20k Leagues Under the Internet

Chat. GPT has taken the internet by storm. Videos of people using it to write lease agreements, college essays, marketing strategies and more have been impossible to avoid. Unless you're Kyle who avoids social media like the plague. People have been testing out how far they can push Chat. GPT to varying results. We asked it if it can do crime which it can't and then immediately reported us to the...

The internet is full of mysteries. Most of them go unsolved or lack any real interest to investigate. But the man who proclaimed "this is democracy manifest" as he is forcibly arrested while attempting to eat a succulent chinese meal has a roller coaster of a history; mistaken identity, chess masters, judo practitioners, mind-control, balding politicians, and a punk band. Democracy Manifest has to...

Episode 113 When you think of an internet cafe you probably imagine clunky, grey computers running Windows 95, green laminated tables, mismatched chairs, and day old coffee and donuts. They're a thing of the past with computers being almost imperceptibly thin and wifi in every building and home. No longer must we venture out into public to access the Net when we have miniaturized computers in our...

With so much misinformation out there, it's hard to tell what's true and what isn't. For years Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias have been referred to as "not a reliable source of information". But, may I introduce you to Conservapedia? Described as a "complete disaster" and "instant fail" that is heavily influenced by fundamentalist Christian beliefs such as: gravity is an unproven theory,...

What would you do if you became a meme? For Andras Arato it almost ruined his life. But acceptance and more importantly, monetization, is a good way to get over it and have the internet embrace you as a "meme hero". At least, that's how Arato puts it. Although, becoming a meme around 2011 wasn't the first time he gained a bit of notoriety, that came in 1996 when he appeared on the Hungarian Minden...

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We all laugh online, but each "haha" or "lolol" might have different underlying meaning depending on the individual and the recipient. But have you ever thought about the origins of online laughter? Well, it wasn't just the phonetic spelling or onomatopoeia of the sound a laugh makes. It dates much farther back to before Shakespeare times. Written laughter has evolved to a point where "ha ha" migh...

On the surface, Bite Labs sounds relatively innocent. Maybe a start-up that wants to disrupt the restaurant industry or make a food based dating app. But no, it's much more disgusting, confusing, and reprehensible than that. Bite Labs says they want to make salami out of 30% in-vitro human tissue specifically taken from celebrities such as James Franco, Kanye West, and Ellen Degeneres. And honestl...

It's always a busy week on the internet and there's a lot to cover today. Conservatives created a dating app for men to meet tradwives called The Right Stuff, but unfortunately, most women want to be treated like human beings and also users data was immediately leaked. Morbin' time began as a joke tweet by a user with less than a thousand followers, which just goes to show how one individual can i...

The Gregory Brothers have been YouTube pioneers for over a decade making parody songs with the use of auto-tune to alter political debates, newscasts, movies and more. Better known as Schmoyoho, the brothers have written songs for the Academy Awards and TV shows such as Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. More recently they have gone viral week after week on TikTok with their remixed songs using clips from...

It's finally upon us; FAT BEAR WEEK. We've missed previous years, but not this time. We go through all the draft picks for the fattest bear at Katmai National Park. Returning champs, rookies, and dynasties are all in the running for who can gobble up the most fish. Some interesting techniques are being implemented this year from ambitious newcomers and sheer mass utilized to flood the zone from ve...

Shrek is back in a big way or maybe it never left. This week Kyle is still gone, so we do a round up of the week. Jon saw a Shrek Rave and Harland Googled disgusting Shrek costumes. We discuss the obvious outcome of Christian Walker moving to Florida from Los Angeles, Spain made a grotesque mascot for their public transportation system, a "foodie" slathered their cutting board in butter and called...

With Kyle out of town Jon and Harland try something a little different this week by expanding on our sh*tty shark tank bit and renaming it Shart Tank. We riff for a half hour using a random word generator in an attempt to come up with the internet's next big social media app. We also discuss the Nyquil chicken "craze" and the new cosmetic leg lengthening procedure that's sweeping the tech world. L...

Let us drink the juice! In 2018 archaeologists discovered an ancient sarcophagus that they suspected held the remains of Alexander The Great. It didn't, but what it did contain was a delicious french onion bone stew whose scent brought men to their knees. The visual of the red sludge drove some men insane. And yet, as always, the internet went mad for the stuff. A change petition was created that...

Another new social media app, another way to mess up your kids. BeReal says its goal is to create "an alternative to addictive social networks" that focus on amassing influence and that it gives users a "chance to show your friends who you really are." But by participating in the creation of yet another app it's founders seem to fundamentally misunderstand or are ignorant to the consequences of to...

We all know someone who spends too much of their time online and begins speaking in internet slang and parroting talking points from their favorite creator. This is all well and good until they begin expressing shock around the mundane or not recognizing what they are describing are every day emotions like empathy or dislike. This can have some dangerous consequences for those who are more suscept...

100 episodes, can you believe it?! We thought to celebrate this a special occasion we would take a look back at previous topics and see if new developments have... developed. Kyle tackles the newest in glizzy guzzling, quite literally, as we review a certain cinematic suction system on baseball patron implemented in the third inning. Harland expands on our Elsagate episode with a dive into the You...

This week we discuss a scam. A content scam. This isn't something new as people steal jokes, designs, and all manner of intellectual property all the time all throughout history. This is just the most recent example and one were the perpetrators have filmed the evidence themselves with timestamps and geotags; primitive technology content creators. If you're not familiar with these types of channel...

This week we take a look deeper into the NFT marketplace, specifically that of Yuga Labs' Bored Ape Yacht Club. Recently there has been a discussion of whether or not the NFT's are riddled with Nazi, racist, and anti-semetic imagery and ciphers. While there seems to be many coincidences or neglect, that doesn't mean Bored Apes are still not fully unproblematic. With many designs that can only be i...

Kyle is absent this week so we thought we'd do something a little different; we clean out our notes apps of all the small internet related stories that just don't justify their own episode. With that being said, we cover a lot of news that's happened recently and from far in the past. We address some of the comments on our Jimbly/Nexialist episode, dive into the rollercoaster of a ride that is Jak...

We've all seen brands flirting with their audiences and each other over the years from Wendy's to Duolingo to Pedialyte. Oftentimes the brands doing the flirting make no sense and have no business being horny on main and leads to many awkward moments and slip-ups. It was all fun and games initially with the inclusion of internet slang like "BAE" and "bruh", but things escalated quickly once the CO...

We need to talk about Jimbly. We continue our cliffhanger episode and uncover more cult-like behavior that has gone on for more than a decade. Worlds.com , once again, is a virtual world much like Second Life that is kept alive by patent troll Ron Kidron, and there is still a diehard player base that exists on these servers. What dangers lie in the shadows of Jimbly's vast worlds? Well, it's much...

This week we explore yet another old school MMO that has some suspect activity going on; Worlds.com , basically an early version of Second Life. It only still exists as a way for a patent troll to make some passive income but had better intention thanks to both Steven Spielberg and David Bowie. However, Nexialist brought some general creepiness to counter those good intentions and a cult soon foll...

Y'all love A.I. episodes and there's a lot of A.I. out there. You also seem to love A.I. generated images that are absurd and easily meme-able. Dall-E mini and Dall-E 2 have swept across the internet like wildfire with people sharing their bizarre prompts with things like, "a delicious cinnamon bun with googly eyes" or "a US patent of Dwayne Johnson's head" or "Stephen Hawking absolutely dominatin...

This week Harland and Kyle discuss something good and fun that they both enjoy very much about the internet; the rise in popularity of RPG actual plays. What is an actual play you may be asking yourself. Actual plays are role playing game broadcasts. Typically played using Dungeons & Dragons, actual plays are streamed or produced series' where a group of friends or professional comedians (or b...