senior culture writer @wired. ONE BAD MOTHER, my book about bad moms, out now: amazon.com/dp/1668051117?lv=…
New York, NY
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Maddie Kowalski was 19 years old when anonymous men on X posted a pornographic video of her without her consent. It went viral nationally, and was viewed 8.5 million times.
For months, she had no idea who did it or why. So she made it her mission to find out. 🧵
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Not only would I be comfortable with a furry pilot, I would vastly prefer it
Just a few weeks ago at the “Furry Migration” convention in Minneapolis, there was an “Aviation Furs Meet-up.”
Ask yourself… would you be comfortable with a MENTALLY ILL FURRY being your pilot?
furrymigration.org/schedule/
Community note
Airline pilots must meet 1st-class medical requirements; being a part of the furry fandom or playing dress-up is not listed in 14 CFR 67.107(c) as a disqualifier. Hiring is entirely merit-based per OpSpec A134; airlines will hire whomever is qualified and certified.
ecfr.gov/current/title-…
faa.gov/documentLibrar…
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if you are a furry who works in the air travel industry, please DM me. I am not joking
TOMMY TUBERVILLE WARNS THAT “MANY” PILOTS, FLIGHT ATTENDANTS AND AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS ARE FURRIES: “Lord help us. It’s terrifying when you think about this.”
Tuberville claimed on the Senate floor that airline workers being part of the furry community poses a danger to passengers, saying a pilot “could have a deranged fetish of dressing up like an animal.”
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(for context: I've reported on the fandom in the past, and furries are BY FAR the nicest and most welcoming internet community) rollingstone.com/culture/cul…
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EXCLUSIVE: You know that BookTok smut-themed scare zone at SeaWorld that's going viral? I talked to the art director who came up with the idea. "I remember texting my manager being like, 'Don't judge me, but I have an idea,'" she told @WIRED.
Full interview (and yes, she talks about the spraytanned abs) below: wired.com/story/seaworld-wan…
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At noon EST/9 PST I’ll be streaming with @sandraupson and @LaurenGoode to talk about the most recent @WIRED women’s issue! We’ll be chatting about women in Silicon Valley. I’ll probably throw around a few cusses. Come join us! wired.com/story/livestream-w…
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ej retweeted
"The plan? Create a lore so complicated and bewildering that the Western Massachusetts lesbian bar currently hemorrhaging money recoups its losses by becoming an attraction for disbelieving tourists."
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does anyone have the footage from the Zoom meeting for the lesbian long Covid bar? asking for a friend
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The @WIRED headline team simply cannot be beat wired.com/story/emma-waters-…
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Normalize being thoughtful and introspective and taking accountability for your mistakes in a way that can help others learn from them as well
People are dragging Nikole Hannah-Jones for this, but I think this piece is incredible. Trying to live your values, discovering it’s not working and having an open conversation with your kid about that is eminently laudable — Pubbing about it even more so. nytimes.com/2026/09/20/magaz…
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loled throughout this interview with Tilly Norwood, "the world's first AI actress? wired.com/story/ai-actor-til…
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There are a lot of reasonable critiques to be made about this woman, but her sexualizing herself in exactly the same way the culture insists on objectifying her is not one of them
I don’t think the Sydney Sweeney ad sets women back as much as it highlights a regression of young men at an exponential pace. Of course the move is to target online porn addicted boys on addictive algorithms full of false perceptions of reality with an addictive app to bet on.
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endless amount of stuff to be disgusted by lately but this was really horrifying wired.com/story/burnerverse-…
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I want to address this bc I think it’s important to understand. It’s not just SEC frat bros.
As part of my background reporting, I kept a spreadsheet of maybe 50-60 handles that shared Maddie’s video/screenshots, etc when it first started going viral.
Using various OSINT tools, reverse image search, etc, I tried to ID some of the people behind the accounts. Some were impossible to trace. But not all of them.
The emails, LinkedIns, etc associated with these burner accounts came from all over the country (and, in one case, from the UK).
They were current SEC students, yes, but there were also high school kids, Big 10 kids. Guys in their 20s and 30s. Dads. Husbands. Old-ass men. There was a HUGE range.
These weren’t just UF frat bros dogpiling a sorority girl. They were often many, many years out of college. Grown men from all over the country taking pleasure in one girl’s sexual humiliation.
Because they had the benefit of anonymity, they didn’t think they’d be held accountable for the disgusting things they were doing and saying. And as Maddie’s case proves, they were wrong.
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RT @ionianprincess: Great article that should not be behind a paywall. If you go to Maddie’s Instagram, the top comments are still men & bo…
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There is a corner of the internet I had never heard of before I started reporting this story.
It’s called the “burnerverse”: a sprawling network of anonymous college-sports accounts that can look, at first glance, like ordinary shitposting.
Then I started looking closer. And what I found was a highly coordinated network of hundreds of anon accounts, dedicated to doxxing girls and ruining their lives.
My investigation for @WIRED — including some of the men allegedly behind some of these accounts — is out now. wired.com/story/burnerverse-…
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Maddie Kowalski was 19 years old when anonymous men on X posted a pornographic video of her without her consent. It went viral nationally, and was viewed 8.5 million times.
For months, she had no idea who did it or why. So she made it her mission to find out. 🧵
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Deeply traumatized, Maddie was furious no one had been held accountable. Her life was ruined, and no one — not the men who shared the video, nor the ones who filmed her without her consent in the first place — was facing the consequences. "No one gives a fuck," she told me.
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So Maddie decided to fight back. With the Gainesville Police Department and with a lawyer, she tried to find out the men behind the anonymous accounts — and what she learned stunned her.
You can read my full investigation about the community of anonymous men who try to destroy girls' lives, and the one girl who fought back and unmasked them, at @WIRED: wired.com/story/burnerverse-…
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