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Blind box collecting: Meet the Australians collecting Labubus, Sonny Angels and more in worldwide phenomenon.

How blind boxes became the talk of Gen Z, big business – and psych researchers

Blind boxes have been around for decades, but Labubus and Sonny Angels have collectors in a chokehold. What is so addictive about these little plastic figurines?

  • Nell Geraets, Gabriela Sumampow and The Visual Stories Team

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American artist Laura Allcorn (yellow top) with her work Pledge Drive For Attention.

Hopelessly distracted by you: Can we break our love affair with tech?

Doomscrolling, video autoplay and swiping left, right, up and down is devouring everyone’s attention. A new exhibition asks how we might break the habit.

  • Karl Quinn
Australian influencer Anna Paul, English adult actress Bonnie Blue and singer Lily Allen are well-known OnlyFans creators.

How adult content platform OnlyFans transformed porn

The platform, reportedly up for sale for billions, has made a smutty industry far more lucrative.

  • The Economist
Cory Michael Smith as Venis, Steve Carell as Randall, Ramy Youssef as Jeff, and Jason Schwartzman as Hugo in Mountainhead.

Why Mountainhead’s ‘tech bro’ satire rings eerily true

A new movie from the creator of hit series Succession has shown us what happens when AI and social media are unregulated.

  • Julia Baird
Wait Mate co-founder Jessica Mendoza-Roth said smartphones “are like pokies in children’s pockets”.

Gaming, smartphone addiction starts in primary school as daily screen times soar

The study of students in years four to eight found the average daily screen time for junior high schoolers was nine hours a day.

  • Jordan Baker
Rob DenBleyker (left), Kris Wilson (centre) and Adam Nusrallah. Cyanide & Happiness are coming to Oz Comic-Con for the first time.

Edgy or offensive? How these early-2000s internet creators kept webcomics alive

Webcomics are well past their peak, but Cyanide & Happiness is still deep in the game. Here’s how it has managed to keep up with the non-stop beast that is the internet.

  • Nell Geraets
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One of the people who appear in new TV adverts aimed at promoting tourism into Australia launched on Thursday February 23 2006 by Tourism Australia . Image supplied TA. Lara Bingle Lara Bingle in Tourism Australia ad, 2006 So where the bloody hell are you?

WTF! Australians don’t swear as much as others do online, study shows

The University of Queensland researchers examined more than 1.7 billion words of online content across 20 English-speaking countries.

  • Savannah Meacham
Lukas Winward, with daughters Maggie, left, and Layla.

They’re a childhood rite of passage, so why are more parents saying ‘no’ to sleepovers?

With concerns around safety and unsupervised access to the internet, some parents don’t feel comfortable with sleepovers.

  • Lauren Ironmonger
We used to be a society, now look at us.

It’s time to face the truth: The internet has ruined everything

We used to be a society, now look at us.

  • Richard Glover
4chan has for years served as an incubator for some of the internet’s most viral memes, as well a range of subcultures.

Notorious internet message board 4chan has been hacked, posts claim

The claim of a hack “looks legit”, according to cybercrime experts.

  • Raphael Satter

Original URL: https://www.theage.com.au/topic/web-culture-hqt