Pop Spotlight

The thing about being first is that it usually puts a target on your back. For Street Fighter, despite setting the standard for an entire genre in 1987, and perfecting it in 1991, it meant […]

For those worried about the so-called “woke mind virus,” it’s tough keeping track of all the stuff you’re supposed to hate and boycott. Naturally, there will always be major figures and brands at top of […]

Hadōken! It’s sounds like a nonsense word, and it mostly is, despite translating to “Wave Motion Fist” from Japanese. But when shouted, it embodies a pop culture phenomenon that triggers nostalgia in multiple generations of […]

Target has long carried LGBTQ Pride-themed merchandise for the month of June. Sure, they’ve received some angry comments from the right, or even been called out as cringe by the left. But this year — […]

The National Butterfly Center — a nature preserve in Mission, Texas, just north of the Rio Grande — has been threatened for years by the potential construction of a border wall and even far-right QAnon […]

Queen Gambit Does this make The Naked Gun a documentary? A royal visit to the United States in the 1980s. An assignation plot targeting Queen Elizabeth II. It’s no longer just the plot to the […]

Etienne Waite was not aware that his arm wrestling videos, in which he gently whispers instructions to beefy men, were inspiring thirst. “Pull backwards, that’s too much rotating…good, good,” he coos in a video that […]

To a certain kind of gamer, Diablo is sacrosanct. Arriving for PC in 1997, the first game in the series evoked all the most hellacious phantasmagoria ever dreamt up in a basement-bound Dungeons & Dragons […]

Florida Gov. and GOP presidential nominee Ron DeSantis has successfully sucked the pleasure out of many of life’s little joys, from drag brunches to Disney adult TikTok. And thanks to the passage of SB 1438, […]

With so many companies going “woke” nowadays, American conservatives are understandably looking to purchase goods and services from brands that reflect their own values. Or, to put a finer point on it, from hucksters who […]

Daily Salinas, the Miami-area mother whose poorly reasoned complaint about “The Hill We Climb,” Amanda Gorman’s poem for Joe Biden’s inauguration, got it restricted in an area elementary school, is now defending herself against claims […]

Despite J.R.R. Tolkien’s meticulous planning of The Lord of the Rings and Middle Earth, he leaves one crucial part of the saga to chance: the hope that you’ll feel pity for Gollum. Daedalic Entertainment steps […]