The problem with Yelp and other similar crowd-sourced reviews websites is that everyone thinks he or she is a food critic on par with the likes of Jonathan Gold, Ruth Reichl, Jay Rayner, Robert Sietsema, Alan Richman, Gail Simmons, and so on and so on. Then, there are those who take it to the next level, who think they can exert some form of power by threatening a restaurant that’s not willing to jump through hoops, with a bad review. It’s these terrible Yelpers that are the focus of South Park’s hilarious scorn this week.
In the episode, “You’re Not Yelping“ (via Eater), the seminal series on Comedy Central pokes fun at Yelp restaurant reviewers. For example, Gerald Broflovski, Kyle’s father, thinks his reviews are words of gold and that “everyone relies on my Yelp reviews and I don’t want to let anyone down.” Meanwhile, Cartman uses his threat of one-star reviews to extort freebies from restaurants. Eventually, restaurant owners fight back, leading to actual warfare between them and Yelp reviewers.
As ridiculous as it sounds, South Park’s biting commentary makes an interesting point about social media, where everyone now has a soapbox to make noise. Even more dangerous is how users have taken to Yelp to hurt businesses that they’ve never even visited. While Yelp’s commenters are useful in helping us narrow down our list of places to eat or locate eateries with health code violations, some are obviously using the site as a form of entitlement.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?
Instagram is testing a new format for long-form videos called Features. It allows select creators to upload horizontal videos running up to 90 minutes long. Instagram has already tested the new format with creators in Brazil, and now, it's expanding to tens of thousands of creators across the US.
How will Instagram's new Features format work?