The use of AI companions is no longer niche behavior but has become embedded in mainstream teenage life, according to a new report.
A nationally representative survey of 1,060 teens ages 13 to 17, conducted in April and May 2025 by Common Sense Mediaa U.S.-based advocacy and research nonprofitfound that 72% have used AI companions at least once, and more than half qualify as regular users. Of those surveyed, 13% are daily users.
For the purposes of the research, “AI companions” were defined as “digital friends or characters you can text or talk with whenever you want.” This includes apps specifically designed as AI companions, such as Character.AI, Nomi, and Replika, as well as tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, which, though not built for companionship, are frequently used in that way.
According to the survey, most teens are taking a pragmatic approach to these tools rather than treating them as replacements for real-life relationships. Nearly half said they view AI companions mainly as tools or programs, while 33% avoid them entirely. However, a third said they engage with AI companions for social interaction and relationships, including role-playing and practicing conversations. Others said theyve sought emotional support, friendship, and even romantic connections with AI.
Entertainment and curiosity are the primary drivers of use among teens, though a smaller number rely on AI companions for advice, appreciating their constant availability and nonjudgmental responses.
Michael Robb, head of research at Common Sense Media, expressed concern over one particular finding: 31% of teens said their conversations with AI companions are as satisfyingor more satisfyingthan those with other people. A third have discussed serious and important issues with AI companions instead of humans, and 12% said they share things they wouldnt tell friends or family.
From a developmental perspective, teens are still learning the tricky and sometimes uncomfortable skills of human relationships like handling disagreements, reading subtle social cues, and learning to understand others’ perspectives, Robb tells Fast Company. AI companions are specifically designed to be agreeable and validating. They tell teens what they want to hear rather than what they might need to hear from someone in their real life.
A separate safety assessment published earlier this year by Common Sense and Stanford University’s Brainstorm Lab warned that no AI companion is safe for kids younger than 18. Although most platforms technically forbid minorsexcept for Character.AI, which rates its service as safe for ages 13 and upage verification processes are often easy to bypass.
For now, most teens still prefer people to bots. According to the recent report, 80% of AI companion users spend more time with real friends than with AI. Just 6% said they spend more time with AI companions than peers, while 13% spend about equal time with both.
The fact that half of teens express skepticism about AI companion information shows they may be using their critical thinking, Robb says. Though additional digital literacy education could certainly make that number larger.
PepsiCo reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue in the second quarter despite sluggish North American sales.Sales of Frito-Lay and other snacks fell 1% in North America during the April-June period, PepsiCo said Thursday, while beverage sales were down 2% in the region. But sales rose in some other regions, including Latin America and Asia.Revenue rose less than 1% to $22.7 billion in the April-June period. That was higher than the $22.3 billion Wall Street forecast, according to analysts polled by FactSet.PepsiCo’s net income fell 59% to $1.3 billion. Adjusted for one-time items, PepsiCo earned $2.12 per share. That was also higher than the $2.03 analysts forecast.PepsiCo shares rose more than 2% in premarket trading Thursday.PepsiCo lowered its full-year earnings expectations in April, citing increased costs from tariffs and a pullback in consumer spending. The company reaffirmed that guidance Thursday.Its tariff costs have risen since then. In June, the Trump administration hiked the tariff on imported aluminum from 25% to 50%.
Dee-Ann Durbin, AP Business Writer
The summer of 2025 hasnt been a good one when it comes to job security in the tech industry.
Since May, tens of thousands of technology workers have lost their jobs. In May, that included workers from Panasonic, Match Group, Google, and CrowdStrike. In June, layoffs affected employees from Microsoft, Disney, Bumble, and other companies.
Unfortunately, July 2025 is turning out to be no different when it comes to layoffs from big-name tech companies. Here are some of the biggest names in tech that have laid off workers since this month began.
Microsoft
Without a doubt, the worst layoffs news this month came from Microsoft. In June, the company conducted two rounds of layoffs, including in its Xbox division. Those layoffs followed around 6,000 job cuts in May.
But those cuts combined pale in comparison to July.
That’s when Microsoft reportedly said it was cutting up to 9,100 jobs, or about 4% of its workforce. Fast Company reached out to Microsoft for comment.
The cuts are widely seen as a way for the company to reallocate expenditures from labor pay to AI investment as the software giant, like so many other tech companies, pursues artificial intelligence advancement at all costs.
Worse, layoffs can destroy lives, so it’s important that companies handle them with delicacy and care. But thats something Microsoft failed to do.
Many of Microsofts laid-off workers lost their jobs due to Microsofts shift to AI, so it was a kick in the pants when Xbox executive producer Matt Turnbull posted on LinkedIn, just days after the layoffs, that recently laid-off Microsoft employees may want to consider using AI to help with the emotional load of a job loss.
The post was soon deleted after public uproar.
ByteDance
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has a significant workforce presence in Bellevue, Washington, comprising approximately 1,000 employees. But as GeekWire reported on July 7, ByteDance plans to lay off 65 of them. Twenty-seven of those workers will be laid off at ByteDance, while 38 at TikTok will lose their jobs.
The roles are reportedly connected to its e-commerce unit, which includes TikTok Shop.
Fast Company reached out to ByteDance for comment. In a statement confirming the cuts to GeekWire, a TikTok spokesperson said, As the TikTok Shop business evolves, we regularly review our operations to ensure long-term success. Following careful consideration, weve made the difficult decision to adjust parts of our team to better align with strategic priorities.
Intel
After Microsoft, chipmaker Intel is the tech giant that has posted the most job losses in July so far.
As reported by Manufacturing Dive, the company is laying off more than 5,000 workers, with most of those job cuts happening in two states: California and Oregon. Jobs in Texas and Arizona will also be lost.
Its unknown which departments at Intel will be hit the hardest. Fast Company reached out to Intel for comment.
In statement confirming the job cuts to Manufacturing Dive, an Intel spokesperson said, We are taking steps to become a leaner, faster and more efficient company. Removing organizational complexity and empowering our engineers will enable us to better serve the needs of our customers and strengthen our execution.
Like Microsoft and other tech giants, Intel is funneling its financial resources into artificial intelligence. That asset reallocation is likely a driving factor behind the job cuts as the company seeks to cut costs wherever it can.
Glassdoor and Indeed (Recruit Holdings)
On July 11, Recruit Holdings, the Japanese parent company of job sites Glassdoor and Indeed, announced it would be cutting 1,300 employees in its HR Technology segment. That number equates to about 6% of its total workforce.
Again, the shift to artificial intelligence is likely one of the reasons behind the cuts.
In a memo seen by Fast Company, Recruit CEO Hisayuki “Deko” Idekoba said that “AI is changing the world, and we must adapt by ensuring our product delivers truly great experiences for job seekers and employers”.
Lenovo
Consumer PC makers arent immune to layoffs, either. This week, Chinese computer giant Lenovo announced it would be laying off 3% of its full-time U.S. workforce. That equates to about 100 positions, according to The News & Observer.
At least some of the layoffs are expected to affect workers at the companys U.S. headquarters in the North Carolina Triangle area, which includes Raleigh and Durham.
Confirming the layoffs, a Lenovo spokesperson said, We are currently making strategic reductions in some parts of our North American business and will continue to invest and focus on initiatives that accelerate the growth and the overall transformation of the company.
Scale AI
While the industry shift toward artificial intelligence is at least a partially driving factor behind many of the layoffs announced in July, one AI company itself has also announced layoffs.
Scale AI, a fast-growing data annotation companywhich recently received a $14.3 billion investment from Metahas announced it will cut 14% of its workforce, reports CNBC.
Scale AIs business involves adding labels and other markers to the data that is used to train AI. These annotations help AI understand what it is looking at. As part of the deal with Meta, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang will head Metas new artificial intelligence research lab.
The cuts are reportedly being made to reduce excessive bureaucracy at the company after it expanded its generative AI capacity too quickly, according to Scale AIs interim CEO Jason Droege. In a memo to employees, Droege said, These chnges will make us more nimble enabling us to react more quickly to shifts in the market and customer needs.
Fast Company reached out to Scale AI for comment.
80,000 tech workers laid off in 2025 so far
July has so far been a brutal month for tech layoffs, especially thanks to the large numbers of workers laid off from Microsoft, Intel, Indeed, and Glassdoor.
This month’s layoffs add to 2025’s grim total, which now stands at over 80,000 tech workers who have lost their jobs since the year began, according to data from layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi. The 80,000 layoffs came from cuts at 159 tech companies.
To put that 80,000 figure in comparison, it’s about half of the 152,000 tech workers laid off in all of 2024. Given that July is the midway point of the year, it means that, so far, 2025 tech layoffs are on par with layoffs in 2024.
Going back further, the worst year for layoffs recently has been 2023, which saw 264,000 tech workers from 1,193 tech companies lose their jobs.
Cambodia on Wednesday said that an order by Prime Minister Hun Manet for government bodies to crackdown on criminal cybercrime operations being run in the country had resulted in the arrest of more than 1,000 suspects so far this week.Hun Manet issued the order authorising state action for “maintaining and protecting security, public order, and social safety.”“The government has observed that online scams are currently causing threats and insecurity in the world and the region. In Cambodia, foreign criminal groups have also infiltrated to engage in online scams,” Hun Manet’s statement, dated Tuesday, said.The United Nations and other agencies estimate that cyberscams, most of them originating from Southeast Asia, earn international criminal gangs billions of dollars annually.More than 1,000 suspects were arrested in raids in at least five provinces between Monday and Wednesday, according to statements from Information Minister Neth Pheaktra and police.Those detained included more than 200 Vietnamese, 27 Chinese, and 75 suspects from Taiwan and 85 Cambodians in the capital Phnom Penh and the southern city of Sihanoukville. Police also seized equipment, including computers and hundreds of mobile phones.At least 270 Indonesians, including 45 women, were arrested Wednesday in Poipet, a town on the border with Thailand notorious for cyberscam and gambling operations, the minister said. Elsewhere, police in the northeastern province of Kratie arrested 312 people, including nationals of Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar and Vietnam, while 27 people from Vietnam, China and Myanmar were arrested in the western province of Pursat.Amnesty International last month published the findings of an 18-month investigation into cybercrime in Cambodia, which the human rights group said “point towards state complicity in abuses carried out by Chinese criminal gangs.”“The Cambodian government is deliberately ignoring a litany of human rights abuses including slavery, human trafficking, child labor and torture being carried out by criminal gangs on a vast scale in more than 50 scamming compounds located across the country,” it said.Human trafficking is closely associated with cyberscam operations, as workers are often recruited under false pretences and then held captive.“Deceived, trafficked and enslaved, the survivors of these scamming compounds describe being trapped in a living nightmare enlisted in criminal enterprises that are operating with the apparent consent of the Cambodian government,” Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard said.Cambodia’s latest crackdown comes in the midst of a bitter feud with neighboring Thailand, which began with a brief armed skirmish in late May over border territory claimed by both nations and has now led to border closures and nearly daily exchanges of nationalistic insults. Friendly former leaders of both countries have become estranged and there have been hot debates over which nation’s cultural heritage has influenced the other.Measures initiated by the Thai side, including cutting off cross-border electricity supplies and closing crossing points, have particularly heightened tensions, with Cambodia claiming they were churlish actions of spite to retaliate for its intention to pursue its territorial claims. Thailand said its original intention was to combat long-existing cyberscam operations in Poipet.Associated Press writer Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.
Sopheng Cheang, Associated Press
A new set of AI tools is coming to Slack, designed to help users quickly find and utilize information from their chatsand even from data stored in connected business apps.
“It serves as the hub, or your work operating system, to be able to get work done, to make things more productive,” says Slack CEO Denise Dresser.
On July 17, Slack announced the general availability of an enterprise search feature. Users on Enterprise+ plans will now be able to search information from integrated apps like Google Drive, Box, Microsoft Teams, and corporate parent Salesforces systems directly from within the Slack search box.
“Slack is a very natural place to look for things and to initiate that search, because a lot of what prompts people to go look for something is something that happens in Slackeither a notification or a question from somebody in a message, or something you see in a channel that you don’t quite understand, says Rob Seaman, Slack’s chief product officer.
[Image: Courtesy of Slack]
Even within those conversations, users will soon be able to ask AI for help understanding specific messages, such as defining corporate terminology and acronyms or putting messages into the context of a broader discussion. AI will also highlight action items for individual users, helping those with limited time to focus on top priorities.
A language translation feature has also entered general availability for Business+ and higher-tier plans, enabling multilingual teams to ask AI to translate messages into their preferred languages. Users with Pro and higher-level plans can use AI to generate meeting notes from Slack Huddle conversations.
Soon, Slacks AI will even be able to create user profiles, offering insights into team members roles and recent contributionsespecially useful in large organizations.
[Image: Courtesy of Slack]
“We do a lot here to make sure it feels right and doesn’t feel creepy,” Seaman says. “We have it be positive. We have it only access what’s available publicly.”
Slack Canvas, the platforms tool for creating shared documents and collaborative notebooks, will also benefit from AI. The assistant will leverage Slacks conversational data to help with tasks like drafting onboarding documents or turning brainstorming sessions into project briefs.
These updates are part of Slacks broader effort to help users cut through the information overload of modern office life, and to solidify the companys position as the go-to hub for finding information and AI-powered assistance. Dresser says Slack has a head start, given how many people already know and enjoy using it to connect and collaborate.
“The more that people love being there, and they can find what they need to do their job, the more they’re going to want to stay in Slack,” Dresser says.
For many teams, Slack already acts as a central repository of vital information, containing records of key conversations and company updateseven before integrating external data sources. As Dresser points out, the Slack name was originally said to stand for searchable log of all conversation and knowledge, and AI may increasingly help users take action based on that information, or quickly grasp what’s already been discussed.
[Image: Courtesy of Slack]
“You search for information, you’re able to very quickly then take action right in the flow of work on that information so you don’t have to go somewhere else,” Dresser says.
Slacks business customers also trust its security and privacy models. Many already integrate Slack with other apps, including to enable communication with AI bots and agents. Even as new AI features roll out, Slack emphasizes that it wont use customer data to train new AI models, and that its systems will only access information a user already has permission to see.
Slack, which began introducing AI features about 18 months ago, also ensures that AI responses include citations, such as links to relevant chats. This transparency could give Slack an edge over other AI tools that lack easy access to internal knowledge.
As Dresser says, We really do think between being trained on your Slack corpus and seeing the citations, it’s been a huge benefit.”
How much is a brand name worth if it’s well known, but only because of its failures? For the botched music festival Fyre Festival, it’s nearly a quarter of a million dollars.
The Fyre Festival brand sold for $245,300 on eBay Tuesday after 42 bidders made 175 bids. The sale includes rights to all trademarks, intellectual property, and social media assets associated with Fyre Fest, according to the listing. Although Fyre Fest founder Billy McFarland didn’t think the sale price was high enough (“This sucks, its so low,” he said on a livestream), it proved that even without actually ever putting on a successful music festival, there was some value in the rights to his trademarks and IP. McFarland congratulated the buyer in a Notes App statement posted to Instagram and said he would “begin the process to finalize the sale.”
As splintering media has made attention harder to capture and scrambled traditional publicity and marketing plans, some have turned to purchasing discounted brand names in hopes of buying themselves a shortcut. Fyre Fest might be a punchline, but since people already know what it is, it’s also a starting point that a new owner can use as a launch pad.
[Screenshot: eBay]
“Someone paid $245k, so that establishes its value,” David Reibstein, a William Stewart Woodside professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, tells Fast Company in an email. One thing Fyre Fest has going for it is “its level of awareness, despite its baggage, and that cannot be overlooked,” he says.
Enron, the energy company that went bankrupt in 2001, was bought by the organizers of “Birds Aren’t Real” to sell a parody product, and in March, an AI company bought Napster for $207 million and used the brand to launch a platform with “AI companions.” McFarland didn’t say who the Fyre Fest buyer is, but he did say, “it’s funny.” Whatever the new owner intends to do with it, they’ll get extra attention at least for the name.
Since Fyre Fest is more meme than a brand, “its value isnt in social media followers or brand equity,” says Emily Day, a strategist at Mother LA, but cultural shorthand. McFarland said in a letter he put the brand up for sale as part of an attempt to make things right and pay back investors. Rather than go forward with a planned Fyre Festival 2, he said selling the brand for parts was the best way to accomplish that. His brand’s nearly quarter-of-a-million-dollar purchase price, though, isn’t enough to pay off all the $26 million he scammed investors of. Fyre Fest ticket holders also won $7,220 each in a 2021 class-action settlement.
“Fyre is one of the most powerful attention engines in the world,” he wrote, citing the documentaries and headlines the festival inspired. Fyre Fest was no good as a festival. As a meme, though, it was great.
In 1995, a familiar experience sat at the center of many peoples first experiences with the dial-up internet: the chance to create something for themselves.
Along with the access to the World Wide Web, Telnet, and Usenet newsgroups, many users were given a few megabytes on their ISPs FTP server to share whateverrecipes, pictures, creative projects, any weird thing that came to mind. Other people created personal sites using third-party providers such as GeoCities, AngelFire, and Tripod. If you knew a little HTML, you could suddenly express yourself however you wanted. It was the personal home page era of the internet, a slice of life that feels quaint in an era of constant social engagement and monetization.
Most of these sites are forgotten to history, too obscure for even the Internet Archive. But a lucky few made it to the present day.
Tom Fulp owns one of those pages. You might have heard of it. Today, its called Newgrounds, but it started life as a site called New Ground Remix. When Fulp, a one-time zine-maker who got online in 1995 landed on an ISP called Fastnet, he found its hosted website feature to be the most appealing part.
This story is part of 1995 Week, where well revisit some of the most interesting, unexpected, and confounding developments in tech 30 years ago.
I thought it was awesome that you could make a page full of stuff and anyone could come see it, he says. It was a little rocky getting goingthis was the era when Netscape and Internet Explorer often rendered pages wildly differently. Nonetheless, he jumped in with both feet.
Newgrounds as it appeared in 1996, when it was still known as New Ground Remix.
Even knowing how they worked, there would still be unique challenges that kept cropping up while trying to get everything to look how you wanted it, he says.
Newgrounds Flash of success
At first, it wasnt a particularly serious thing. Fulp went off to college, where he didnt have access to his hosting space and therefore couldnt update it. But when he got back to it, he made the most of his site, which he used to create point-and-click web games using his budding HTML skills. And those games started to gain attention.
One of them, Assassin, became a huge hit. Essentially, the idea of the game was that you could let off steam by killing a celebrity you didnt like. All the popular-to-dislike celebrities of the eraBarney, Britney Spears, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, the Backstreet Boysmade appearances. But some of them were completely off the beaten path. Hate Bil Keane, the creator of newspaper comics staple The Family Circus? So did Fulp, apparently.
There was no plan to promote it, people somehow found it, he says.
One of those people was a producer for the TV show Inside Edition, which was considering doing a story about the Assassin game and reached out to Fulp. What could have been problematicwhile the games many variants are clearly satirical, this was notably during an era of high awareness of school shootingsturned out to be a blessing in disguise.
They wanted to feature the site on TV, at which point I knew I had to get a domain name, so people could remember the web address, he says. Newgrounds never ended up being featured on Inside
Edition, but once it had a domain name, it started spreading even faster.
The final missing piece of the puzzle for Newgrounds to become a cultural phenomenon? Macromedia Flash. When Fulp picked up the animation technology in 1998, I knew I was on to something.
By 2000, Fulp had incorporated Newgrounds and hired a friend, Ross Snyder, to build a portal that allowed other people to easily upload Flash animationsan innovative feature at the time, predicting the later success of YouTube.
Quickly, Flash animations like 2001s Xiao Xiao No. 3, which featured dozens of stick figures in a seemingly never-ending kung fu battle, came to dominate internet culture. Later animations built by groups of creators extended the concept even further.
On Newgrounds, you could find people to collaborate with and create something bigger than you ever possibly could on your own, said Roger Barr, the founder of the humor site I-Mockery and a longtime Newgrounds member. And that was the real draw to me, because I’ve always been a collaborative person. I love working with people. I find it exciting. I find it elevates any project if you have people who are genuinely interested in it.
A great example of this is The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, the most popular Newgrounds video of all time. The animation had music from Neil Cicierega, who developed the surrealistic Animutation style as a teenager and later became a popular comedy musician. Meanwhile, the animation itself was developed by Shawn Vulliez, who worked on it when he was just 14.
But there are many, many animations and Flash games on the Newgrounds site. And while Flash may be long gone, Fulp said the platform put in the work to keep the animations working.
When asked about Flashs influence on the platform, Fulp is careful not to lean too hard on where it eventually led.
Flash was the tool, but the real point of Newgrounds is that its fun to make and share things on the internet, he says. Weve been working to hold on to that culture and maintain a focus on art made by artists.
It was a hub of Flash animation, sure, but it was also a community. And the nice thing about communities is that youre never really alone.
Popular, but edgy
The early 2000s were a Renaissance period for ground-up content sites like Newgrounds. It was part of a group of humor sites founded in the 90s that had an outsize impact on internet culture. Some of them faded into history, but othersNewgrounds, Fark, Something Awful, and I-Mockeryremain online decades after their key period of relevance.
Each started in similar waysas, essentially, larks by their founders that accidentally turned into real businesses. (I-Mockerys Barr, for example, registered his domain after constantly running into storage limits on GeoCities, while Fark, a domain registered because for-letter domains are rare, initially featured a provocative image of a squirrel.) And they all kind of succeeded together.
Fark in 2000
A key reason for that is that they cross-promoted one another. It was common to see Fark link to Newgrounds, for example, and Barr was so associated with Newgrounds culture that Newgrounds acquires I-Mockery was an April Fools’ joke one year. Fark founder Drew Curtis said it became something of a symbiotic strategy, and even led to unusual situations where his site gained a large Swedish audience because he frequently linked to a Swedish site.
Anytime we did that, we actually ended up growing each others audience, Curtis says.
And these site owners knew one another personally. When I talked to him for this piece, Curtis regaled me with stories of his long-ago interactions with Richard Lowtax Kyanka, Something Awfuls late founder, for example. Barr and Fulp, meanwhile, went to the same school at different times, reconnecting later in life thanks to their respective online presences.
I-Mockery in 2000
These sites werent corporate, which kind of cut both ways. Newgrounds most popular Flash videos were often cartoonishly violent, which did not make it easy to win over advertisersor keep them.
Ill always remember this one day [when] I got notified we were being dropped by our ad company, right before I left for class, Fulp recalls. I had to sit in a lecture hall for an hour thinking about how I was going to pay the next $1,000 bill.
(Fulp ultimately teamed with an ad network run by the independent film studio Troma Entertainment, though the ad network concept didnt last forever.)
It wasnt a unique problemboth Curtis and Barr expressed similar challenges related to advertising and their content. Curtis noted Fark was on difficult-to-shake advertising block lists, but the situation improved over time. Oddly, what was edgy in 2005 doesnt feel so off-kilter in 2025.
Whats funny now is like, we really havent changed, but everybody else here has, he says. I mean, they went flying right past us.
The roots of community
While lots of people found Newgrounds thanks to popular Flash animations like Salad Fingers or the Animator vs. Animation series, what kept them thereand at many similar siteswas the power of community. If you put the effort into the community, there was a real chance it could give back in a big way.
There has always been a strong emphasis on collaboration, which has brought a lot of people together over the years and strengthened the bonds of the community, Fulp says.
Those connections proved essential to both Fulp and Barr, both of whom now work professionally in the video game industry. Fulp, who started his platform by creating a series of point-and-click games using just HTML, accidentally created a farm system for a generation of indie game developers.
We’re really for the fun of it, but Tom started like sponsoring people, Barr recalls. And he would put up money for monthly contests, where you would win money and just getting any kind of payment for something that you created. I think that kind of put the little a little seed in people’s minds that, Hey, maybe I could actually do this for a living later on.
Newgrounds users later developed hit games such as Super Meat Boy and Among Us. Reflecting this, Fulp won a Pioneer Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2021.
Newgrounds success inspired real-life friendships and interactions that go deeper than your average social network. Fulp says Newgrounds fans became a major fixture at San Diego Comic-Con.
This inspired an annual party at the NG office, with hundreds of artists making the trip each year, Fulp says. I stopped doing the parties, because they were gonna get out of control if they kept growing. But they have always stood out as special moments, where Id step back and realize how many amazing people were touched by the site.
From a social media perspective, it was almost as if sites like Newgrounds and its friendly competitors had cracked the code for how to build online communities. The business model for Something Awfuls forums, for example, which required banned users to pay money to rejoin, still stands out as one of the more intriguing online-community business models. (Imagine having to do that on X!)
In Farks case, Curtis says, his knowledge of how to build a long-running community has led to friendships with leaders at modern community platforms like Reddit.
One of the massive mistakes we made early on was so you create the site, you create the community, and they’re like, We got some bad actors, didnt expect this to happen, Curtis says. So you kind of built it as an afterthought. But the real problem here, and we all screwed this up. This moderation is actually the product. And I didnt even realize that until 15 years down the road.
(Side note: Curtis ran an ISP during the late 90s. Fark turned out to be his soft landing after the dial-up internet business fell apart.)
Part of what might have made these communities stickier might have had something to do with the fact that nobody was making money, except maybe, after vast amounts of work, the people who owned the sites.
In 2025, theres a genuine expectation that when you build something, its likely to come with a business model. That leads to things like peacocking on social media on the hunt for additional followers or traffic.
That wasnt true with these earlier online communities. Curtis says the lack of internet points really stands out to people who use Fark, to the point where Gen-Z users read it as an alternative to social media. And, according to Barr, all the great creations on I-Mockery and Newgrounds came from people who had no real expectation of even getting paid.
There wasnt influencer culture or anything, where studios are sending all kinds f freebies, in hopes that theyll promote it, or paying them ungodly amounts of money and stuff, Barr says.
Disrupted, but still hanging on
This is likely the least controversial take in tech history, but things change, and the disruption can leave even online stalwarts at a loss.
Newgrounds is no exceptionand it got disrupted in multiple directions. It was weakened not only by the decline of Flash, which made it difficult for the site to find footing in the mobile world, but by the rise of YouTube as a sustainable lifestyle. Creators started to care more about making money from their work. Worse, an open-source tool Newgrounds had created made it easier for those users to leave.
By the time things began to get messy, Newgrounds had started to support its creators financially. It added support for Flash-based ads in 2008, and even a revenue-sharing program. But the combination of disruptions, mixed with a cratering ad market, ultimately left the platform struggling to stay afloat.
When asked if he ever felt any motivation to take a break, Fulp noted that when he felt that tug to stopsay, a big life change, like having a kidhe always felt the desire to keep the site he built online. He knew he would miss it if it wasnt there.
I kept going, but it often felt like the world didnt care, he says. Over time, it started to feel like people cared again. Maybe not the world, but enough to keep going!
Likewise, Roger Barr has kept I-Mockery online, but a personal loss ended up sidelining him, something he has been transparent about on his website.
But he noted that one thing that differentiates sites like Newgrounds and I-Mockery from most of their contemporaries is that they never sold out. Sure, the acquisition offers were always there. Newgrounds was prominent enough at its peak that it could have sold for millions of dollars. But many sites that werent, says Barr, likely sold for tens of thousands of dollars.
Yeah. Those sites are gone, all those articles, everything, The only thing we have to look up now is the Internet Archive. You can look back on those things. The sites themselves are gone, and that’s a sad thing that people would sell out for that.
In other words, the reason we can celebrate the 30th anniversary of Newgrounds is because Cracked or College Humor never owned it. Instead, the guy who founded it on some random server space in 1995 does.
But Fulp feels that pressure. He says he still receives periodic offers for the site, which hes been running at a loss, but funding through sales of his various games, such as the forthcoming Nightmare Cops. He admits that, while hes avoided the temptation so far, staying independent isnt easy at this juncture.
Depending on how things go on my end, there might come a day where I need to either close it or sell it out of personal desperation, he says. Im trying to avoid that outcome, though.
Fark, which long ago diversified its revenue streams, has held on better than most other legacy platforms of its nature. (Helping things: the site is famously based in Kentucky, where Curtis once ran for governor, and benefits from a lower cost of living.) But Curtis understands the pressure. He has some simple advice that applies to Newgrounds, but also to every other site you might love.
Everybody needs to subscribe to them immediately, he says. Newgrounds will live another 50 years if literally a thousand people go and subscribe right now.
Its not easy to keep a thing alive forever, even one as fundamental to the rise of the internet as Newgrounds. But godspeed for trying.
Bill Gates recently sounded the alarm: with massive cuts to foreign aid, global child mortality is set to risefor the first time in decades. Since the Trump era, more than 80% of USAID contracts have been slashed, and the shortfall is being felt across the worlds most vulnerable communities.
As a result, there is an urgent need to address how global issues are tackled, making the private philanthropic sector more important than ever.
Its tempting to assume that philanthropy should simply step in and focus on filling the gap. But that in my view would be a mistake, and a missed opportunity.
Philanthropy, at its best, isnt built to replace government-scale aid. Its real potential lies in its agency to take a longer term view and absorb risk needed to tackle the seemingly intractable issues we face. And in this moment of global disruption, thats needed more than ever.
There is a real danger that the primary focus of philanthropic funding pivots towards being a backstop for foreign aid. My fear is that this new role detracts from the real power of philanthropy, which lies in its ability to tackle systemic issues by funding the radical innovation needed to deliver more equitable futures.
A moment for philanthropy to embrace breakthroughs
Philanthropy is at a crossroads. Traditional models of giving are no longer sufficient to address the complex global challenges we face and the uncertain times we live in. At the same time, too few philanthropists understand their potential in helping tackle them.
Let me be clear: I am not criticizing philanthropys storied history. Philanthropists should be proud to be part of a tradition that has had many successes since the Industrial Revolution. Private donors have helped to fund important social advancesfrom the near-eradication of polio to womens liberation and equal marriage.
Now, as we face rising uncertainty, is the moment for philanthropy to step up and embrace its true superpower: the ability to embrace risk to make breakthroughs. The ability to commit beyond just signing checks. A commitment that also requires time, perseverance, and expertise.
A time for a new mindset
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy called upon his fellow countrymen to put a man on the moon by the end of that decade.
As I look at the challenges we face globally, the solutions look just as far away from our reach as the moon did to Kennedy. Today, I do not believe that voters and taxpayers would be as accepting of such a bold and audacious goal.
At the same time many global corporations, some with more capital than nation states, recognize their potential to contribute to tackling the worlds greatest challenges. They are stepping up, making huge risky investments in potentially profitable, transformative ideas. But their obligation to deliver shareholder returns leaves little room to deliver the high-risk, transformative work where its desperately needed.
We need to change our thinking about who delivers that change and how its done. Systems change philanthropy can play that role, but only if philanthropists with the passion, resilience, and risk appetite are encouraged to use their capital for transformative impact. It is this superpower that will enable philanthropy to privatize and absorb the cost of failures, but also socialize its success for the good of all.
A partnership, not a substitution
Philanthropy has the power to change the tide and create the conditions for larger institutions to act. They dont replace those institutions; they inspire, enable, and de-risk their intervention; it is philanthropists strategic collaboration with partners, experts, and convening institutions that can ensure targeted and effective action.
My work has focused on tackling the issue of uncorrected poor vision, which affects 2.2 billion people globallya mission that has been at the heart of my philanthropy for the last two decades. For the first decade, my focus was on delivering universal vision correction to the nation of Rwanda. While we achieved our goal, after a long-term effort by a team that included a funder, many partners, and all kinds of experts, correcting poor vision remained a low-priority health issue on the global agenda.
This resulted in transforming one countrys healthcare system. But change cant happen one country at a time. Without institutional support, I quickly realized that philanthropy would not make enough of a dent in solving the global poor vision challenge. It misses the point of what each does best.
Its about the legitimacy, scale, and convening power that governments possess. When a government or international organization commits to a cause, it signals to the world that this issue matters at the highest levels of policy and diplomacy.
Our global vision campaign, Clearly, was born out of this realization. And it was the inflection point achieved by lobbying the UN to shift its thinking, from vision correction being a low priority health silo issue to being recognized as a high-priority development issue, that led to a resolution committing every country to “eyecare for all” by 2030.
By taking the risk to reframe vision correction, it created the evidence base and political momentum that governments needed to act. This is the model for philanthropys future: creating breakthroughs that make government intervention more effective.
Philanthropy cannot be a stopgapbut it can kick-start a revolution to address the worlds biggest challenges.
Roblox, the popular online gaming and social platform among kids and teens, is introducing new chat features for users ages 13 and up, allowing them to connect more directly with trusted real-life friends.
Previously, Roblox categorized all connections equally. Now, the platform is adding a new classification called “trusted connections,” intended for users who know each other outside of Roblox. Verified users 13 and oldertypically through a new video-based age estimation system developed with identity verification company Personawill be able to engage in what the company refers to as unfiltered chat sessions with these trusted contacts. While these voice and text conversations will still be monitored for harmful behavior, they will not support video or photo sharing.
“This makes Roblox the only major platform that will require age verification, like facial age estimation, in order to use private voice or unfiltered chat,” says Ryan Ebanks, principal product manager for social products at Roblox.
Age verification is becoming more common across digital platforms. Reddit, for example, recently implemented Persona-powered age verification for users accessing adult content in the UK. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Texas law requiring age verification for adult online content. Roblox users can also verify their age by using an official ID, and the company plans to allow parents to verify their children’s ages in the future.
These efforts are part of Robloxs broader initiative to maintain its appeal among youth and parents while ensuring the platform remains safeespecially in light of high-profile incidents involving predatory behavior and inappropriate and violent content. Despite controversies, Roblox continues to thrive: As of May, its first-quarter revenue rose 29% year over year, to $1.035 billion, and daily active users climbed 26%, to 97.8 million.
Allowing unfiltered chats with trusted connections may enhance safety, Ebanks suggests, by discouraging teens from taking conversations to external platforms with weaker safeguards. Roblox will also provide teens with additional guidance on blocking and reporting unwanted interactions.
Users younger than 18 can only add adults as trusted connections if they can confirm a real-life relationshipcurrently by syncing phone contacts or scanning a QR code in person, with safeguards to ensure proper usage.
Parents who link their Roblox accounts to their teens will gain more visibility into their childrens activity. Theyll be able to see their kids connections, including which are trusted; track time spent on the platform; monitor top games played; and configure notifications for financial transactions.
“We know that parents are extremely busy, and so we’ve designed these to really be quick at-a-glance insights that parents can hopefully fit into their busy schedules,” says Dina Lamdany, senior product manager at Roblox.
Teens over 13 will also be able to view their own screen time, set daily limits, activate do-not-disturb periods, and better manage who can see their online status.
“We’ve heard directly from teens that they’re really nervous about being too visible online,” Lamdany says. She adds that some developers are even looking forward to logging in without appearing visible to others.
These new features reflect Robloxs broader effort to address challenges common to online platforms, such as managing screen time and reducing unwanted communicationwhile also dealing with the unique responsibilities of serving a young user base.
In recent years, Roblox has introduced content tailored to older users, including edgier experiences for those 17 and older, while continuing to invest in educational and safety-focused content for younger players.
“Our goal is that Roblox matures with youthat you can start playing and learning when you’re 7, and you can stay on the platform until you’re in your 70sbut that the experience you have on Roblox will really adapt and be customized to meet you where you are,” Lamdany says.
Few traits are more celebrated than self-awareness, broadly defined as the ability to know or understand yourself.
And yet, self-awareness is surprisingly rare. Perhaps this is why we worship and cherish it so much, precisely because it doesnt exist in abundance. Like punctual trains or humble leaders, its absence only seems to increase our collective obsession with it.
In fact, evolutionary psychologists have a persuasive explanation: there are clear survival advantages to not knowing yourself, especially your limitations (or as corporate HR calls them, development opportunities). After all, if you truly knew how incompetent you were, you might never leave your bed, let alone apply for that senior leadership role.
Consider this: if you are unaware of your shortcomings, you will convince others (and sometimes yourself) that you are better than you really are. Robert Trivers, in The Folly of Fools, showed how self-deception can be a social weapon: delusions of grandeur are not just self-fulfilling, they are contagious.
Striking a balance
Imagine Donald Trump interviewing for a job in a parallel universe where reality mattered. In a rational world, interviewers would calmly examine whether his self-belief is grounded in facts or fantasy. But in our actual world, we cant even agree whether hes a genius or a fraud: a branding visionary or a human Twitter thread.
Similarly, a lack of awareness about actual risks can make you seem invincible. When you confidently stroll into a crisis like a contestant on The Apprentice saying failure was not an option, people might just believe you. We mistake certainty for competence all the time, which is why some tech founders get billions for half-built prototypes, while self-aware geniuses write brilliant Medium posts that no one reads.
So yes, you can be too self-aware. Theres a fine line between humility and shooting yourself in the foot with a spreadsheet of your flaws. Worse still, in a world where everyone exaggerates their strengths, honesty gets mistaken for incompetence. Just like in a CV, even if you’re meticulously truthful, employers assume you’re inflating your achievements like everyone else. So when you list “basic Excel” under skills, they read “struggles with double-clicking.” Ironically, that means the only way to be taken seriously is to overstate, or risk being underestimated by default. So how do you strike the balance?
The secret lies in cultivating internal self-awareness (a sober and honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses) while externally projecting just enough confident swagger to not seem like you’re narrating your own therapy session. Think of it as executive peacocking with emotional intelligence. It is better to be internally insecure and externally overconfident, than vice-versa.
That said, because others are only able to judge your behavior, what matters is the image you project, irrespective of whether it is authentic or not, a sincere reflection of your self-concept or not, and based on your actual self-awareness or not. To be sure, there are more opportunities to succeed when you show overconfidence than self-awareness in real-life interactions.
Some examples?
Job interviews: The self-aware candidate says, Im still learning how to delegate. The blissfully deluded one says, Im a natural leaderpeople just follow me. Guess who gets hired?
Team meetings: The self-aware person says, Im not sure I have the answer. The oblivious one says, Lets pivot and disrupt the value chain. Guess who ends up presenting to the board? (Sad, yes, but true).
LinkedIn bios: The self-aware write curious, collaborative learner. The deluded write visionary thought leader, growth hacker, empathy-driven unicorn wrangler. Guess who gets invited to speak at Davos? There seems to be no limits to the grandiosity of absurd titles people pick to describe their skills and roles on social media: Digital Overlord, Creator of Happiness, Change Magician, and Accounting Ninja. Ridiculous, yes, but if you go with the modest, accurate versions, namely IT Manager, Customer Service Representative, Organizational Change Consultant, and Financial Analyst, no one will care, remember, or be remotely impressed. Youll vanish into the LinkedIn void, right between results-oriented team player and passionate about stakeholder alignment.
Can you fake confidence without deceiving yourself?
Absolutely. In other words, you dont have to fool yourself to fool others. Thats the magic trick (and downfall) of the modern workplace.
Ultimately, true self-awareness isnt about navel-gazing or confessionals. Its about calibrating your self-image with feedback, especially from people who arent your mum, your dog, or your Instagram followers. Its learning to see yourself as others see you, and then using that insight to pretend youre just a little better than you actually are.
And if that sounds manipulative?
Congratulations. You’re self-aware.
Authenticity as performance
In my forthcoming book Dont Be Yourself, I argue that success depends less on being authentic than on knowing which version of yourself to perform when the spotlights on.
Of course, not everyone wants to perform. We live in a culture that fetishizes authenticity, as if our raw, unedited selves are always lovable, competent, and fit for public consumption. But the truth is that authenticity is a performance, too. Its just one thats more likely to make others uncomfortable, especially in professional settings.
Imagine walking into a boardroom and sharing your unfiltered feelings about imposter syndrome, your recent therapy breakthrough, or your deep existential dread about the company’s mission. Thats honest. Thats authentic. Thats also a good way to get sidelined, labeled not a team player, or, worse of all, not executive material.
Meanwhile, the person who polished their self-narrative, rehearsed their strategic humility, and remembered to nod empathetically at the right moments will likely be promoted. Why? Because they played the partand in most high-stakes contexts, playing the part matters more than being the part.
Impression management
This is not cynicism. This is the reality of impression management, which is not only a survival skill but a professional superpower. In line, meta-analytic research suggests that emotional intelligence is basically impression management or faking good! Your career is less about who you are and more about how convincingly you can simulate the traits others value. Charisma, gravitas, confidence, these are often more influential than competence. Especially if youre a man. Or tall. Or attractive. Or all of the above. It isnt fair, or rational, or beneficial to the world . . . but it is what it is.
The good news? You can learn this. You can learn to observe how youre seen, to script your strengths, to soft-focus your weaknesses, and to curate the version of you that fits the room you’re in. This isnt selling out. This is growing up. Its understanding that success is not about being true to yourself, but about being true to your potentialand potential, like beauty, is always in the eye of the beholder.
So yes, be self-aware. But not so self-aware that you become a philosopher when the job calls for a salesperson, an HR business partner, or a procurement officer. Learn which parts of you to mute, which ones to dial up, and which ones to save for your therapist. That, ironically, is the most authentic thing you can do.
After all, the workplace isnt a confessional. Its a stage. As the great Erving Goffman noted, We are all just actors trying to control and manage our public image. We act based on how others might see us.
