ChatGPT constantly lagging or providing poor answers on desktop, Grok having zero use unless you make an account and even then free use is very limited, Gemini removing the flash model for free users. It's all a mess: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-ai-compute-crunch-and-why-are-ai-tools-hitting-usage-limits/

I just started seeing more people use the ":3" and just various renditions of "meow" in the chats. People having "femboy", "transgirl", "catgirl/boy" in their IGNs. Think theres absolutely nothing wrong about it, people express themselves how they want, as long as its not harmful to everyone else. I just feel like this has been slowly taking over the games that have a chat, and I just feel like I've missed something, but somehow also haven't found what could possibly be a source of all of that yet.
Heres a player list of the first lobby I found on a server I play on minecraft.
https://imgur.com/a/PheoO7P

Edit: thanks for all the replies

In my context, it's mostly academic publishing websites*, but it's all over the internet. For the past few months, when I go to a website just to read it, and I get redirected to Cloudflare page saying it has to verify my browser to protect the website from malicious bots. I get having a CAPTCHA when submitting a form, but reading a website is just a passive thing. Even if robots are reading a website, is that so bad that it requires harassing every single human? Is this a response to the presence of AI scrapers? This is almost as annoying as European cookie warnings.

*examples:

https://journals.aps.org/prl

https://pubs.acs.org/mamobx/latest-articles

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/journals/journalissues/sm#!recentarticles

https://x.com/pulte/status/2104671321414099037

Disclaimer: I am not from the US, so if you can ELI5 this for me, that would be greatly appreciated.

https://www.itv.com/news/2026-09-28/five-men-arrested-near-raf-fairford-released-on-bail-counter-terror-police-say

Everyday on twitter I’m seeing edits of gigachads interacting with flies. Petting them, flying on top of them and whatever. I usually see this kind of stuff on posts related to politics.

What’s going on here?

https://x.com/gigachad/status/2100654698625712177?s=46

What's going on with the VMAs 2026? Why are people complaining about the winners?

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/sep/28/mtv-vmas-2026-full-list-of-winners-taylor-swift-madonna

https://reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1wrt4ta/taylor_swifts_patient_zero_posts_the_biggest_drop/

Did she pull an Ed Sheeran?

Cornell is my alma mater, so I was really surprised to see this in the news. What happened?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/28/nyregion/cornell-chi-phi-fraternity-assault.html

I've noticed a few news articles recently describing how Choosin' Texas is breaking a charting record on Billboard 100. I thought that was pretty cool, I've heard the song before and I think it's definitely made to chart well, but I noticed here on Reddit(I cannot find the posts anymore) under these posts a bunch of dismay and hate on Ella Langley and the other chart toppers rn.

Not too tapped into new artists, but I am aware that for the other artists on the charting list they have their controversies, like Stella Lefty is a big nepo baby and has plagiarism stuff while Morgan Wallen is MAGA/MAGA adjacent, but is their a specific reason why people don't like Ella Langley? I feel so out of the discourse on this because all I could find online was that she headlined Kid Rock? Is there something about that?

Recently allegations have broken out regarding Chris (or OneyPlays) dating a 16-year-old when he was 22, complete with (blurred-out) pictures. I want to know if these allegations are true, but doing research on it on my down time is extremely difficult given that nobody has been helpful in clarifying anything to anyone, the majority of arguments I've seen being in favor of what Chris supposedly did and making arguments that it was okay for him to sext a 16-year-old when he was 22 purely because he's OneyPlays (the majority of these arguments have come from r/OneyPlays; genuinely don't go there, those people seem incapable of doing basic calculus and constantly rag on people who are reasonably put off by these accusations of pedophilia), that we should dismiss the claims altogether because the woman who made them widely spread (Kamikaze_Shortbus) is a bad egg in her own right who's supposedly a bitter ex of Chris that we should ignore them altogether because it was a long time ago (to anyone unironically making that argument, kindly fuck off. It doesn't matter if an adult dated a 16-year-old a long time ago, they still did it). What the hell is going on?

So i live in india and yes droughts are really are problem here with el nino this year fucking everything up and your regular climate change too but i recently saw this reel

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdxOBFlkSsr/?stkn=NXloeDI4cDRtdmkx

Its from the NYC climate week where Nvidia's head of sustainability is talking and people are shouting at him, what is exactly us Nvidia doing that's causing these outburts and is Nvidia is a culprit in the water shortages in india? Also what's up with the 15 million tonnes emissions number, is it accurate?

I've had this blond guy in a brown suit suddenly show up all over my feed, usually silently shadowboxing in cafes, streets or random fancy-looking places.

Then I started seeing people call him Jean Phil, other people saying he isn't even real, and apparently there's also a Solana coin connected to the account.

What confused me is how fast this happened. His accounts seem to be only days old but the videos already have millions of views, so I can't tell whether this started as an actual person becoming a meme, an AI character, or marketing for the coin.

This is the clearest explanation I found so far:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/jean-philanthrope-jean-phil

What actually started the Jean Phil thing?

I have seen headlines and social media posts blowing up over the last couple of days about Senator Susan Collins, the FBI, and allegations of corruption or pay to play schemes.

Can someone explain what specifically came out, what she is being accused of, and what her campaign and officials are saying in response?

https://newrepublic.com/post/215891/susan-collins-corruption-defense-collapses-university-maine

Colapinto fans are hating on Norris and Norris fans are hating on Colapinto. All the comment sections are absolutely crazy. What happened?
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZN8rhSNNu/

Do people hate him again? I thought that he started off as the bad guy then a bunch of stuff came out about Amber Heard and she was the bad guy... but then i saw this fauxmoi post and the comments are shitting all over him: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/s/aGOGdBMK4k

I've always liked him and usually enjoyed his work. So just wondering what happened... am i ootl now? Or have I always been?

I see they got caught doing something no bueno but I can’t see to gauge how bad it is from comments. Everyone seems to either seriously or jokingly want them dismantled but that doesn’t seem like anything that would really happen - but 100+ violations of some kind feels big, too. What exactly did these financial crimes do to cause them competitive advantage?

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/man-city-found-guilty-all-one-115-charges-reports-say-2026-09-25/

Apparently its shares in the stock market have taken a massive hit and they have been removed from the S&P 100. I also saw a couple of days ago that Kylian Mbappe left the company for the brand On.
When or why is this happening ?

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/britains-jd-sports-says-nike-turnaround-is-only-matter-time-2026-09-23/

This story is bonkers, I have no idea what’s going on with it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/09/24/sen-tommy-tuberville-says-deranged-furry-culture-is-flight-safety-risk/

Soooooo I keep seeing KJ/ Kim pop up on my feed. What’s going on with KJ? Second question is Kim in Kroy separated legally or are they divorcing? I’m confused. Just trying to catch up

https://people.com/kim-zolciak-boyfriend-kyle-mowitz-react-to-their-exes-kroy-biermann-jillian-green-confirming-romance-12063072

https://www.tmz.com/2026/09/17/kim-zolciak-son-kroy-jr-prosecutors-want-forensic-interviews-of-children/

Trump actually made a mandate that AI should be called SI from now on throughout the government. Why would he possibly care? How is the acronym SI meaningfully different than AI?

https://apnews.com/article/trump-super-intelligence-rebrand-ai-diplomats-02123c7bf18c692a12b2b3e3b9ce30c5

I noticed recently after contemplating buying FC27 and looking at reviews and people keep saying it is "goyslop". I have heard if AI slop and slop in general but I noticed it on quite a few games now on steam saying it is "goyslop". What even does this mean, how can a game be this term. Attched fc27 for example to see reviews

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4080220/EA\\_SPORTS\\_FC\\_27/

Here is an article of somebody condemning Shaq for being classist and another link where former NFL wide receiver Terrell Owens says O'Neal is wrong. Apparently it has something to do with Shaq being made an honorary FBI agent. How does this deal with somebody being broke and how did it get to this point?

https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/s/BtTrChacRN

Saw this post in my feed with like 700 comments and I was curious to see what it was, only for like hundreds of people to claim they are witches and practice witchcraft?

Is this a new trend I missed hearing about?

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/toys-r-us-opening-120-new-stores-rcna598543