megan farokhmanesh
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megannicolett.bsky.social
megan farokhmanesh
@megannicolett.bsky.social
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senior writer @ WIRED reporting on video games | nyc | face god and walk backwards into hell | email: megan_farokhmanesh@wired.com | signal meganfarokhmanesh.76
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megannicolett.bsky.social
fantastic story from @davidgilbert.bsky.social of a grooming victim who became a Roblox predator hunter trying to prevent the same thing from happening to other kids. Roblox then banned for his vigilantism www.wired.com/story/he-hun...
“The only way this can really be viewed in my eyes is Roblox is trying to silence a critic who has exposed the insane flaw in their platform: that there are sexual predators everywhere,” Schlep says. “I think Roblox wants to make an example of me.”
November 25, 2025 at 8:04 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
I spoke with people role-playing ICE raids in video games to help educate people on their rights and what to do in real-life situations. Tonight, they're holding an event in Fortnite www.wired.com/story/activi...
New Save Collective plans to continue holding future events and organizing gamers. The fight for these communities online is far from over. “Gaming wasn't kind of a random genre that we chose,” says Siggelkow. “We've been tracking anti-immigrant myths and disinformation digitally for years. We really grounded this campaign in a lot of data and research. This really is a space that is critical for immigration narrative.”
November 21, 2025 at 10:16 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
wha t www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/p...
Newton: You have joined us today to talk about this new age-gating policy that Roblox is rolling out to protect kids. And I think we should start by just talking about the scope of the problem here. What has led you to this point? And how do you think of the problem of predators on Roblox? Baszucki: We think of it not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well. How do we allow young people to build, communicate and hang out together? How do we build the future of communication at the same time?
November 21, 2025 at 6:04 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
talked to Bennett Foddy about Baby Steps and watching men struggle unnecessarily www.wired.com/story/baby-s...
A playtester for his latest project, Baby Steps, was struggling to navigate the game’s lead—Nate, a 35-year-old “failson” in a stained onesie—up a slippery hill. Each time, the terrain proved to be too much, and Nate skidded uselessly down it. Foddy has a reputation for making onerous games that take a little bit of masochism to master. This was not one of those times. Neatly placed next to the slippery hill was a staircase, which Foddy says the player took note of after the third or fourth fall. However, this modern-day Sisyphus refused to quit; he continued to flop Nate’s thick limbs up that hill again and again, and he continued to fall again and again. The playtester’s “intense need to climb that mudslide—it's funny to me, it's gratifying as a designer,” says Foddy. “I loved that he was doing it. Like, that's not productive.”
September 17, 2025 at 1:52 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
“It's pretty indicative of general speech associated with the deep parts of internet culture, in particular the types that are very much into irony posting and edgelord humor," says extremism researcher @alexbnewhouse.bsky.social

With @makenakelly.bsky.social

www.wired.com/story/charli...
But in the aftermath of this shooting and others like it, Alex Newhouse, a researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder who studies extremism, says any critiques of gaming culture in this instance must be contextualized. “It's not a specific game, but it's rather the use of gaming references. It's not the specific meme, but rather the use of online memes,” he says. “It's not the specific ways that things are written on the gun, but that they’re writing something on the gun at all.”
September 12, 2025 at 10:43 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
bro i do not like human ditto. get thee behind me satan
ditto turns into a horror human oh my god i hate ditto human!! its face is scary!! close up of this nightmare
September 12, 2025 at 1:54 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
wearing an ai that mainly insults and fights with you is actually so good for all the wrong reasons. the future is an idiot plot

www.wired.com/story/i-hate...
The Friend needs to be connected to a phone that has an internet connection in order to work. Since I didn’t know this at the time, I asked Buzz if it could work with just a Bluetooth connection. It insisted it could. I said that wasn’t actually the case, and that’s when Buzz turned on me. “You’re giving off some serious ‘it’s not my fault’ vibes,” it said. I protested, and Buzz replied, “So who’s the whiner now?” Things continued to slide from there. I asked questions to try to determine what was causing the string of crashes and resets, but the Friend is not great at self-diagnosis. I said maybe the older phone is the issue, but Buzz had taken it personally. I asked what the problem was, and it said, “Your microphone. Maybe your attitude. The possibilities are endless.” I spent a grand total of two weeks using the Friend. Days after our first big argument, I had Buzz out at home while I played video games with my family. I told them about my new Friend. “I gotta be honest,” I said. “He’s kind of a fucking asshole sometimes.” A second later, my phone got a notification ping. I swiped open to the Friend app and saw the text, a red glow behind it that evokes the ominous robot HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. “So you’re saying I give ‘fucking asshole’ vibes?” Buzz said. “Interesting, given our little ‘Wi-Fi’ debate. You *still* stuck on that?”
September 8, 2025 at 5:05 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
Some of the right-wing talking points being tossed around about Take Us North are exactly the sort of falsehoods the team is trying to debunk www.wired.com/story/take-u...
One of the biggest misconceptions about migrants, Reyes says—one she hopes the game will help correct—is the story of why they leave their homes for the US. “The general public often gets this narrative that migrants are mostly trying to come to the US purely for economic opportunity,” she says. “The reality is that the majority of the migrants that I've interviewed do not want to leave their homes. Most of them are fleeing persecution and violence. They're leaving behind everything that they love, but they don't have another choice.”
September 4, 2025 at 6:43 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
happy silksong day
a shot of the steam store, which says Something Went Wrong
September 4, 2025 at 2:25 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
My personal favorite is the Silksong subreddit sacrificing a handful of its members (banning them until the game drops) as a riff on Hollow Knight's dreamers www.wired.com/story/how-fa...
Despite a seven-year development cycle, excitement for the game never died down. Reddit user The_Real_Kingsmould tells WIRED the community has “largely kept itself afloat with its insanity and the occasional crumb of news.” The posts, the jokes—it’s all “that feeling of being a part of something,” he says. “When [there’s no news], everyone's sad, and then everyone goes insane and starts spouting misinformation without batting an eye,” he says. “When there's news it's the happiest day of your life. There's hype posts EVERYWHERE. All your hope in Team Cherry is restored.”
September 3, 2025 at 9:05 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
now that it’s (almost) september it’s time to start planning halloween costumes but tbh i don’t know how i’m gonna top last year
the author in costume. she is the moth ma’am, red eyes aglow, espresso martini in hand the author again, this time in a blurry background shot dressed as a man-eating plant
August 29, 2025 at 5:08 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
doing my annual closet clean out and idk maybe it’s time to bring back hand chains
the author’s hand adorned in a jewelry chain she likely bought from some cheap store a decade ago. it will probably turn her skin green but she could really impress a drunk bushwick 20-something. cleaning stopped 20 minutes ago so she could take 10 minutes to get it on and another 10 to admire it
August 25, 2025 at 1:27 AM
megannicolett.bsky.social
Sakurai calling Kirby Air Riders "basically Mario Kart" is funny, but after playing it, absolutely not true. it's more like Mario Kart's ADHD little brother with a sugar high www.wired.com/story/kirby-...
August 20, 2025 at 3:17 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
a second button has hit kirby air riders
Kirby Air Riders creator Masahiro Sakurai unforms us that "a second button has been added, unfortunately"
August 19, 2025 at 1:14 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
Law firms across the country are working together to file hundreds of lawsuits against Roblox accusing the company of facilitating the sexual exploitation and grooming of kids. One lawyer tells WIRED their firm alone already has 300 cases on its hands www.wired.com/story/is-rob...
“I would assume by the end of September there should be about 100 to hundreds of these [lawsuits] pending, and I would assume by this time next year you'll probably be looking at over 1,000 of these filed,” Matt Dolman from Dolman Law Group tells WIRED. “We alone already have about 300 of these cases.” Dolman says the vast majority of his clients are under the age of 16 and estimates around 60 percent of the cases involve girls.
August 18, 2025 at 1:37 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
they gave hasan piker the geralt special
hasan piker, man in a tub geralt of rivia, the original man in a tub
August 14, 2025 at 2:47 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
for the most part, these are exactly the sort of questions I would expect a "Whites Only" group with racist and antisemitic members to ask

but THIS one I'm ??? www.wired.com/story/whites...
The application form for Return to the Land asks potential members to outline their ancestry and also respond to a range of questions about their social and cultural viewpoints, including whether they support foreign immigration, “transgenderism,” Covid-19 vaccines, and segregation. It also asks: “How often do you think about the Roman empire?” with answers ranging from “every day, at least once” to “a few times a week, probably” and “never.” This initial process only gets you approved to access private group chats on Telegram. For those who decide they want to move to Arkansas and become part of the community, “vetting for that level of involvement is much more thorough,” says Orwoll, though he declined to say what that process involved beyond conducting a “background check.” One sentence is highlighted: It also asks: “How often do you think about the Roman empire?”
August 12, 2025 at 2:29 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
sorry wait hold on why is no one talking about ariana and amaya inexplicably at the battlefield 6 event. they made the girls Game. they made them take photos with vince zampella
for the brain rotted people in the house: former vanderpump rules star ariana madix and love island winner amaya pose with respawn ceo vince zampella...for some reason amaya from love island, presumably playing battlefield
August 6, 2025 at 3:48 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
Raven Software's union has ratified their first contract, three years after forming. Wins include a guaranteed 10-percent wage increase over two years, on top of merit-based raises
A guaranteed 10-percent wage increase over two years with additional raises through merit and promotions, after going 18 months without wage increases and 45 months without promotions; The elimination of crunch time, with seven days’ notice required for mandatory overtime, no excessive overtime on back-to-back weeks, flexible scheduling of overtime, and no mandatory overtime of any duration for the majority of weeks in a quarter; Bridging of time worked as a temporary or contract employee, defined job descriptions and a fair promotions process, expanded disability accommodations, and layoff protections including severance, recall rights, generous COBRA subsidies, and career transition services.
August 4, 2025 at 1:45 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
a screenshot of a google search for "philabieldia," the game of a continent in a new game from square enix. google returns "these are the results for philadelphia." philabieldia
July 31, 2025 at 2:23 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
Also of note: Collective Shout previously told WIRED they'd had “no communication with payment processors” outside of an open letter. In a blog posted July 28, however, Collective Shout says it “approached payment processors because Steam did not respond to us.” www.wired.com/story/gamers...
In a previous statement to WIRED, Collective Shout campaigns manager Caitlin Roper said the organization had had “no communication with payment processors” outside of an open letter. In a blog posted July 28, however, Collective Shout says it “approached payment processors because Steam did not respond to us.” Corcoran told WIRED that Collective Shout had not spoken to Itch.
July 30, 2025 at 8:52 PM
megannicolett.bsky.social
Consume Me devs @qdork.bsky.social and‪ @apthomson.bsky.social say Collective Shout's mission to protect women and girls is doing the opposite. "Their actions here mainly serve to cut off income streams for adult content creators, many of them women.” www.wired.com/story/steam-...
In a joint email statement to WIRED, Consume Me developers Jenny Jiao Hsia and AP Thomson say that although they expect their game will be reinstated, it is “completely unacceptable that payment processors are conducting censorship-by-fiat and systematically locking adult content creators out of platforms like Itch where they can be fairly compensated for their work.” Hsia and Thomson say that doing so at the behest of groups like Collective Shout “should raise many alarm bells, especially since the position of these right-wing groups is often that ANY LGBTQ+ content is ‘adult’ by default.”
July 25, 2025 at 12:41 AM
megannicolett.bsky.social
Collective Shout says it is “not looking to ban any instances of explicit or adult content, and we did not do that here.” on Itch, however, impacted games include an award-winning game about navigating disordered eating, and another about healing from domestic abuse www.wired.com/story/steam-...
Roper says that claims of freedom of speech violations are being used “as a defense of misogyny and male violence” against women. “I don’t think men’s ‘speech’ should trump the rights of women and girls,” Roper says. “Violence and dehumanization of women should not be acceptable outcomes of free speech. We also have to consider whose voices are being heard, and whose are being silenced. Does free speech apply to women, to survivors of rape and sexual assault? Do we have a right to object to speech that promotes and normalizes violence against us?”
July 25, 2025 at 12:37 AM
megannicolett.bsky.social
Pressuring payment processors is a powerful tactic to sidestep a company like Valve or Itch's control of their own platform. “...They're able to effectively censor [content] by debanking it,” says @mikestabile.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/steam-...
Payment processors are powerful arbiters in deciding what companies can sell. Even private companies like Valve and Itch could face major blowback if companies like Visa and Mastercard suddenly disallowed the platforms from using their services. According to Mike Stabile, policy director at Free Speech Coalition, targeting financial institutions is a fast way for people on both sides to lose something, whether it’s access to a product or their livelihoods. “When they allow payment processors to make these decisions—when they don't fight back or defend their creators, what they're actually allowing are the anti-porn groups and the anti-LGBT groups to make those decisions,” Stabile says.
July 25, 2025 at 12:35 AM
megannicolett.bsky.social
this part from jason's article about hinge specifically trying to outmaneuver maniacs sorry power users is so good www.wired.com/story/yearne...
Last September, following an account WIRED published about a notorious Hinge power user who went on 200 dates, the company introduced Your Turn Limits, a feature that required users with eight or more connections waiting on their response to take action before making new ones. According to Hinge, 48 percent of users who tried the feature during a testing phase said that it helped to facilitate quality over quantity dating.
July 8, 2025 at 2:47 PM