If you want to witness the last vestiges of human intellect swirling down the drain, hold your nose and type the words “skibidi toilet” into YouTube. The 11-second video features an animated human head protruding from a toilet bowl while singing the nonsensical lyrics “skibidi dop dop dop yes yes”. The clip has been viewed more than 215m times, and spawned hundreds of millions of references on TikTok and other social media. Fitting, then, that the Oxford ...

Was that the week that marked the death of X? The platform formerly regarded as a utopian market square for exchanging information has suffered its largest exodus to date. Bluesky, emerging as X’s newest rival, has amassed 16 million users, including 1 million in the course of 24 hours last week. Hundreds of thousands of people have quit the former Twitter since Donald Trump’s election victory on 6 November. The catalyst is X’s owner, Elon Musk...

The big tech companies that own dating apps are manipulating and overcharging their vulnerable users without delivering results, United Kingdom tech journalist Siân Boyle says. "The loneliness epidemic is affecting younger people disproportionately, who happen to be the largest users of dating apps. The fertility crisis is disproportionately affecting people in their 20s." Add to the mix post-Covid shyness, smartphone addiction and men's uncertainty about how to behave post #MeToo, and we have got a modern dating crisis on our hands, she…

“Designed to be deleted” is the tagline of one of the UK’s most popular dating apps. Hinge promises that it is “the dating app for people who want to get off dating apps” – the place to find lasting love. But critics say modern dating is in crisis. They claim that dating apps, which have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times worldwide, are “exploitative” and are designed not to be deleted but to be addictive...

My new girlfriend Nadia has just replied to my message. “How about we choose something that feels like a warm embrace for the soul?” she suggests. Nadia is a bit ...

A fellow ocean explorer recalls a warning he gave to the British adventure

Sequestered among wildflower meadows in Cheshire is Delamere, a private rehabilitation clinic whose guests are most commonly treated for drug and alcohol addiction.

Last summer, the grand opening of the newest outlet in London's Westfield shopping centre was quite an event. Hundreds of people applauded the cutting of an orange...

With its imposing red brick houses, neat gardens and red postbox, Baskerville Road in the borough of Wandsworth is a classic example of family residences in the more affluent areas of London...

Shoppers have been secretly filmed by big stores to try to make them spend more. Tesco, Boots, Sainsbury's and Co-op all commissioned SBXL, a little-known behavioural analysis agency, to record customers...

At first glance, there was no witness to the grisly murder of Christine Sullivan, who was stabbed to death alongside a friend, Jenna Pellegrini, at her home in rural New Hampshire in the U.S. last year. But as detectives...

A Facebook user has told of her distress as the site bombards her with adverts aimed at new parents six months after she gave birth to a stillborn daughter. Anna England Kerr, 30, says she has been targeted relentlessly...

The disturbing scale of the personal data harvested and traded by multinationals can be revealed today. Health details, children's voice recordings and copies of passports can be at risk when customers tick...