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Elizabeth Minkel

@elizabethminkel.bsky.social

2.5K followers 260 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 · 16d

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 · 16d

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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ceej @ceej.online · 14h

damn. hoping it at least signifies something

William Shakespeare @shakespeare.lol · 15h

It is a tale
Told by an idiot

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 21h

there’s this weird idea a lot of people seem to have about how all of us writers and artists must secretly want to use AI and are merely resisting temptation for ethical reasons, and like, no, it’s not hard for me to resist drinking the bowl of Piss With Glass In It actually

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Amy @lolennui.bsky.social · 1d

So cool that whenever someone asks the president, “did you eat the Lindbergh baby” he’s like, “no but I’d be allowed to, I have the right to, I might do it later”

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Fansplaining @fansplaining.bsky.social · 1d

Congratulations!! 😍😍😍

(Meghan was a Fansplaining SDCC 2025 panelist—and she’s the author of our October piece! She’ll be diving into her experience writing Mary Sue in an essay with excerpted images, though don’t wait til that’s out to get yourself a copy!)

Meghan Fitzmartin @megfitz89.bsky.social · 1d

💗 Happy Mary Sue Day 🧛🏻‍♀️

This is a love letter to fandom, to those who stay up late reading fic, who still argue for your favorite ship, who found themselves in stories.

Art: @lisasterle.bsky.social
Colors: @dearbhlala.bsky.social + @angienessyo.bsky.social
Letters: @longtalljodie.com

The Mary Sue issue 1 covers next to a large, well deserved beer.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 1d

A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.

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Sam Cole @samleecole.bsky.social · 2d

the only thing people want to do on Sora, it seems, is generate images of copyrighted characters. now that they can't, they're crashing the fuck out www.404media.co/sora-2-conte...

People Are Crashing Out Over Sora 2’s New Guardrails

OpenAI’s Sora 2 platform started just one week ago as an AI-generated copyright infringement free-for-all. Now, people say they’re struggling to generate anything without being hit with a violation er...

www.404media.co

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Gavin, Small Beer, long covid, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social · 2d

economy of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires

Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 2d

twice a year the entire U.S. press becomes a marketing extension of a single billionaire-owned retailer, and nobody in any position of editorial power thinks it's weird or gross

photo of Google News search results for Amazon Prime Day (the second this year)

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 3d

combine with absolutely bonkers driving—giant u-turns at full speed on Atlantic, people blithely driving through stop signs and, increasingly, red lights...it's so clear that drivers in this city have utterly zero regard for other humans. Which is kind of required to keep a giant city functioning!

Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 3d

lol luv my City Council member 💕

(tl;dr a substantial number of city employees believe it's a-ok to park in front of fire hydrants, in bike lanes, and as the lone vehicle on the side of my street where no one is allowed to park outside street-sweeping—for *days*: hellgatenyc.com/downtown-bro...)

Text reading: Restler has been pushing for the nuclear option when it comes to New York's Wild West of placards, which have been given out mostly at the discretion of individual agencies. His bill would get rid of 60,000 city-issued parking placards and narrow them down to agencies whose workers have collectively bargained for them, or cars that have official city plates.

"I imagine this bill would make me very popular with City workers who drive into work every day from Rockland, Nassau, and Suffolk," Restler told Hell Gate sarcastically. "Fortunately, they're not my constituents."

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Drew Schnoebelen @dschnoeb.bsky.social · 3d

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Grem, of 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐏 🔜 MCAtlanta! @gremlin.world · 4d

I will never not repost this

(Sound on for maximum effect)

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David Buchanan @retr0.id · 3d

how to deactivate torment nexus

torment nexus deactivation tutorial

torment nexus deactivation tutorial working 2025

deactivate torment nexus no survey

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Ryan Boyd @ryanboyd.bsky.social · 3d

The grand unified “Everyone is Twelve” theory is a legit contribution to contemporary thought and critique. We really are ruled by evil adult children!

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Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 4d

The Sora AI disinfo nightmare is here

For more like this:
tiktok.com/@drewharwell
instagram.com/bydrewharwell

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David_j_roth @davidjroth.bsky.social · 4d

Doing a sober, serious-minded TV interview about Bari Weiss's appointment to head up CBS News in which I make evidence-based arguments but say her name in the Borat "very nice" voice every time I mention her.

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 4d

I've been enjoying the "she made this bad on purpose because it's part of a larger secret plot" response which I saw someone correctly compare to the response from a particular contingent of conspiratorial BBC Sherlock fans around the final season lol.

Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 4d

There's def writing on this within the fan journalism/fan studies space, though I can't think of anything great off the top of my head—not unique to Swifties. It ties to a sort of internalization of fandom, particularly standom, aka "my identity IS a Swiftie," and the default position is defense.

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Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 4d

Amazed at the number of guys who are willing to give interviews about how since they didn’t find love with women they found love with the computer that’s poisoning people in black neighborhoods

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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 5d

We Have at least 70? years of science fiction exploring this proposition and all reaching the same conclusions as Josie.

Which I only bring up because everyone involved in this AI thing is a science fiction fan, but not one who understands what they read.

🏳️‍⚧️ Josephine Riesman (Horrifying) @josie.zone · 5d

It is morally wrong to want a computer to be sentient. If you owned a sentient thing, you would be a slaver. If you want sentient computers to exist, you just want to create a new kind of slavery. The ethics are as simple as that. Sorry if this offends

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Jack Tripper @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 5d

The fact they jumped straight to AI actors modeled after women when, if I’m not mistaken, male actors are a higher labor cost kind of says it all doesn’t it,

Dr. Damien P. Williams Wants A Better Sociotechnical Paradigm @wolvendamien.bsky.social · 5d

Like… it's kind of right there, no?

"AI" generated image of woman with dark hair sitting in a chair in front of posters with random shapes and symbols meant to look like images and text on movie posters, all superimposed with a post from k.w.bogen reading
"AI actresses can't negotiate. They can't say they'd prefer their bodies not be shown certgain ways. They can't refuse degrading scenes. They can't express distress about disturbing content. They can't ask the creators :why would you do that to me? Why put any woman through watching that? If AI film winds up being the path, we're about to see an entirely new generation (and more brutal depiction) of media misogyny."

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 5d

Imagine a world where people went "you and me and this fictional character are all equally real and valid and deserving of love and respect" lol. Funny how the other human in the argument doesn't usually get....a lot of....consideration as a real being........

Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 5d

Also funny this person is arguing that there's a sort of direct pairing between dehumanizing language towards humans and non-humans when in fact we have eight trillion examples of people being horrific to other real humans as they fall over themselves to "protect" their favorite fictional character.

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Elizabeth Minkel @elizabethminkel.bsky.social · 5d

You know, after laughing out loud at the wording of this post, it really unlocked something for me. We've been watching "cartoon characters can't consent" for at least a decade. That cartoon characters can now have a ~convincing months'-long convo with you is truly reality-shattering for people.

Even Spookier Malloy @spooksmalloy.bsky.social · 5d

The OP she’s quoting is just as lost in the sauce and it’s beautiful, just a new generation of people asking if cartoon characters can consent but this time they’re running a website and actively marginalising vulnerable people

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matt’s slutty lil halloween name @windows98support.bsky.social · 5d

Is there a carbon monoxide leak in Bsky HQ or something?

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Tim Price @timprice.bsky.social · 7d

I like a number of songs on the new TS album, but there’s just no getting around the fact that it’s hilarious to fall deeply in love with Travis Kelce. It couldn’t be funnier if you wrote a set of romantic pop-ballads about Michelangelo the Ninja Turtle.

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