Elon Musk Bad
We’ve been throwing around the concept of a technology issue of Debate for years. It’s just as much, if not more, of a core concept in our lives as food, sex, music, drugs, and anything else we’ve covered since we were founded as Debait in the late 90s - yet our last tech issue was way back in 2018, when I was in year nine and all I cared about was BROCKHAMPTON shortly before Ameer Vann got booted out.
Peering back through that issue’s editorial, former editor Julie Cleaver paints a portrait of someone who she considered a modern day Einstein at the time - a man wholly dedicated to humanity whose primary goal at the time was to send humans to Mars and establish a colony, broadening our horizons beyond Earth and into the rest of the universe after years of dormancy on our silly little planet. It’s like hearing someone talk positively about Anakin Skywalker without the knowledge he’d become a Sith lord.
I don’t blame anyone for previously respecting, admiring, or tolerating Elon Musk. I remember hearing about him for the first time as a kid circa 2015, watching a video where his praises are endlessly sung by a YouTuber who has since left the internet after a barrage of sexual abuse allegations were sent his way - probably an omen in of itself, to be honest. I’d heard him referred to as a saviour for tech bros who, despite being a little overambitious and up himself, genuinely wanted to make the world a better place. In 2015, he was considered a real-life Iron Man. In 2025, I consider him to be the scum of the earth.
If you need an explanation for why Musk is a plague on humanity, and every single atom he interacts with, you’ve likely stopped reading and thrown this magazine into the same bonfire you burned your Nike sneakers in when they had Colin Kaepernick as a spokesperson. The man has spent the last seven years taking on mind-numbingly stupid, and oftentimes harmful roles in society that have made him simultaneously impossible to tolerate or ignore. The man turned Twitter into a fundamentally worse hellscape of right-wing engagement bait and AI bots interacting with other AI bots, destroyed its stock price, implemented the worst rebrand of the 21st century via changing the platform's name to X, and then proceeded to do the same thing with the United States Government.
His bullshit organisation, the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ has the sole purpose of cutting government spending, and - okay, can we talk about this for a moment? The most powerful man in the world, who is openly puppeteering and gutting the most powerful government in the world, named his vessel for destroying America after a fucking decade-old internet meme. Some of you first years were born in 2008 - do you even remember Doge? Did we all just collectively forget that the same men licking Musk's feet now are the same ones who cared more about
meme relevance than human rights eight years ago, and would roast you on an open flame if you shared a meme that Reddit deemed outdated 24 hours after it began? Am I just chronically online? Is this not just unabashedly, shamelessly, horrifically cringeworthy?
This is the problem with talking about technology in 2025. Tech billionaires, like Musk, are no longer theorised to be controlling the government - they’re actively bragging about it on social media. They’re shielding themselves from any form of criticism by allowing hate speech to run wild and removing any literature or communications criticising them from schools, social networks, and forms of media - quite literally, violating the point of free speech while spreading transphobic misinformation fuelled by nothing but pathetic hatred.
Billionaire technology and hate-fuelled politics are feeding off of each other right now and growing like mould, both across the internet and throughout the world. Social media giants like Meta are revealing that any former support they showed for the LGBTQIA+ community was for a quick dollar, and have since burned protections for queer people to the ground for an ounce of validation from daddy Donald. Simultaneously, hate-fuelled talking points that stemmed from right-wing spaces on the internet are sinking their teeth into the politics of Aotearoa - or should I say New Zealand, in order to not offend deputy PM and snowflake Winston Peters who recently threw a fit in parliament over Green MP Ricardo Menendez March using the indigenous name for the country he has lived in for nearly two decades. Just as Musk and Trump will yell on street corners about free speech whilst actively removing scientific support for trans rights from education facilities, New Zealand First just last year introduced a members’ bill to “protect freedom of speech” before crashing out over Te Reo Māori being an official language of Aotearoa to the point where Gerry “No, don’t do that” Brownlee had to tell him to shut the fuck up and do his job.
If you can’t tell, I’m angry and jaded about the state of technology and how it’s informing politics. I haven’t even had the chance to touch on artificial intelligence, because the US president is already running ads unabashedly promoting the for-profit colonisation of Gaza with AI—skipping the conversation about its ethics entirely. Any semblance of morality or empathy has been reduced to a punchline. Meanwhile, they’re banning books that promote peace and gearing up to join Russia in what feels like the inevitable third world war, which could start at any moment.
Reading the last technology issue shows that while technology is still a force for good, and that there’s still plenty of
interesting developments happening every day, as we outline throughout this magazine, we need to be careful with how we allow these major technology organisations to be run by people who have used inherited wealth to exploit the system for personal gain. Elon Musk would have never been able to pay his way to top positions at PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter, and the US Government without inheriting cash from his family's profits off of South African apartheid. By raising taxes on the ultra wealthy and making sure the fuckers actually pay their tax or face a prison cell, we may be able to break the chain of progress being controlled by bigots who use hatred to make money. Even if that means we never get another major technology corporation, like Apple, Meta, Tesla, or anything else that's slowly destroying the planet and everything inside it - we’ll get a hell of a lot more working-class people using opportunities that could be paid for through a wealth tax, such as free education, research grants, and a stable living to build a new age of technological advancement where the profit margins are irrelevant compared to genuine improvement to the way we live.
@dodofrenzy ARTS EDITOR
Illustration By Stella Roper
(they/she)
How to make the most of AI in your studies (unless you study pottery)
A few weeks ago, on my daily online news trawl, an outlandish concept popped up on my feed that prompted me to do a double take. As seen in the NZ Herald, Business and Economics students at the University of Auckland were reportedly ‘outraged’ after finding out they wouldn’t have a qualified professor acting as their tutor this semester, but instead an AI programme.
As one of the most debated topics of the past decade, AI seems to dominate conversations in nearly every industry. How will it affect jobs? How will it increase productivity? How will it corrode creativity? Although we often wonder what effect AI will take in the future, it’s easy to forget that it’s playing an increasingly prominent role in our everyday lives.
So coming to university, although at AUT all of your tutors still have a beating heart, AI is an integral part of the way the university operates. Most students are probably aware of this, in the sense that ChatGPT has probably come in handy on many a last-minute essay. Of course, getting AI to write an entire assignment isn’t technically allowed (nor encouraged by Debate), but there are ways that AI can be harnessed here at university to make your life a little bit easier.
AUT had a candid chat with Debate about how students can actually use AI to assist them in their studies without being busted for plagiarism, as well as how AUT is harnessing it as a tool for development, rather than as a replacement teacher.
So can you actually use AI to help with your assignments?
Well, the short answer is yes. The long answer is a little bit more complicated.
Unless you’re sitting an in-person exam or undertaking a physical assignment (AUT’s examples were making a pot, or performing a dance - it would be quite impressive if you found a way to use AI to help you out here), you’re more than welcome to crack open ChatGPT.
The long story short is there is no outright ban on AI when it comes to doing assignments. AUT wants students to harness the technology available to them in a productive way. The only catch to this, AUT repeatedly stresses, is that it must be done with integrity. This word came up eight times throughout the university’s response to Debate on the topic of AI. But, what on earth does that mean? AUT’s rules around AI use are clearly currently quite ambiguous. This again can be put down to the fast moving nature of the tech. It’s evident that even AUT is still trying to wrap its head around exactly how it works.
Helpfully, AUT does have a resource aptly titled ‘How to Use AI with Integrity’. But since most of you won’t take the time to read
through it, we’ve broken it down here.
The resource essentially walks you through a number of hypothetical examples of when you could potentially use AI - and how to do it in the right way.
When Researching and Reading:
You can:
Use AI to help you break down certain concepts or words you don’t understand
Fact check the AI response against other resources you have
You Can’t:
Get AI to give you a bunch of resources and readings, and then not actually read them
AI can’t analyse whether any of those sources are credible or accurate
The content in these sources might not even be relevant to the assignment
When Writing and Presenting:
You can:
Get AI to check your grammar and punctuation, and general writing style (like Grammarly)
Take advice and guidance from AI, but make your own changes
You can’t:
Get AI to write your work (we’re leaving this here because this is a no brainer really)
When Preparing for Exams and Tests:
You can:
Use AI to create a summary of the course content (But check that it’s accurate before cracking into revision)
Use AI to generate questions that could be in the exam using previous exam papers’ questions
You can’t:
Get AI to generate answers to previous exam questions (Another no brainer guys, without the context of the course, there’s no way a chatbot will know what it’s talking about)
Lots of assessments will now actually incorporate the use of AI into them. Of course, the guidelines will vary between assessments, but most of the time you’re welcome to crack on with AI as long as you accurately reference where you’ve used it.
AUT stressed that they are still actively updating their policy around AI. Particularly over the next two years, when their official AI policy will be rolled out across the uni.
So I can use AI, but what AI do I use?
Of course we all know ChatGPT as a trusty best friend, but AUT actually offers their own AI tools to students. Microsoft Copilot in Edge is available to all students, and there are some key guidelines to using it available online too.
Are my lecturers also going to be replaced with AI chatbots?
Well first off, we’re not UoA - it’s commonly known we’re better in all aspects. But unfortunately, the answer to this question isn’t a hard no.
AUT is currently piloting the use of a generative AI tool called Cogniti in several courses.
Through this, “teachers can build custom chatbot agents that can be given specific instructions, and specific resources, to assist student learning”.
Examples of how this has been developed so far include a patient simulation role play, and a tutor providing advice and guidance on a group assessment task. AUT would like to stress that teachers use Cogniti to enhance, not replace, their teaching.
So for now, no, a robot won’t be your tutor (but from the sounds of things, I’d never say never).
They Haven’t Replied in 12 hours and 26 Minutes
It could be the most stressful period of your life. Your relationship with your mother is up in flames, you're late on about three deadlines at work, re-wore your last pair of socks three times in a row, and started scheduling coffee with friends twenty working days in advance. And yet, the sixty-three emails from your boss and thirty-item to-do list seem less tangibly impactful than being left on delivered for the past three days.
The ability to access people through technology complicates the already bewildering experience of dating. Pervasive phone use has led to the belief that our circle has constant and immediate access to our attention. Texting etiquette, even in platonic relationships, forms an amorphous cloud of ill-defined rules. Through message threads, we lose the context acquired from communicating in person, forced to glean the subtext of someone's communication, not through their tone or expression, but through their punctuation. I have never been more scared of a full stop in my life.
With all this soap-opera-esque turmoil occurring at the tips of our fingers instead of real life, sometimes I need a few reminders to stop my brain from going on overdrive. I despise the game of ensuring a reply is sent a respectable time after receiving a message to portray an air of carelessness. It's all so inauthentic and tiresome. Unfortunately, yes, I grab my ball and play, too.
It's the time someone takes to respond, usually most felt during the first steps of a relationship. Unfamiliar mannerisms and different communication styles are prone to misinterpretation. As someone who is terminally attached to her phone, I struggle when dealing with a love interest that takes days to reply. Jumping to the worst conclusions: they must hate me, and I'm not worth their time. I love to be dramatic.
The girls often congregate around a dinner table to lament the time spent on delivered. The suspense causes our neurons to fire in an insubordinate manner. Making excuses to tranquilise my fears. They might be running a marathon, stuck in a twelve-hour traffic jam, hiking without reception or walking their cat. Common advice from friends includes the phrase no one wants to hear: 'if they wanted to, they would.' And while this is true, I return to my previous point that discerning someone's communication style
is difficult to derive after a week of talking. Give it some time; your perspective on their behaviour might change after delving a little deeper.
On the other hand, some people respond rapidly, which often can be more confusing. Sometimes, it can be easy to mistake prompt responses for something more. My friend Adrian spent endless nights texting someone they had never met in person. They exchanged intimate details about their lives and made extensive plans to meet in person. Exorbitant words of affection caused Adrian to reasonably believe they liked him. Alas, the virtual love affair was over within a fortnight.
You may think I'm cynical, but I call it realistic. People often act out of character with their true feelings. This behaviour may not always be malicious, but it is no less cause for confusion. Throw the six walls of a phone into the mix, and it's even more difficult to tell how much of their online persona is an accurate depiction of themselves. Often, it is not.
Sometimes, though, it's not them; it's you. A friend of mine once successfully asked a man to grab a drink over text, only to later find out through mutual friends he thought it was platonic. While the objective observer could tell what the message meant, he was blind to it. The disparate nature of humans permeates our communication styles, and I find it's useful to keep this in mind when the inevitable overthinking kicks in.
Now, I just spent a lot of words to essentially say, it's not that deep. Texting portrays a minutia of someone's personality; it's better to discover more about them through an in-person connection. So try not to overthink the number of hours since the last message and assess the communication holistically. Take all interactions into account. You won't always get it correct, but that's all part of the ebb and flow of dating. And if you're on delivered and feel like throwing your phone in the water, à la Ella Yelich O'Connor, dig deep and find some self-control to stop checking your phone. You just picked it up, didn't you? Don't worry, I did too.
Written By Elle Daji (she/her) @ellemnopow
WRITER
What Māori Word Sums Up All This Stress?!
Written By Hirimaia Eketone (they/them) @hiri.music TE AO MĀORI EDITOR
Kia ora e hoa ma,
I hope the woes of Semester 1 starting up again have begun to settle and you’re finally in a space to explore the campus, make new friends and climb the pile of canvas assignments that have already begun to flood your computer screen.
Today I have a couple of words for you to start buffing out your Te Reo Māori knowledge. Learning languages can be so important for developing not only your cultural understanding but also your creative brain and the way you see the world. So, with that in mind, let’s get started on a couple of phrases that are fun to say and may impress any Debate readers that skip over this column.
“Hōhā,” “werawera” and “manaka” are my current favourites due to the unbearing heat and intense workload that comes with the beginning of March. Following on from what we learned last issue, these are brilliant descriptive words that you can add to your bank when anyone asks how you are. Here are some examples and explanations of what these words mean and how to use them!
“Hōhā”- means annoyed, stressed, angry or fed up. Best used when your last snack has been unlawfully taken before lunch.
Kei te pehea koe? ( How are you )
Ahh, he tino hōhā au/kei te hōhā au/kei te tino tino hōhā au.
( Ahh, I’m very annoyed/ I’m stressed/I’m very very upset )
“Werawera”- means hot, sweaty, uncomfortable. Perfect to describe the feeling of hitting 5pm and the sun deciding to bear down on us all.
Kei te pehea koe?
He tino werawera au!/Kei te werawera au, koe?/Kei te tino tino werawera au. Aue!
( I’m very warm!/I’m hot, you?/I’m very very hot. Damn! )
“Manaka”- perhaps the most relatable, this is for those times where you’re stressed, anxious, or dreading your next 8am lecture.
Kei te pehea koe?
Ah, he tino manaka au/Kei te manaka au nā te mea e haera ana au ki te mahi/Kei te tino tino manaka au
( Ah, I’m quite stressed/I’m anxious because I’m going to work/I’m very very stressed. )
Try out a couple of these phrases whenever the right time rolls around. For any future Debate contributors, feel free to use some of these phrases in your emails to me or other Debate editors! I’ve chucked in some extra hard bits to the usual sentence structure, look out for the patterns as it will assist you in understanding the next couple of issues!
Ma te wa e hoa ma!
“Building trust won’t happen ov What people are saying about t
The Gene Technology Bill, introduced by the government late last year, aims to ease restrictions and open up development on genetic modification in Aotearoa.
Genetic modification is the process of making specific changes to the DNA sequence of an organism. This is normally for purposes such as protection against disease or to lower greenhouse gas output. The changes would encompass gene editing across plants, animals, and bacteria.
The bill intends to establish a new framework for regulating existing and future gene technology in Aotearoa. It would allow for a more straightforward approval process than the current rigorous one and would be monitored by a new regulator of the industry.
The last time gene technology was given significant attention by the government was during the 2001 Royal Commission on Genetic Modification. The commission resulted in a heated debate on the topic, including a 10,000-strong march against genetic modification on Queen Street. Since then, politicians have strongly avoided the topic - until now.
Members of the scientific community, such as University of Auckland Biological Sciences Professor Andrew Allan, have praised the bill for being “modern” in its risk assessment. Currently, gene technology is regulated under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act of 1996.
“If passed, new rules and regulations for gene technologies will be a vast improvement on the previous law. This is because the suggested settings are more modern, and will regulate DNA-techniques based on real, measurable risks.
“Previously low or no-risk activities were very restricted, and had to be treated like they were all very risky. Now we may be able to see more of the benefits of these efforts in medicine, agriculture and conservation.”
Supporters of the bill have also argued genetic technology can help lower carbon emissions in the agricultural sector and stimulate economic growth and development.
However, critics of the bill worry about the impact any changes could have on our export market.
The Japanese Consumers Co-operative Union (JCCU) wrote that they were “alarmed” by the bill in an open letter. The JCCU represents 30 million Japanese consumers and has successfully lobbied against gene editing technology within Japan. In 2023, New Zealand exports to Japan included $450 million in dairy, eggs and honey, $307 million in fruit, and $220 million in meat.
In their submission on the bill, the Sustainable Business Network wrote that the bill could harm our “clean, green” image that has supported our premium food production and tourism industries. This image has been estimated to be worth billions of dollars.
They also noted the risk of the bill to organic producers, which have recently made significant gains in organic certification processes. They warned that organic producers could lose their certification due to unintentional contamination with genetically modified organisms.
Hāpai Te Hauora, an organisation focused on Māori health, have expressed concern over what the bill could mean for Māori. Their areas of concern include the bill's impact on kai sovereignty, environmental risks, the lack of means for accountability for the new industry regulator, and economic implications. They emphasised that “Māori have long opposed GMOs” which is especially concerning given the context of “Māori as kaitiaki (guardians) of the environment and taonga.”
In her submission, lecturer at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiarangi and researcher at Purangakura, Lani Rotzler-Purewa (Tūhoe, Ngāti Pūkeko) emphasised that the bill was a breach of Te Tiriti, writing that “Tino Rangatiratanga is once again being dishonoured and disregarded through this legislation, breaching the contract between the Crown and tangata whenua [...]”. Rotzler-Purewa cited the lack of “risk analysis on environmental, human health, and economic risks”, particularly given the context of our reputation as ‘GE free Aotearoa.’
University of Auckland PhD Candidate Katie Henderson, who specialises in food technology acceptance and adoption, says more could have been done to explain the bill to the public. In her research, she’s found that people generally want to know more about topics like genetic modification but want to hear it from sources such as universities, scientific institutions, and farmers over politicians.
ernight”: he Gene Technology Bill
She told Debate that “building trust won’t happen overnight” but more needs to be done to break the “taboo” surrounding genetic modification that has stifled open communication on the topic. One way dialogue could be opened is through the implementation of the bill itself, however, the first projects ap proved under the new regulations need to be “beneficial and understandable” to bring the public on board.
The bill is also notable as it’s the first time Generation Z are in cluded in the debate on genetic modification. In Henderson’s words, “I was alive during the Royal Commission [on Genetic Modification] but I would have only been about 3-years-old. Gen Z hasn’t had a chance to have a say on this topic before. We’re hearing older people's opinions, but we’re not hearing young people's views. That’s why it’s cool to have this debate now, we can hear whole new perspectives.”
Submissions on the bill closed earlier this month. The health committee is now considering the 1,700 submissions it re ceived and will present its findings to Parliament in June.
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Who do I need to dispose of on the Meta team responsible for changing feed posts from square to portrait?
I've always loved the concept of the feed. As I’ve developed my style and preferences within fashion, art and media, I found Instagram to be a place to express myself while also exploring what other people in my life were up to. It felt like being in a safe digital community of people in different areas of my life, many of whom couldn't always be there in person, so curating my feed to highlight those new and developing interests was a great solution to keep in touch. Since I downloaded Instagram in the early 2010s, my interests have developed quite a lot, and so has the Instagram app.
Instagram was founded in 2010 by Stanford graduates Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. The app was originally called Burbn, a location-based app that allows you to check in on friends and share photos to gain points. Not long after, the name was changed to Instagram, a combination of instant camera and telegram.
As millennials will proudly tell you, the original Instagram logo was not the bright orange and pink one we know today. Before the logo we are currently familiar with, the face of the app was a more humble beige, paired with a bright rainbow stripe down the middle. Inspiration was taken from the '50s 8mm Bell Howell camera. This lasted until 2016, when the current revised version we know today came into existence.
The redesign was an excellent move for Instagram brand-wise, as the beloved retro beige logo became outdated alongside grainy filters and moustache tattoos. This change was a response to the short-form video content boom, a new era of social media such as Snapchat - a personal favourite of one of our politicians - and Vine surged in popularity. As stated in a Shopify article, "The gradient is reimagined with vibrant colours to make it feel illuminated and alive, and to signal moments of discovery."
All of these logo designs aim to emphasise the main point of Instagram: the ability to instantly post photos to the app.
A lot has happened since 2016. Vine rose and fell (RIP), block brows existed, and Instagram, alongside many others, has updated into an all-in-one social media application. Vying for user screen time and data, Social media apps stole and reinvented each other's in-app features. I remember in 2016 when Instagram unveiled the 'Stories' feature, and for a week or so everyone seemed to comment on how they "copied Snapchat."
These days it's commonplace - perhaps even expected - for apps to serve akin to a 9-in-one shampoo, including features for messaging as well as the ability to not only post photos and videos, but also share your location, music taste and whatever Instagram 'Notes' is supposed to be used for.
There was a similar response from companies to the unveiling of the short-form video content platform TikTok, as Instagram and Facebook suddenly had 'Reels' and Youtube unleashed 'Youtube Shorts' to compete with this new era of brainrot/information sharing.
While I could dissect the intricacies of the history of social media platform updates, descending into inevitably conspiratorial rambling, I'd like to circle back and focus on the most recently troubling update to Instagram, changing the beloved feed from square to portrait composition.
Many updates have happened to the app since its beginninga memorable one being the feature to turn the number of likes on posts off, a move Meta made with the hopes to "give people control over their experience." An important distinction to make is that this update is an option that users can alter depending on their preference, unlike the recent feed recomposition, which has been a permanent change since late January this year.
After a casual stalk on the @Instagram account, I would guesstimate videos/reels take up 98% of the feed's content. This speaks to how highly short-form video content consumption is encouraged by the platform. As Emma Grigoryan from the photography website Fstoppers states, "Instagram’s shift from square to portrait-oriented thumbnails isn’t about redefining how photographers or creators shoot—it’s more about evolving the platform’s layout to reflect current trends." While it's understandable that Meta would align its formatting with how users are more commonly creating and consuming content, in doing so, it removes some control from the user.
As it continues to stray from its original motto: Capture and share the world's moments, Instagram shifts to instead; Capture curated content for the dopamine deficient!
Ironically, it's the video content, not photography posts, which is significantly more effective in decreasing attention spans - a pressing concern for the neural development of our youngest generations. This is particularly harmful to young minds as the stimuli within apps inadvertently train young children’s brains to engage in multitasking behaviours, also known as attention shifting. Such behaviours cause young children to seek instant
gratification while subjecting themselves to excessive stimulation. Prolonged exposure to screens profoundly affects the executive functions of a child, particularly concentration and focus. While the impact is extremely significant for youth, there is no doubt that this result is also commonplace within the over-active adult user base of social media platforms.
When countless accessible studies emphasise the negative impacts of prolonged short-form video content consumption, why would platforms continue to shove such content down our throats to the level of permanently altering the app structure?
The answer is your data, ie, money. If it isn't glaringly obvious by now, social media platforms are for-profit, like any other company, and largely do not care about the individual user experience if it isn't affecting their wealth. Dissecting your likes and saves, constructing a customised algorithm made to your taste, all with the mission for you to consume and purchase advertised content.
It's quite unfortunate that online consumption can so easily lead you down a deteriorating rabbit hole of time-wasting attempts at dopamine fulfilment. Once I came to terms with Instagram's grossly composed reality, I realised there are three main points of interest I have in this app.
Visual Composition: As a recent Visual Arts graduate and generally arty busybody since forever, it's no surprise that I value the ability to create visually appealing compositions of memories made on Insta. Having posts organised in a collaged format within my feed makes it accessible for me to look back at the digital gallery consisting of parts of my life. A garden of images to take a leisurely scroll through whenever I feel the pangs of nostalgia.
Connection: To be honest, I couldn't care less what "the internet" would think about anything I put online if I ever found myself trending in some way. By connection, I mean further strengthening the relationships I've already made with those I have clicked with in person. Or, on occasion, connecting with someone online who I then meet in person later. Discovery: While I can fulfil this desire in some way by literally going outside, social media opens the world up to you - a blessing and a curse. I have interests that may not have been as prevalent without online influences.
After defining my reasons for not having deleted the Devil app, I realised something while mourning the Instagram square feed; If memorializing moments with loved ones and physicalizing them in a visually pleasing archive was what was meaningful to me, I had already been doing that before becoming an Instagram user. The original feed was the scrapbook. The only difference is I can't exactly get my friends to turn on scrapbook post notifications.
After this moment of realization, I managed to find a big empty book that was lying around that my mom never used and promptly started to scrap. As I shuffled around the sheets of coloured paper, patterned washi tape and decently priced photo prints from Warehouse Stationery, I glued and adorned the pages with stickers. In doing so, I think I found a child-like excitement and wonder, a time before I knew how to spell the word because. That similar feeling of happiness and nostalgia I
felt scrolling through photos in my phone gallery, looking over the time spent with friends, before posting them online. There's something uniquely special about the scrapbook experience. I soon realized that some materials needed a different glue to stick onto the page, a more adhesive one than others. There's skill to it, and so much more personalisation than an app like Instagram could offer me. By the time I had completed the double spread, I felt like what I imagine people who meditate feel like post-meditation. I think that we hold a lot of stigma for crafts as something only for those who are children or the elderly. But I see no issue with an early adult feeling the need to look back!
When a friend of mine would come over to my house and ask me what I'd been up to I would quickly remember my scrapbooking adventures and bring out this huge book that looks like it would be some kind of grimoire, and open its metal clasp to reveal pages adorned with so much glitter and color. Probably not as much color or movement that Reels provides, but showing someone the scrapbook and noting where everything was found and bought from made me feel a sense of pride and happiness that I hadn’t felt showing some Instagram post, even if it was mine.
As screen times rise and our minds turn into mush, I encourage you to give scrapbooking a go and create a feed that's physical and isn't bound by the restrictions of an app that doesn't have your best interests at heart.
I'll leave you with a badly aged quote to sit with, “Brands, logos and products develop deep connections and associations with people,” Ian Spalter, Instagram’s Head of Design, wrote on Medium in 2016, “so you don’t just want to change them for the sake of novelty."
While this quote referenced the logo change in 2016, it's still pretty funny to think how this mindset was applied to future changes.
Q: (20, he/him)
Hey Tashi, hopeless romantic (or maybe just hopeless?) here.
I've been single since Year 11, and now that I'm in my second year of uni, it's really starting to wear on me. I keep trying, I'm on the apps, and I match with people, but nothing ever comes of it. The conversations just die, or I get ghosted before we even meet. I don't want to sound bitter, but I feel like dating has changed so much, and I honestly don’t know what women even want anymore.
I think I'm a decent guy, I'm studying social sciences, so I'm obviously interested in people, and I try to be emotionally available and understanding. But it feels like that doesn’t matter. I know I’m not a model or anything, but I thought at least my personality would count for something. Maybe I’m just too boring? Too nice? I wish I had more female friends to help me figure this out, but it’s hard to even get to that stage.
Is there something I’m doing wrong, or is this just how things are now?
A:
Dear Hopeless Romantic,
I too have spent unsuccessful hours in bed swiping left and right on dating apps while brewing nasty farts and eating an entire bag of corn chips. I hope this makes you feel like we’re on the same page.
Before I give you my advice, I want to address the overall feeling your letter gave me when I read it. You sound like
the story is over already, that you’ve somehow failed, and everything is hopeless. Is there a hint of missing your Year 11 girlfriend, and a desire for things to be simpler? I congratulate you on seeking help, and I can reassure you it's not all over. On a planet of 8 billion people, I’m 100% certain there is someone (likely, many someones) out there for you.
You have had success in the past; a high school relationship. A good chunk of your classmates probably haven't dated anyone in their life. Starting university is an exciting social time, so we are told. But there is a big difference in social dynamics between uni and high school. You’ve gone from being forced to be around the same people every day, to being forced to put yourself out there just to make friends who you might only see once a week in your sociology lecture. The fact you’re struggling to find connections at this age is not abnormal, and you’ll find a lot of people are feeling the same way.
So, is this your fault, or has dating become a conspiracy aimed against ‘nice guys’? My immediate answer to this is, No? What? We’re all in this sinking ship together. Dating is hard for everyone. I acknowledge it is harder for some more than others. Being queer, disabled, a parent, or not fitting the Eurocentric beauty standards imposed on us by patriarchal colonialism and the capitalistic beauty industry, all make dating just a bit harder than it is for the Chris Hemsworths of the world. You say you’re “not a model or anything”. Models get paid wages that allow them to maintain that level of flawlessness. You don’t have to look like a magazine cover to connect with people meaningfully. What really matters is how you present yourself—not just in terms of looks, but in confidence, attitude, and the way you engage with others.
Dating norms have certainly changed since our ma’s and pa’s were getting frisky. My mum used to hand-write letters to her lovers. I scroll through my photo gallery and decide which picture of my genitalia looks most appealing before sending it to a potential hookup. I won’t deny things are scarily immediate and devastatingly impersonal. The tech oligarchy has not improved how humans interact with each other. The lizard people who run social media platforms do not have your best interests at heart. Dating apps are designed to make money, not find you a girlfriend (unfortunately). I’m not saying they’re all terrible, I met my partner on Hinge. Some apps are better than others. Maybe it’s time to reassess your approach to dating. Are your conversations engaging, or are they fizzling out because you’re playing it too safe? Are you genuinely showing up as yourself, or are you holding back out of fear of rejection? Instead of worrying about whether you measure up to some impossible app-approved standard, think about what makes you interesting, passionate, and fun to be around. The more
you lean into that, the more likely you are to connect with people who actually appreciate you for who you are. So, don’t uninstall the dating apps with the Duolingo!
Rest assured, women aren’t plotting in secret Discord servers to coordinate their responses to certain dudes on dating apps. I wish we had that kind of organisation just to warn each other about toxic men, alas, we’re humans, just like you. If you’re worried that you’re being “too nice” or “too boring” because you think women prefer “bad-boys” or “edgy” guys, let me share my wisdom. Shallow people will always exist. Some people out there, men, women, and everything in between, are vapid. They care only about looks, status, money, power, etc. Instead of worrying about what women might want, focus on showing up as your best, most authentic self. And if a date isn’t vibing with that? Move on. You’re not a lost puppy at an adoption event—you don’t need everyone to pick you, just the right person. Just please, for the love of Beyoncé, don’t fall into a fantasy that all women are searching for the same thing. Andrew Tate is just around that corner.
You’ve expressed a desire for women’s guidance. I applaud this. You want to have relationships with women, and desiring their friendship should be the first step. Believe it or not, as a little teenage bisexual pick-me girl, I too was confused about what women wanted from me. I spent my teen years with mostly guy friends, thinking all women were confusing, and writing them off as frivolous because I couldn’t bear the rejection. Women are socialized to be polite and accommodating, which can make dating interactions feel confusing on both sides. It’s worth thinking about how power dynamics and social norms shape the way we all navigate attraction. Many men can’t tell the difference between flirting and a woman’s polite attempt to not get raped or killed with any interaction.
I might sound harsh, but what I’m trying to curb before it spreads here is your hint of resentment and bitterness towards women. My advice is: read some feminist literature. Watch a Contrapoints video on YouTube. Learn about women's experiences and don’t use that knowledge to pit yourself against other men. Learn it because you love and care for women. Learn it because, one day, you want to live, love and laugh with a woman every day. After all, women love funny guys.
Ultimately, you don’t need to be in a relationship to be happy. Focus on yourself and meaningful friendships. Every romantic relationship should be built on the foundation of care, love, and respect you would find in a platonic one. Instead of focusing on what you don’t have, focus on what you do have. You said it yourself: you’re a decent guy, you’re interested in people, and you’re emotionally available and understanding. It sounds like
you have a lot to work with. It’s a cliche thing to say, but developing your confidence will help you get noticed. I don’t mean what “alpha” males on podcasts would call confidence, strutting around and using pick-up lines. I mean confidence in yourself, your abilities, and your interests. You’re not losing some game you don’t know the rules to, and women aren’t intentionally punishing you for not meeting unreasonable standards. You might not have control over how people behave on dating apps, but you do have control over how you approach dating, friendships, and self-growth. Keep focusing on being someone you’re proud of. In time, with patience, you’ll be all the more appreciative of your future love when you find her.
Answered By Tashi Donnelly (they/she) @tashi_rd FEATURES EDITOR
Exploring Alternative
In July of 2023, my social media feed switched from my favourite celebrities posting promotional interviews and posters to picket lines and protests. This was the beginning of the strikes held by SAG-AFTRA, a union that aims to protect and expand the rights of television and radio artists. A few months earlier, in May, the Writers Guild of America also initiated strikes. Both resulted in a deal that addresses topical areas of debate, such as artificial intelligence use and the changing landscape of how crew and cast get paid in this streaming era. While the strikes had reached an end, my journey of finding alternative streaming sites had only just begun.
It’s almost impossible to find ethical broadcasters these days, with companies such as Netflix, Prime and Disney+ each having individual issues. Disney+, for example, has been condemned by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for their support of Israel. Disney+ pledged US$2 million dollars to Israel and supports other initiatives that are pro-Israel.
Aside from each company having its own unique set of horrors and unethical business practices, they also have a wide and ongoing impact on the viability of local and independent initiatives. These large streaming platforms are far more popular than anything local, but unfortunately, they have no obligation to create local content. Producing and employing Kiwi talent is not only important for the livelihood of many but also plays an important role in preserving our culture and history. NZ screen producers (SPADA) have called this out. Irene Gardiner, the president of the group, told Variety magazine that “..as has happened globally, their negative impact on local broadcasting viewership and therefore advertising revenue in the [local] market has been huge, which has been very challenging for local production.”
SPADA continues to advocate for the regulation of large streaming platforms through legislation. There are currently five draft proposals to help support Aotearoa's media sector, one proposal being to require streaming platforms and TV broadcasters to invest in local content. While this is a hopeful and essential measure, if you seriously want to support local independent projects, you should just watch content directly from them! To assist you in your own alternative streaming journey, here are some of my recommendations to get you started. These are a mix of local media and international projects trying to change industry standards and break away from harmful practices.
Dropout
Dropout is an American comedy streaming platform that rose from the ashes of the YouTube channel CollegeHumor. The company produces comedy panel shows, sketches and
tabletop role-playing game shows. As Dropout gains more traction, they have been getting some bigger comedy names involved, which is super exciting to see! However, what makes them truly special is their loyalty to the rotating cast of smaller comedians. In 2023, they were able to do their first year of profit sharing. Sam Reich, the CEO of Dropout, stated that “ we redistributed it among anyone who had ever made $1 with us over the course of the year.” This includes anybody who auditioned for them and all the crew.
From a consumer point of view, Dropout has much less gate-keepy tendencies, the price is fairly low for the quality of content you get ($10.21 per month), and you can share the account with as many people as you please!
YouTube
YouTube is my personal favourite on this list. People underestimate the amount of highly produced, long-form content that you can find on there! Here are some recommendations that brought me a lot of joy.
First up is a locally made short film, Gunpowder, written and directed by Benjamin Hudson. It is a super engaging watch and makes me want to teleport to the 90s to experience it in real time. Literally Dead is another Kiwi project, a mini-series centred around the mysterious death of a popular girl, True, who in ghost form guides the viewer around her previous friends (and enemies).
YouTube contains such a wide variety of creatives with such specific niches, so I'd definitely recommend investigating the treasure trove of content it has to offer. Truly, you could search up any topic and add the word “documentary”, and someone will have made something.
TVNZ
TVNZ is a tiny streaming platform compared to its competitors, but it is a big part of Aotearoa's local media landscape that is getting smaller and more vulnerable! When recommending TVNZ to friends, the frequent ads are always brought up, but you do get over them pretty quickly. Also, I think we should bring back the adrenaline of running to get food in ad breaks, as it really gets your blood pumping.
TVNZ is the home of many wonderful local projects. Two very recent additions include Troy Kingi’s Desert Hikoi, which explores the making of his eighth album and his exploration of artistry after a drought of creativity. Camp Be Better is a comedy series about a group of rich teenagers doing a form of alternative community service.
Streaming Platforms
TVNZ has a number of international movies and shows. The highlights for me are Interview with the Vampire, Taskmaster, Arrival, Brooklyn, A.P Bio, and new content is constantly being added to the site.
Straight up the cinemas
I'm of the opinion that when you go to the cinemas you should make it a spectacle like you would seeing theatre. Movies are one of the greatest joys in life, so dress up, buy a sweet treat, and talk about the movie with friends. People spend years working on them; they deserve a bit of fuss!
If you're a student on a budget, Academy Cinemas' $5 Wednesdays are always a blast, and they are only a 5-minute walk from AUT city campus! They have a diverse selection of old and new movies, so there is bound to be something playing that you'll enjoy.
The Takapuna Beachside Cinema is a little more pricey, with student tickets being $15, however, their seats are so genuinely so comfortable, and the ambience is lovely. What more could you ask for? If you are in the mood to treat yourself this cinema is a great option.
There is so much creativity out there in the world - even just in Aotearoa! Switching to alternative ways of consuming media that aren't the big media conglomerates for even just a month or two will not only not hurt you but will also provide support to artists with a more direct impact.
Now, explore away!
Illustration By Stella Roper (they/she)
@dodofrenzy
ARTS EDITOR
AI & the Artist Alley: How AI Art impacts artists & the Artist Alley Community.
AI is growing fast in its development, with almost every media site involving its own built-in intelligence systems, using both image and text learning to train and expand.
Many initially saw it as a wonderful futuristic tool that would help humans relax and eliminate menial tasks from their lives. However, what began as a promise of convenience has turned into a general replacement of human creativity—first by corporations and now also by individuals.
With user-friendly applications such as Midjourney becoming mainstream, it seems that anyone can be an artist. It’s no joke that spaces are being completely saturated with AI art, and ‘artists’ are palming off their digitally generated concepts as their own when it's the amalgamation of thousands of real artists whose work has been used to train these programs without their consent.
To investigate the phenomenon, I went to a local event hosted at the Panmure Community Center called Cosmoscon, the first of its kind in the growing number of geek and pop culture art and media events developing across Tāmaki Makaurau. Other events in this vein include Auckland Zinefest, Overload, Queers & Wares and of course, the largest events in NZ across the board, Armageddon.
Many of these events have already put an overall ban on AI-assisted art to keep the community within the artist alley safe from those who wish to take advantage of the ease of AI in creating merchandise to sell. An official statement from Armageddon Expo reads, “While A.I. art does have some cool aspects to it, it is also very dependent upon existing art created by artists across the globe to create new imagery from algorithms that give no credit to the creators it is taking the metadata from.”
As I attended Cosmocon on the 22nd of February, I asked both small and large creators their opinions on the matter.
Firstly, I chatted with Hayley (@hellishrebuke), an artist who’s tabled at multiple conventions, some including Armageddon, Overload and Cosmoscon:
MS: How would you define AI?
H: It’s a tool that’s been poorly implemented and has a long way to go.
MS: Have you used AI, and if so, what for?
H: I tried one of those AI filters on a few cosplay selfies a while ago.
MS: As AI becomes more prevalent, how does that impact what you do?
H: It detracts from the hard work that goes into art. People’s art that they’ve spent hours, days, years making goes into a little program, and it rips off everything they’ve done without having the actual honed skill or talent or even the emotions/lived experience of the artist. It’s the same vibes of people who go into an art museum, point at the most heart-wrenching piece of art in the gallery and go, “I could make that”.
MS: Are there ways you can identify AI art? If so, how?
H: AI is learning fast, but it’s still not far enough to escape its uncanny valley quality. Easy things to spot are inaccurate anatomy (ie, hands, fingers, and odd proportions) and smushed together details on things like clothes (ie, contorted buttons and lace).
After you become aware of these things, you can pick out consistencies of a ripped-off art style or weird backgrounds.
MS: How can you identify AI art at conventions?
H: It can be a little difficult, but when you see 5 prints that have a wildly different art style in each piece, you have a feeling something is going on. And it’s not just, “Here’s my painting style, my illustration style and my chibi style.” It’ll look like it was drawn by 5 entirely different artists.
MS: How does the presence of AI art impact the artist alley?
H: Artists can pick out AI most of the time, but the regular-degular normal convention attendee who might like art but isn’t quite used to staring at illustrations for hours on end or doesn’t have much of a deeper insight into art and its creation can’t pick it out as easily.
Particularly when it’s used to cash in on what’s popular or what’s selling, just to make a quick buck, it really affects the rest of the artist alley artists who made their art themselves. It affects sales when AI art is taking up stall space.
The second person I spoke to was Rachel (@biqq.in), another artist who’s sold their art at conventions as big as Armageddon, Big Gay Out and Melbourne based event SupaNova as well as other small scale markets.
MS: What are your immediate thoughts when I say AI?
M: Well, two thoughts come to mind when I hear ‘AI. ’ There is the dramatised version of AI you see in sci-fi media, where it has the capacity to think and have its own inner thoughts like a human. The other is the AI we have now, which is essentially just a really
sophisticated filtration of data. It hadn’t invoked the image of that sci-fi intelligent lifeform until it was able to generate ‘art’ and ‘literature’ - two things that only humans were thought to be capable of.
Because of that, a lot of people defend this AI by claiming that the computer was merely taking inspiration from other works like a human. I hate this argument. Words like ‘learn’ and ‘decision-making’ are applied to its actions, but this wrongfully anthropomorphises AI. There is an input and an output, but nothing in between that is remotely similar to human-independent thought. MS: Have you used it in the past?
R: I have only used AI in the past for coding, as it was required in my classes. Personally, I try to limit the use of AI due to environmental factors. Knowing my art has been stolen and put into other platforms without my permission and is likely being fed into AI isn’t a great thought.
MS: How does the presence of AI art impact the artist alley? R: AI takes money away from actual artists like us who are already barely getting by. It is a shame cause general audiences will have no idea and be ignorant of the fact.
MS: Do you think AI is good for Artists or for the New Zealand economy?
R: I think AI could be more reasonable if it originates from NZ due to our more eco-friendly ways of collecting power. With having some of the most area connection to sea compared to other countries, it could provide a better alternative because we need a lot of water to cool the computers that are used for AI. It will be concerning in the future as it is expensive to run and will likely be restricted to only big companies. I think it needs to be regulated before it can help me.
Finally, I spoke to Mousse Mouse (@mousse_mouse) outside of Cosmoscon, who gave her perspective on AI as an artist who not only works in the Artist Alley, but regularly opens pop up shops that host her and her peer’s art, and owns an online shop and website as another source of income.
MS: As AI becomes more common, does that impact your work negatively or positively?
M: Honestly, AI doesn’t pose much of a threat to my artistic work. At this point, most conventions and markets ban AI art outright. If society as a whole keeps rejecting AI art, then I still have hope in pursuing an artistic career.
AI art is like pollution. Nobody wants to see it, and nobody wants
to buy it, but it still somehow piles up everywhere you look.
MS: Is AI good for New Zealand?
M: AI art and literature will never be good for New Zealand. We have so many talented artists, it is a huge waste to ditch them in favour of AI. Nobody wants to walk down the street with soulless AI posters covering the walls and buses on their way to watch a movie with soulless AI visuals. Sounds like a nightmare. I spoke with other artists regarding their thoughts on AI bans at conventions, who preferred to be anonymous, but similar sentiments arose:
H: “It’s good. Everyone should ban it.”
R: “Love the idea of AI bans. It's very unregulated at the moment.”
M: “AI art devalues a con or market’s integrity if they do not have a ban. The presence of AI art cheapens the event greatly.”
Overall, there was one overarching message:
“AI art is the death of creativity. It isn’t intuitive, it’s a system that damages the environment to regurgitate slop from creatives.”
Written By Mikaela Stroud (they/them) @me.kaiella
“3
Films About the Camera”
Remember that the camera is a good thing. Take solace in the fact that amid all this technofascist noise — of market interests, censorship, ahistorical and apolitical narratives, computers, PR stunts, and AI-generative monstrosities among other things — that the primary technological innovation at the centre of the form has always been the camera; the perspective it embodies, what it depicts, and also what it conceals from us. Innovation in filmmaking is often appraised as the cutting-edge, high-concept and grand-scale conceptions — see the simulation of the Trinity Test and up-close particle effects in Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023), or the mo-cap world-building of James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) franchise; you may even lump in with them the soulless, suburban enterprise of Rob Zemeckis’s Here (2024). But in this colonial-minded pursuit of evolving tech to achieve the impossible, I remain concerned that artistically we are learning to fly before we’ve mastered running — we’re too soon searching for beauty in CGI sunsets when we’ve barely wrung the complete, existential potential out of capturing one in real life. I don’t mean to clutch my pearls. It’s just that, at this late stage, we all have access to a camera of our own, and the art of film may
benefit from circling back on what it means to wield one.
Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross, 2024)
Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel The Nickel Boys was based on the true story of the Arthur G. Dozier reform school for boys in Florida, open between 1900-2011 and reputed for repeat torturings, abuses and murders of its students, three times as many Black as white buried on grounds. RaMell Ross’s film adaptation of Whitehead’s novel is shot mostly in first-person perspective. It doesn’t just sensitively depict this terror by inhabiting the eyes of two of the young boys, Elwood and Turner, but it’s also — hear me out — a film that ruminates on
the act of adapting a story into the visual medium. The two boys are empowered to break free of their fates through recognition; on one level by being seen by each other, but also by being seen by a camera that telegraphs their suffering in a way that wasn’t afforded to them in 1962. While so much viscera in Nickel Boys comes from our sharing of Elwood and Turner’s eyes, its true, moving power comes from what happens when the camera occasionally leaves their bodies.
Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995)
In case my opening spiel gave you the impression that I don’t sometimes rock with James Cameron, let me tell you about the second-best thing he worked on in the nineties. (Guess the first — clue: it’s not Titanic.) Strange Days, inspired partly by the ‘92 L.A. riots, is a dystopian tech-thriller about a new black-market trade: selling virtual-reality recordings of other peoples’ memories that its users can plug into in order to feel its exact emotions and physical sensations. A dealer of this new drug discovers a brutal murder in his supply. A few hysteric cop-outs will remind you that it is a shameless product of Hollywood after all, but for those who can brush past that for kinetic first-person action, themes of death-drive and voyeurism strained to their limits, smoky neonoir atmosphere, an acid-soaked soundtrack featuring Tricky and Lords of Acid you have Kathryn Bigelow to thank (Point Break, The Hurt Locker), and a long-haired Ralph Fiennes to look forward to.
Real Life (Albert Brooks, 1979)
The one about a vain and obnoxious filmmaker trying to conduct a documentary on the everyday lives of an American family. The one that predicted the fabrications of reality television. The one where Albert Brooks loses his mind and Charles Grodin tries doing surgery on a horse. The one where the crew wear stupid-looking camera-mounted helmets to walk around in, showing up in the background of serious scenes like clueless astronauts. The one that must’ve inspired Nathan For You and The Curse (2023). The one where this ‘real life’ begins to progressively feel like a fever dream.
Video Killed the Radio Star, is the Internet killing the Modern Day Press?
Where to turn when they turn it off
Written By Mikaela Stroud (they/them)
Media is evolving at a rapid rate, bringing casualties in the world of modern broadcasting. From radio to TV news to podcasts and Twitter threads, the dissemination of knowledge has grown more accessible and more immediate than ever before. The mass globalisation event that is the internet is an ever expanding landscape of creativity, knowledge and freedom, but for how long?
How long before our media outlets are no longer a space for creative freedom, finding common communities outside of your own, and learning more about the world outside our front door? How long until corporations begin feeding the media machines and using these easy access information highways to their own advantage?
Unfortunately, it’s a plan that’s already in motion.
Bye Bye Broadcasting
Broadcast media is travelling on a downward slope towards being obsolete, with funding being cut or tanking as advertisers move to more accessible and popular forms of media.
Streaming is the next big thing, with corporate giants such as Disney and Netflix taking over where TV used to reign supreme. Advertisers move with these changing tides, and as advertisers go, the ability to keep broadcast media afloat declines immensely.
This can be seen in the closure of Newshub and TV3 here in New Zealand. Glen Kyne, Warner Bros. representative and boss of Discovery New Zealand stated that the project was canceled due to market conditions. According to market research, around $100m had come out of the TV advertising market as of mid2022 roughly 20% of the market. “Any one thing around digital bargaining would not be enough to really offset the devastating economic impact of what’s happened.” (Kyne 2024)
Newshub was one of New Zealand's longest running outlets, and closed in April of 2024, resulting in roughly 300 job losses, leaving one English language TV Network the state owned TVNZ. This raised a worrying question; how is this shrinking news landscape going to impact New Zealand and potentially its democracy?
@me.kaiella @azuresparkz.art CONTRIBUTING
WRITER
Where do we go when they turn off the new stations? The answer: Social Media.
POV: Propaganda
Governments have been using the media as a political tool for years, but with the advent of social media the ability to in-
seminate manufactured evidence and propagate bigotry and misinformation has never been easier. This can be seen in the utilisation of social media in the political exploits of American Politicians alongside the boom in misogynist and transphobic rhetoric in recent years.
Creators such as Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan with large platforms on social media began to perpetrate harmful ideologies around women and their role in society, alongside the necessity that men see themselves as “High Value Males”, re-centering the man in the narrative that has been constructed and written by men. This created a ripple effect into the greater male youth population across the globe, and as Trump was re-elected in 2024, created a space online where men could spout hatred with no consequences. With “Your body, my choice” and other such vitriol being spread by anonymous and public accounts alike with no heed to the consequences internet anonymity has made it easy for people to dehumanise and desensitise themselves and others. These creators feed off of the vulnerable, the youth and the lonely, and make billions of dollars off of the suffering they cause to both sides.
The rebranding of Twitter to 'X' under Elon Musk, alongside the rise of unethical AI use in Zuckerberg's META products and their slow support of conservative views, has fueled the fear that social media is increasingly controlled by corporations and used to benefit the 1%.. Both Musk and Zuckerberg contributed to current US President Donald Trump’s campaign, with Musk speaking with him at events and using his control over X to hide comments and ban creators who he disagrees with, and META’s removal of third party fact checking, it's clear that tech new money billionaires are putting their mouth where the money is with the conservative voter.
The biggest example of this was last year, when TikTok was banned — an action initially supported by the Trump administration — only to return less than 24 hours later, praising Trump for his efforts in keeping it afloat. For those who studied history, they will recognise that this is a classic propaganda tactic cutting off or taking away a group's access to media then returning it to come off as the “saviour”.
But where do we go when they turn off our main point of contact, information sharing and creative outlet? What happens when the internet isn’t a worldwide web anymore, and just a profit farm? What can help us keep the internet open?
Net Neutrality
We have been in similar situations before. Back in 2017-2021, there was a massive movement to save Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is the ability for the internet to stay a free market and free information sharing space that was uncensored and uncon-
trolled by any one entity. This was enacted by the first Trump Administration. The internet has always been seen as a valuable tool that, if controlled, could be incredibly beneficial to the one in the chair. In the first week of this year, the Federal Court ruled that the FCC ( Federal Communications Commission) cannot classify Internet service providers, or ISPs, in a way that would prevent them from favoring certain content over others. This means they can throttle or control traffic to smaller sites, therefore causing the death of the open internet.
This coincides with the advent of large social media corporations and the billionaires who own them shifting towards more conservative values, which showcases the importance being put on money and advertising for the sake of profit over the needs of the public. Rulings like this will only get more common now that the Supreme Court has overturned the “Chevron deference” – giving judges, rather than qualified public servants, a blank check to toss out protections like net neutrality, environmental safeguards, or food safety standards.
But this has happened before. Which means we can beat them again. In 2017, when the initiatives were initially rolling through, 126,000 people spoke out and halted the movement against Net Neutrality. In 2024 there was a significant win as the FCC voted to restore Net Neutrality.
Conclusion
It's scary out there. Our phones are constantly buzzing with new bad news reels to doom scroll through and it seems like there's hardly any hope for a free, unbiased press in the near future. But there are ways that we can keep our heads up. As social media sites become flooded with propaganda with no fact checking or systems in place to protect diverse groups, it's important to keep speaking up and speaking out. Sign petitions, speak for net neutrality, report misinformation and educate yourself through real sources. There are still broadcast news stations reporting on the ground; BBC, TVNZ Newsroom, NPR and Al Jazeera to name a few. But every source has its own political bend. Read your sources and cross reference them with others. Be open to new information.
When you control what you're being fed, you have the opportunity to cleanse and widen your own palette. Social media can be a tool for good, but we must be aware of misinformation. Our time is the food it feeds on. So let's starve it out.
5. Boat - big or small, paddle, sail, or engine, the primary feature of the boat is that it floats on water. People have been utilising boat technology for millennia; early humans used makeshift crafts such as logs and rafts to carry them over bodies of water both narrow and vast, spreading themselves and their cultures across the globe. Many different peoples around the world have mastered the technology of boat-building and sailing throughout history - from the Polynesians to the Greeks, the Chinese to the Arabs, the Portuguese to the British, and many others.
Pros: Human movement and trade, resource acquirement and exploration
Cons: Titanic disaster, both IRL and the 1997 James Cameron film
4. Bow & Arrow - what image springs to mind when we consider the humble bow and arrow? Personally, what I think of is my favourite pointy-eared twink from the Lord of the Rings - the elf and master archer Legolas. The bow and arrow is an ancient technology utilised by a significant number of human populations throughout history, all leading to the absolute peak of archery representation in modernity - a golden-haired Legolas sliding down a staircase on a shield during the Battle of Helms Deep while shooting arrows at Uruk-hai (LOTR Twin Towers 2002).
Pros: Robin Hood (giving the ole one-two to the establishment à la Luigi Mangione)
Cons: Arrow to the eye e.g. Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings
3. Arabic numerals - Arabic numerals developed during the 8th-9th centuries CE, based on earlier number systems created by ancient Hindu and Tamil mathematicians. The use of these numerals spread across Europe after the 15th century, contributing greatly to the advancement of science and industrialisation worldwide.
Pros: Growth and advancement of mathematics that spread globally, contributing to widespread technological innovations from many different cultures
Cons: Long division and fractions give me a headache
2. Printing press - invented in Germany in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg. The printing press improved upon earlier technologies for printing written text developed by the Romans, Chinese and Arabs. The invention of the printing press and the subsequent era of widespread mechanically-produced text was an unprecedented leap in technology that ushered in a new age of mass communication - fundamentally contributing to the global spread of literature, education and literacy to the mass populace.
Pros: vastly improving the spread of knowledge and literacy around the world
Cons: Fifty Shades of Grey (so I’ve heard)
1. Condoms - a wonder of the modern age, mass-produced condoms have been a hugely significant advancement in modern technology and have had widespread positive effects on health, birth control and sexual freedom for the human population. Before mass-produced latex condoms were available, people with penises used to cover their genitals to protect from disease and unwanted pregnancy with condoms made of rubber, linen, lamb intestine, and other such sexy materials.
Pros: obvious reasons
Cons: none
- Honourable Mention: The Microwave -
Pros: microwave pies
Cons: microwave pies
Written By Stu Paul (he/him) CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Illustration By Tashi Donnelly (she/her) FEATURES EDITOR
CORE memory
By Heron CS (they/them)
/ in my grandmother's once-home-but-no-longer (now essentially a storage unit, but with a window we could use to break in without a key) my mother and i are sorting or not sorting, sifting through— well, not things, exactly.
“things” as a word lacks intentionality or in her case, premeditation
don’t be fooled: every object here was hand-curated over decades by an increasingly dementiated agoraphobe who wanted to feel like a part of her would still be there, making her daughter’s life just that much harder long after she was gone.
so now we are filling dozens of extra large extra strength hefty bags with grandma’s clandestine intentions and gathering them in pyre formation in the middle of the floor so the whole neighborhood can see the place’s enormous, black, rotted heart beating through the bay windows.
// in what was once my grandparents' home office (first his, then hers, but mostly nobody’s) atop a dusty corner shelf there is a black floppy disk sporting my grandfather’s name, pinned beneath a brass paperweight shaped like a horseshoe.
when pressed about the mystery disk, mom says that her father’s gambling problem was so bad that at one point in the 1980s, he developed a computer program solely to help him bet on horse races. given the context, this also explains the paperweight situation.
"help him how?" i ask. "don't ask me," she says. “i’m like her, i don’t know about any of that stuff.”
"but she doesn't even own a computer." "oh yes she does. it's buried somewhere under that desk in there."
/// at the excavation site beneath the office desk, i spot an orange piece of printer paper. at one point folded in half, it’s fallen behind the desk onto the floor, where it's splayed out like a limp tent.
i recognize my grandma’s cursive, the blue ink from her fountain pen:
lie before the judge open plea
$500
my late cousin's name is written in the upper right corner, in all caps and circled many many times.
it must’ve been from when he got arrested. she would have called her lawyer, taken notes over the phone.
pleading:
1) time passed 2) 3year%backup(3)0 percent
no, not notes. formulas.
3)open plea: 1-3 years(?) 6-10% / months served
2 years most min 4 months / steps
useless to the casual viewer, written in a system of shorthand never meant to be read by more than one person. the order of operations alone is unfathomable.
still, her intent was clear enough— minimize the time her grandson would spend in prison, by any means necessary.
Rat out : 5 years probation 19 years old
LEAVE MISSOURI!!!!!!!
just for a second, the last one makes me laugh.
///\
“Maillardet's automatons” were mechanised dolls built in the early 19th century by a Swiss watchmaker. now considered an early form of computer, the machines (which looked like tiny human children) used wind-up motors connected to an arm which allowed them to write words and draw pictures. their movements were programmed using a stack of brass discs (or “cams”) turning on a mechanical spit roast which allowed the arm to move precisely along invisible axes.
this mechanic is now recognized as a primitive form of “read-only” or “hard-wired” memory (ROM) in a similar vein to the player piano.
///\/
there is a pattern of diamonds drawn across the top of the paper, each bisected by various lines of symmetry, like so: ////\/\|||+\—+///\\\|||++++
upon first glance, they’re stress doodles automatic movements to keep her hysteric hand busy while talking to the lawyer to make her feel a little less helpless.
there’s something similar in the bottom left corner, a shape I initially mistake for a ferris wheel it's a series of rough "spokes" circumscribed by concentric dodecagons that upon first glance looks like a really shittily drawn wheel.
the figure’s lines are dark and thick, like she went over them several times and two adjacent triangles jut out at the base like fangs. until i see the arrow pointing out towards one of her equations and begin to count the spokes, i don’t even realize it’s supposed to be a calendar, each connective thread in her web tying together months he would be gone.
///\/\
One of the writing automata built by Maillardet was damaged severely in a fire. By the 20th century, it was brought to a museum as a box of charred brass and a porcelain head.
The family who brought it in had been keeping it in their attic for years. They had no idea what they were looking at.
///\/
“was grandpa a programmer? was he some kind of tech wiz?”
“no, he was just that addicted to gambling. the computer thing was just kind of a means to an end.”
///\/\
(there’s an irony i don’t quite have words for, to think of my grandfather as some kind of proto-coder a watchmaker who accidentally invents a computer, with my grandmother as a child scribbling mindless patterns at her desk. if anything, it’s the other way around: him subjugated to the predetermined actions hardwired into his body,
her crafting logic into meticulous patterns which out of context look like nothing.)
////\/\|
as a child, i failed to register what my grandmother was slowly becoming: a textbook hoarder living a textbook hoarder lifestyle in her textbook hoarder house.
and her house-you should’ve seen it— every square inch housing its own weird and tactile occupant
knick-knacks and bichon frisé puppies and size 5 pumps for her little doll feet rows of figurines that made every surface an invisible chessboard a bookshelf shaped like a giant cello, with broken plastic strings i would reach for to pluck discreetly at the dinner table.
to be fair, i never once thought of this as a work of madness. undeniably, everything had an exact, if unfathomable place.
to me she just seemed like a person who had chosen to indulge her eccentricities, rather than internalizing them like everyone else.
////\/\|||+\—+///\\\|||++++ we toss the disk, which i regret later because we had nothing to play it on (before you judge, ask yourself if you’ve ever cleaned out a hoarder’s stuff before) i leave the paper behind, a historical artifact which in my opinion really belongs to the house.
funnily enough, the only thing i bring with me is the horseshoe the one object i feel certain has nothing to hide.
there are small capital letters engraved on one side, each separated by a dash-shaped nail hole— the spacing makes it look like a message transcribed from a telegraph. "G-O-O-D-L-U-C-K", it says.
Dear Tech Bros…
This isn’t a critique. I swear on Apple watches and Patagonia puffer vests. But before you take a seat and listen, please get rid of your apparel, and your preconceptions. Women in tech wake up every day to a constant dilemma: how can they celebrate the hard-fought victories whethe uphill battle continues? When is the credit for their contributions due? When is it going to be seen as the norm rather than feminist strides and breaking the glass ‘screen’. Where have Tech Girlies been this whole time?
The reality is, kings are nothing without their queens. Women weren’t late to the tech party — they were instrumental in planning it. Ada Lovelace crafted the first algorithm in the 1840s, ideating computational possibilities before physical computers even existed.
The ENIAC pioneers — Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Meltzer, Fran Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman — yes, all women — programmed the first general-purpose electronic computer during World War II, translating complex mathematical problems into code. This machine, calculating artillery trajectories for the United States Army, laid the groundwork for modern computing. And let’s not forget the women at NASA; brilliant mathematicians like Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson calculated the precise trajectories that sent man to the moon. Women were never absent in the tech space — these names are just a few of those — who were written out of the story.
In today’s world, women have been invited to stand around the table, but are yet to take a seat. Female founders receive a fraction of venture funding. Women in STEM fields still battle assumptions about their roles and capabilities. AI systems carry biases that reflect the voices of their predominantly male development teams. Yet despite these challenges, women aren't merely surviving in tech, they're actively transforming it. From research labs to cybersecurity firms, blockchain startups to healthcare innovations, women are demonstrating that they don't just belong in technology, they're essential to its evolution. Their perspectives make technology more human, more accessible, and more revolutionary.
When considering what women bring to the table, we often overlook their distinct approach to problem-solving. Women offer deep empathy to product development and designing solutions that address genuine human needs, rather than just chasing technical benchmarks. Countless individuals also fail to acknowledge emotional intelligence, an attribute the industry has long undervalued - one that builds innovative communities that thrive via resilience. There is an understanding that technology's purpose isn't the accumulation of technical achievements, but more so enhancing human lives. This perspective isn't "soft", it's the future of successful innovation.
It takes courage for us all to understand that the industry is not oversaturated, there is in fact plenty of space to grow and move forward. It's about understanding a simpler truth: an industry designed by only half of humanity will never reach its full potential. The next chapter of technology needs to address glaring gaps: healthcare systems that understand all bodies, AI that represents all faces and voices, workplaces where parenthood builds resilience rather than derails careers.
Women aren't adapting to tech's established patterns — they're redefining what technology can and should do. The real question isn't whether women will lead tech's future but how quickly the industry will embrace the complete vision they offer.
Men, within the current industry, you hold the influence — the funding decisions, the leadership positions, the power to shape organisational culture. This isn't about guilt or tokenism, or even feeling like you owe those who birth your next generation.
Diversity isn't a HR initiative, it's a competitive advantage. Teams with multifaceted perspectives solve problems more creatively, identify blind spots more readily, and build products that serve a heterogeneous audience. The future belongs to those who can envision technology that serves everyone, not just those who look like its creators. It belongs to teams that understand that empathy and engineering aren't opposing forces but complementary strengths.
Power does not need to be shifted, it needs to be shared. Because when technology reflects the full spectrum of the human experience, we all advance as one.
So, dearest Tech Bros, give us a seat at the table. Or watch as we build our own.
okay,
Ishani Mathur (she/her) @vohnriladki on instagram
