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You get free stuff, you get free travel, you get the nifty cool title of "brand ambassador," what's not to love about being an internet influencer? There's the consequences, for one. Not even just the warranted consequences of your actual actions, mind you, but also those arriving unbidden based on the perception of your actions by your audience — and those can be two markedly different things bearing entirely disparate social costs. In her new book, Swipe Up for More! Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers, Stephanie McNeal takes an unflinching look at the interplay between the public personas and private lives of three of the internet's most influential lifestyle bloggers: Caitlin Covington, Mirna Valerio, and Shannon Bird. 

Equal parts fascinating and disquieting — like a slow-motion car crash where everybody's really, really good looking — Swipe up for More explores the people and personalities behind the product placement. In the excerpt below, mommy blogger Shannon Bird recounts the internet's response to her 911 call asking a local cop to make a midnight milk run for her hungry baby.   

Portfolio

Excerpted from Swipe Up for More!: Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers by Stephanie McNeal, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Stephanie McNeal, 2023.

On January 28, 2020, Shannon and her kids were home alone. Dallin was on a work trip. Her youngest child, London, was only six weeks old and her son Brooklyn had recently broken his leg. That night, she found herself unable to produce any breast milk. She was taking medication that made her supply decline. When she realized she had no formula or saved breast milk, she grew desperate to feed her hungry baby but didn’t want to rouse all her kids to bring them to the store with her. After calling some friends and neighbors, around two a.m. she called 911.

She knew the officer who responded. When we were wandering the neighborhood on my “Mormon blogger tour,” we even saw him driving by. According to Shannon, the police officer usually posts up on their street and stays there all night waiting for a call. It’s kind of funny, she says, because there’s not much going on in Alpine, so he spends many nights just chilling. Shannon often chats with him when she goes to get her mail.

So, when she began to rack her brain for who may be up at two in the morning, she immediately thought of the police officer.

“It didn’t even faze me in a way,” she said. “I was like, ‘I know who’s awake!’”

The officer came through for her, buying baby formula and delivering it to her house in the middle of the night. Shannon was grateful to him and decided to share the saga on her Instagram Story.

In Shannon’s mind, the story was both her typical, Sandler-esque goofy fare (silly her, ending up in this situation) and also a feel-good story about a nice cop doing good in her community. She never expected the story to go viral. However, it was catnip for local news stations like KSL in Utah. (Local news loves a “good cop doing a good deed” story, which is controversial, to say the least.)

The story then spread like wildfire. Shannon was featured on CNN (“As a mother of five young children, Shannon Bird said she considers herself somewhat of a pro at the baby-raising game,” the story reads) and outlets as far away as Chicago and the UK.

At first, the attention from the media was kind of cool. Shannon described it as a “whirlwind,” ticking off all the shows that contacted her and excitedly telling me she got a free trip to New York to do interviews. She had producers “pounding on [her] door” asking her for exclusives. For a minute, everyone seemed to want to talk to her.

Then came the backlash. Online, Shannon was painted as the epitome of a clueless white woman, using her privilege to call upon law enforcement as her personal errand boy. Many questioned how a mother of color would have been treated by police in this situation (probably very differently). People called Shannon a neglectful mother, pathetic, and an attention seeker, and accused her of perpetrating a publicity stunt.

In retrospect, Shannon says she didn’t really think about the implications of what she was posting. In her mind, she wasn’t taking resources away from her larger community. She figured her local cops likely were not out responding to a crime in the middle of the night.

“I was like, ‘Wait, you’re the ones bringing race into this, I didn’t think it was a racist thing at all.’ That’s just because I really am color-blind I didn’t know my white privilege, I guess,” she said.

This decision to post about the cop and the formula has had a profound impact on every aspect of Shannon’s life since and has radically changed her perspective on both her life and her career as an influencer. It’s constantly on her mind. Even two years later, in January 2022 when I visited her, she brought up her 911 call within the first ten minutes of my arrival and referred to it constantly afterward.

The most serious and devastating impact it had on the Bird family was the real-world one. Shortly after the incident went viral, Shannon started getting more hate than she had ever before online. Then, things started to show up at her house. Her mailbox filled up with empty formula cans, though she had no idea how anyone had found her address to send them to.

Shannon wondered if the strange missives were coming from haters online or people in her community. She grew worried. Did everyone in her neighborhood know about the formula thing? What about the other parents at her kids’ school? Everywhere she looked she felt judged. More than ever, Shannon felt like the walls of Alpine were closing in on her.

Then, she said, Child and Family Services showed up at her house. Someone had called in a tip that the Bird children were in danger, and the agency needed to do a full investigation to clear the charges. Her kids had to be interviewed. Shannon was relieved when the officers seemed to be confused as to why they had been called to the Birds.

“You live in a seven-thousand-square-foot house,” she said they told her. “Your kids are eating takeout sushi right now. Like, what are they talking about?”

While she can make little jokes about it occasionally, Shannon was extremely traumatized by the DCFS visit. Dallin, on the other hand, is so easygoing that she said he was never really concerned when DCFS came, calling the whole saga “ridiculous.”

That’s his attitude to most things Shannon posts online, including the formula saga. When I asked him if online criticism ever bothered him, he shook his head with a laugh. Even he doesn’t really understand how he’s able to not let it bother him.

“You know, I just don’t care,” he said.

Sure, he may wish she didn’t post every single thing that comes into her head, but he long ago made his peace with the fact that he can’t control what Shannon wants to do. He is capable of tuning out the opinions of strangers, “You have to get to a point where, like, it’s funny. It’s funny to you,” he told me. “If you really, really care, then you can’t do this,” he said.

It’s a pretty sure bet that anyone who survived high school biology has heard about the Miller-Urey experiment that supported the hypothesis that the chemistry of life could arise from Earth’s primordial atmosphere. It was literally “lightning in a bottle,” with a mix of gases like methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water in a closed-loop glass apparatus and a pair of electrodes to provide a spark to simulate lightning lancing across the early prebiotic sky. [Miller] and [Urey] showed that amino acids, the building blocks of protein, could be cooked up under conditions that existed before life began.

Fast forward 70 years, and Miller-Urey is still relevant, perhaps more so as we’ve extended our reach into space and found places with conditions similar to those on early Earth. This modified version of Miller-Urey is a citizen science effort to update the classic experiment to keep up with those observations, plus perhaps just enjoy the fact that it’s possible to whip up the chemistry of life from practically nothing, right in your own garage.

[Markus Bindhammer]’s setup is similar to [Miller] and [Urey]’s in a lot of ways, but differs mainly by using plasma as the energy input, rather than a simple electrical discharge. [Markus] doesn’t expand on his reasoning for using plasma other than the practical consideration of it being hot enough to oxidize nitrogen inside the apparatus, providing the anoxic environment needed. The plasma discharge is controlled by a microcontroller and MOSFETs, to keep the electrodes from melting. Also, rather than methane and ammonia, the raw ingredient here is a formic acid solution, because the spectroscopic signature of formic acid has been detected in space, and because it has interesting chemistry that can potentially lead to the production of amino acids.

Unfortunately, while the apparatus and experimental procedure are fairly simple, quantifying the results requires some specialized equipment. [Markus] will be sending his samples off for analysis, so we don’t yet know what the experiment will show. But we love the setup here, which just goes to show that even the greatest experiments are worth repeating, because you never know what you’re going to find.

After arriving on PC in the fall of 2021, Unpacking is finally heading to mobile devices. Developer Witch Beam Games revealed today during the Wholesome Direct showcase that it plans to release its breakout game on phones and tablets later this year. The studio didn’t say exactly when the title would arrive on mobile devices, nor if it plans to release Unpacking on both iOS and Android, but judging from the trailer it shared, Apple devices are a lock.

Notably, the announcement comes after Unpacking Master, a nearly identical copy of Unpacking that featured ads and in-app microtransactions, briefly topped the App Store charts at the start of last year before it was pulled by Apple. The incident highlighted the difficulty small studios have in preventing copycat developers from stealing their work. If you’re the impatient type, Unpacking is currently available to play on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PlayStation.

Canon has long been synonymous with traditional photography, but the company could be preparing to take a more definitive step into the world of virtual reality. At the Photo Next 2023 show in Japan, the company showed off a prototype convertible camera. The unnamed device features a nifty folding mechanism that allows it to capture both 360-degree video and 180-degree 3D content. As a handful of websites, including PetaPixel and DIY Photography, have noted, the prototype bears more than a passing resemblance to the Insta360 EVO, which also makes use of a folding mechanism to offer 180-degree 3D capture. According to Pronews, Canon did not share any details on specs, pricing or availability.

Canon has previously only dabbled with virtual reality. In 2021, for instance, the company released a dual fisheye lens for its RF mirrorless camera system. The camera Canon teased at Photo Next features the company’s V branding, which it typically reserves for consumer-facing products. That would suggest Canon could be ready to take VR more seriously. While the company has sometimes been slow to embrace new technologies, Canon’s usual slow pace could work in its favor this time around. Consumer VR has been slow to take off, but with Apple’s recent entry into the space, the camera manufacturer could be ideally positioned to take advantage of growing interest in the format once the market is more mature.

One of the biggest reveals from a generally muted SGF showcase was gameplay footage from Mortal Kombat 1. Technically the 12th mainline game restarts the entire universe. Liu Kang, once mortal, is now a fully-fledged god of fire, and he’s rerolled the realm.

This means fan favorites like Sub Zero and Scorpion are back, but now, they’re siblings. The development team has decided to shake up the plot and reinvent characters for this 2023 reboot. Alongside this new world and character dynamics, MK1 also introduces a new feature to fights in the form of Kameos. After choosing a character, you’re able to select a guest fighter to back you up during the fight. Summonable by a single button (R1 on PlayStation), you can combine it with back and forward inputs to trigger multiple different moves. There are also Kameo throws and fatalities, all-in-all adding more versatility and flexibility in fights. Want to make sure you can block a character’s jump attacks? Get Jax on deck so he can suplex them to the floor. Need to match a projectile-flinging character? Summon Sonya.

We got to play with four different characters (and a trio of ‘Kameo’ assistants), trying out several different combinations and trying to see all the Kameo fatalities we could. Engadget’s Brandon Quintana is a long-standing MK fan. He lays out why the game delivers on what he wanted – while thrashing me in the process. Mortal Kombat 1 will launch this September 19th, 2023 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X and S.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

The Pixel 8 and 8 Pro could feature some notable camera upgrades. Writing for Android Authority, leaker Kamila Wojciechowska, who has a solid record when it comes to Pixel leaks, says Google's next pair of high-end phones will feature Samsung ISOCELL GN2 sensors. That's the same sensor found on the Galaxy S22 and S23. More notably, it's a significant upgrade over the ISOCELL GN1 Google has used since the Pixel 6. The GN2 is physically larger and capable of capturing 35 percent more light than its predecessor, making it a better low-light performer. It also supports more modern features, including 8K/30 fps video capture and Staggered HDR. Google could use the latter to reduce ghosting in HDR images.

According to Wojciechowska, both the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro will come with the GN2. However, Google's flagship will also reportedly pack a few exclusive upgrades. The Pixel 8 Pro will feature a new time-of-flight sensor that should improve autofocus performance and, more significantly, a more modern sensor for its ultra-wide camera. Google reportedly plans to use the 64-megapixel Sony IMX787, the same sensor that powers the Pixel 7a's primary camera, to replace the Pixel 7 Pro's aging 12-megapixel IMX386. The former is almost twice the size of its predecessor and should produce much better images. Wojciechowska notes the version of the Pixel 8 Pro Google is currently testing doesn't come with a macro mode, though they suggest that doesn't mean the final version won't ship with that feature. The Pixel 8 will continue to use the IMX386 but may offer a lens with a wider field of view for those who want to capture more of a scene at once. Wojciechowska says the selfie and telephoto cameras on the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro are unchanged from those on the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro. Lastly, they note the Pixel 8 Pro's rumored thermometer sensor won't be used for photography.

Naturally, Google also has software upgrades planned. The company will reportedly update its camera app to allow Pixel users to decide how strong the bokeh effect is when using the "Cinematic" video mode. Additionally, a new "Adaptive torch" feature may dynamically adjust the output of a phone's flash module to prevent it from overexposing images.

Considering Google has had a history of sticking with the same camera sensor for multiple Pixel generations, it's encouraging to learn the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro could feature new, more capable camera hardware. Google has done a lot with its computational software, but there are only so many visual enhancements you can squeeze out of a camera sensor without going for a bigger one.

Another busy day of Summer Game Fest events is upon us, with the Wholesome Direct, Future Games Show and OTK Games Expo streams running back to back. You'll be able to watch everything right here starting at 12PM ET.

Wholesome Direct will kick things off with a parade of nearly 80 indie games, with a focus on upbeat and cozy titles. It will showcase the "incredible range of themes, styles and perspectives that games have to offer." One notable game that will make an appearance is the wonderful Unpacking. Developer Witch Beam is promising a big announcement that won't be an expansion, but it says this is "something that a lot of folks have been asking for."

At 1PM ET, it's time for the Future Games Show. The stars of Insomniac's Spider-Man games, Yuri Lowenthal (Peter Parker) and Laura Bailey (Mary Jane Watson), are hosting the stream, which will run for around 70 minutes and feature more than 50 multi-format games. The show will include more than 10 world premieres and a VR spotlight. Titles that will be featured includeLords of the Fallen, Stray Gods (in which Bailey appears), Warhaven, Pacific Drive and C-Smash VRS.

Last but not least is the OTK Games Expo. This is a showcase from One True King, a collective of prominent content creators. Members of the group will showcase dozens of games, including 30 new indie titles. The stream will take place on OTK cofounder Asmongold's Twitch channel.

Engadget is in Los Angeles to check out some of the many titles that are being featured at Summer Game Fest. Stay tuned for news, previews and hands-on impressions.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

Lysfanga’s isometric views may conjure up memories of Hades, but this is a different kind of game. While you’ll still be slicing and dicing monsters and enemies, protagonist Imë combines her spells and weapon combos with the ability to revert time and do it all over again, differently. The second time around, her shadow from the previous timeline will continue to rush into the enemies. If you remember the faded-out ghosts in racing games like Mario Kart and Gran Turismo, it’s a little like those, but in a collaborative, not competitive, way.

The aim is to complete separated combat levels within a single ‘run’, with only a finite number of ghost-Imës to get the job done. Naturally, things are further complicated by enemies that can’t be defeated from the front, or paired monsters that have to be killed almost simultaneously or they’ll respawn each other. Another Engadget editor said it reminded them of Transistor – the game rewards careful planning of your moves. While I was able to rush some of the early encounters without too much thinking, later levels demanded careful route planning, with doors that would lock and unlock when my character (or her ghosts) rushed through them, exploding enemies that could be punted into other enemies and a constant countdown that meant, sometimes, there wasn’t enough time to think.

Fortunately, Lysfanga's short levels – most can be completed in under two minutes – can be restarted. (Sometimes I knew I messed up, seconds into a level.) Imë also has an array of spells and special attacks with cooldown timers, to add further fight options. Controls are relatively simple, with two melee attack buttons that can be comboed together, a button to launch spells, a dash button that works for avoiding attacks and jumping across gaps, a rewind trigger for your time-twisting powers and a button for your ultimate attack.

According to the trailer, there will be a variety of weapon loadouts to suit different approaches, like long-reaching spears and speedy chakram blades. You’ll also be able to unleash a super attack that not only does heavy damage to enemies nearby but is also echoed in your doppelgangers.

While some action-game prowess helps, you’ll only beat most levels by thinking them through before you act. The controls and play style aren’t remotely similar, but Lysfanga reminded me of old Fire Emblem games, where careful planning decided a fight before it even begins. Even in this early demo, the game offers some incredibly satisfying moments when all your attacking clones come together to wipe out all the enemies in mere seconds. Each level can be replayed at markers across the game, and includes a more challenging time limit to beat, if you thought it was too easy first time around.

Along with Under The Waves, the game is one of the first titles from Quantic Dreams' new Spotlight publishing arm. Lysfanga will launch later this year on PC, through both Steam and Epic Games.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

You can now talk to Bing on desktop, and it can even read its replies to you out loud. Microsoft has rolled out voice support for the search engine's chatbot on Edge for PCs, which is powered by OpenAI's GPT-4 technology. "We know many of you love using voice input for chat on mobile," the tech giant wrote in its latest Bing preview release notes. The feature first became available on Bing's AI chatbot for its mobile apps. Now it's also available on desktop — you just need to tap on the mic icon in the Bing Chat box to talk to the AI-powered bot.

The feature supports English, Japanese, French, German and Mandarin at the moment, but Microsoft says support for more languages is on the way. In addition to being able to ask Bing questions simply by speaking, the chatbot now also supports text-to-speech answers and can respond to your questions with its own voice. "Using voice input, ask Bing Chat, 'What’s the toughest tongue twister you know?,'" Microsoft suggested. And yes, it will be able to respond. 

As The Verge notes, Microsoft has introduced voice support for Bing Chat on desktop shortly after it announced that it's killing the standalone Cortana app for Windows, which serves as a voice assistant, later this year. In its announcement back then, Microsoft pointed out that users will still have access to "powerful productivity features in Windows and Edge, which have increased AI capabilities." In particular, it mentioned Bing Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot, which uses artificial intelligence to generate content within the company's apps. 

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has finally spoken publicly about the company’s deeply unpopular API changes that have resulted in some of the most-used third-party reddit apps saying they will be forced to shut down. In an AMA (Ask Me Anything) discussion, Huffman promised improvements to Reddit’s own app, but seemed unwilling to make concessions on pricing and other issues that have rankled the community.

“Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use,” he wrote in his AMA post. “Some apps such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync have decided this pricing doesn’t work for their businesses and will close before pricing goes into effect.”

In a series of mostly 1-2 sentence responses to detailed, multi-part questions, Huffman acknowledged some missteps in the company’s API rollout, but largely declined to tackle thornier questions about the company’s handling of its relationship with third-party developers. In one response, he conceded that the 30-day window given to developers for the new API was a “tight timeline” and said the company was “continuing to chat with many of the developers who still want to work with us.”

But other developers soon weighed in, noting that they had never heard back from the company, despite reaching out through the channels promoted by Reddit. “I have been trying to contact Reddit over the last 3 months and have been completely ignored,” one developer wrote. “I feel completely powerless to do anything right now and I want to try and save the app I've been working on for the last 10 years.” Huffman apologized and said the company would respond.

When asked about why the company accused Christian Selig, the developer of Apollo, of threatening the company — a claim Selig denied and promptly debunked with an audio clip of a phone call with a Reddit rep — Huffman doubled down on the criticism. “His ‘joke’ is the least of our issues,” he said. “His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place—saying one thing to us while saying something completely different. I don’t know how we could do business with him.” (Huffman didn’t respond to a followup question from Selig asking for examples of such behavior.)

Huffman, who goes by spez on the platform, also promised that Reddit was working on improvements to its own app, including its moderation tools and accessibility features. Both areas are often cited by Redditors who prefer third-party apps to the company’s native app. He also said that the reason why third-party apps would no longer be able to show sexually explicit content was due to a changing “regulatory environment” and legal concerns. “It’s a constant fight to keep this content at all,” he said. “We have to be strict / conservative about where it shows up.”

One of his most telling answers came in response to a question about the perception that “Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement” than it has in the past. “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive,” Huffman responded. “Unlike some of the 3P [third-party] apps, we are not profitable.”

Notably, there were a number of topics Huffman didn't address, including why the company priced its API at a rate that developers say is prohibitively expensive. Huffman also didn’t address the upcoming blackout from thousands of subreddits protesting the API changes. More than 3,000 subreddits have pledged to “go dark” for two days beginning June 12th to protest the changes.

By the end of the AMA, Huffman had responded to 14 questions, while a few other executives answered a handful of their own. In perhaps the most telling sign that their answers were not well-received, every answer from the reddit team was downvoted so heavily they were almost impossible to view within the AMA thread itself. A moderator later linked all of their answers at the top of the thread. “We know answers are tough to find,” they said.