

Until I heard the author of this piece on On The Media this morning, I had no idea Larry Ellison's particular Silicon Valley society-controlling machinations were an outlier among his peers—because they're motivated by his devotion to the Israeli military. Cool guy to own TikTok & the OpenAI data!

Larry Ellison Is a ‘Shadow President’ in Donald Trump’s America

The Ellison family is cornering the market on attention and data the same way the Vanderbilts did railroads and the Rockefellers did oil.

www.wired.com

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Cat Fitzpatrick @catfitzpatrick.net · 4d

I have actually never seen a politician say anything even remotely like this. Whatever the follow-through, or not, even the fact he said this is really, really something

Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 4d

UNTIL IT’S DONE, Ep. 4: Sylvia Rivera

In the 1970s, queer New Yorkers had been pushed to the margins of NYC. Our trans neighbors faced immense cruelty. But in Sylvia Rivera, they found a champion.

As we combat Trump’s politics of darkness, her legacy can light the path forward.

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