The biggest stories on the internet from January 9th, 2026.

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Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

00:42 Aussie brand’s viral AI slop

9:12 Bretman Rock vs. Vanessa Hudgens

11:55 Toxic celebrity mom group drama

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The biggest stories on the internet from January 8th, 2026.

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Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

00:43 Trisha Paytas for congress

3:49 TikTok creator HaleyBaylee sued by ex-husband over comments she made on livestream about their marriage

6:53 Diary of a CEO backlash over viral "birth rate" conversation

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The biggest tech news & social media trends on the internet from January 7th, 2026.

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Timestamps:

00:00 Intro 

1:06 Is OpenAI buying Pinterest?

4:51 Anna’s Archive domain name suspended 

8:36 Reddit overtakes TikTok in site visits in the UK 

12:45 Grok generating images undressing women 

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Sources:

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/tiktok-prepares-us-app-with-its-own-algorithm-user-data-2025-07-09/ 

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/sutskevers-fate-openais-next-deal-hit-robot-13-predictions-2026 

https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/16/pinterest-adds-controls-to-let-you-limit-the-amount-of-ai-slop-in-your-feed/ 

https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/25023_52957d6c-0378-4796-99fa-aab684b3b2f8.pdf 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/22/activist-group-says-it-has-scraped-86m-music-files-from-spotify 

https://annas-archive.li/blog/backing-up-spotify.html 

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/research-and-data/online-research/online-nation/2025/online-nations-report-2025.pdf?v=409837 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/03/reddit-overtakes-tiktok-uk-search-algorithms-gen-z 

https://www.theverge.com/news/853191/grok-explicit-bikini-pictures-minors 

https://copyleaks.com/blog/grok-and-nonconsensual-image-manipulation 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-03/reports-xai-grok-undressed-minors-in-photos-on-x/106196308

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/06/elon-musk-xai-investment-grok-backlash 

https://www.usermag.co/p/is-anyone-going-to-take-accountability

Thank you to The Commons for supporting this episode: https://www.thecommons.com.au/

The biggest stories on the internet from January 6th, 2026.

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Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

2:00 Camilla Araujo course backlash

9:45 Chinese Baddie-tok

13:55 Timothée Chalamet thanks Kylie Jenner in acceptance speech

15:22 Topgolf vs. Logan's Christmas party resolved

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The biggest stories on the internet from January 5th, 2026.

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Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

2:49 Stranger Things finale backlash

9:20 Alix Earle & Tom Brady

10:17 TarasWrld halter top nurse saga

16:38 365 buttons meme

22:00 Zach Bryan weds Brianna Chickenfry lookalike

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Substack: https://centennialworld.substack.com/

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This is a rerun episode from 2024, where we explore the spiritual-adjacent corners of TikTok like manifestation-tok, tarot-tok, psychic-tok, and astrology-tok, and how this content can lead users down a harmful pipeline. We look at how young people, Gen Z in particular, are turning to new-age spirituality to make sense of the world and how the TikTok algorithm contributes to increasingly extreme beliefs in this area. We also share case studies of users who have devolved into "spiritual psychosis" (an unofficial term) after becoming obsessed with this side of TikTok. 

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Timestamps:

4:05 Why I wanted to talk about this topic

5:13 Overview of the spiritual side of TikTok

10:30 Explaining “spiritual psychosis”

13:36 Creator case studies

17:44 The role of TikTok’s algorithm

Find Dr. Ash King: https://www.heavymental.com.au/

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This is a rerun episode from 2024, where we explored the internet's love of "traumaporn" content and how this is changing the ways in which we engage with tragedy in the modern day, aiming to answer the question: Is there any ethical way to create and consume traumatic content online?

Note: This episode was recorded remotely, so please excuse the change in sound quality.

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Timestamps:

4:09 Defining “traumaporn”

9:27 Online discourse around traumatic content

14:06 Why do we like traumaporn?

19:58 Commodification of traumaporn

21:50 Soft White Underbelly

26:03 MrBeast

28:50 Is there an ethical way to create and consume traumatic content online?

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Thank you to BRITA for supporting the podcast, helping us keep our deep dives going, and, of course, keeping us hydrated!

Check out BRITA here: ⁠https://www.brita.com.au/turnonthetaste⁠

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Timestamps:

1:56 Zendaya hat theory

5:30 Ariana Grande shopfront memes

8:35 Anglerfish

10:43 The Great Meme Depression of 2025

13:37 Club Chalamet’s WSJ profile 

17:46 Vanilla Mace blind box

21:53 Mr Fantasy

24:45 Clang, clang, clang went the trolley 

28:20 Oh no mi bunny memes

31:21 Concert content

35:42 Honourable meme mentions

Please consider buying us a coffee or subscribing to a membership to help keep Centennial World's weekly podcasts going! Every single dollar goes back into this business🩷 https://buymeacoffee.com/centennialworld

Find our podcast YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC18HclY7Tt5-1e3Z-MEP7Jg 

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This episode of infinite scroll is brought to you by Afterpay’s Afterpaid 2025 report, an annual deep dive into Australia’s shopping snapshot.

Join our Patreon here!!! https://www.patreon.com/c/CentennialWorld

Please consider buying us a coffee or subscribing to a membership to help keep Centennial World's weekly podcasts going! Every single dollar goes back into this business🩷 https://buymeacoffee.com/centennialworld

Find our podcast YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC18HclY7Tt5-1e3Z-MEP7Jg 

Subscribe to our weekly Substack: https://centennialworld.substack.com/ 

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Join our Patreon here!!! https://www.patreon.com/c/CentennialWorld

The biggest stories on the internet from December 11th, 2025.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

2:22 Creator suing celebrity facialist Sonya Dakar over alleged facial burns

6:07 Streamer Awards 2025 were a mess

10:43 TikTok's Solidcore scandal

Find our podcast YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC18HclY7Tt5-1e3Z-MEP7Jg 

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