Self-declared sleuths have inserted themselves into the search for Nancy Guthrie, compromising the investigation for views and clicks

On the 10th day of the search for Nancy Guthrie, reporters camped outside of the missing woman’s home noticed a strange man strut right up to the front door. It had been more than a week since the mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie had disappeared, and authorities had just announced they had a new lead from Ring footage of what looked like a “potential subject” attempting to tamper with the doorbell camera on the morning of her disappearance. So now who was this unknown person, clad in a gray top and black pants, carrying a large black bag and striding to the door?

It was a Domino’s delivery driver.

Television outranks laptops, tablets and smartphones across all age groups, according to audience review

The television has replaced laptops, tablets and smartphones as the most common device for UK viewers to watch YouTube at home, according to data confirming the platform’s place as a living room mainstay.

More than half of all YouTube viewing through a domestic wifi connection is now done through the traditional TV, making it the top-ranking YouTube device across all age groups.

The YouTube gaming star’s weird and divisive adaptation of his obscure horror film is a game within a film about a game – and hints at new directions for storytelling

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Something weird struck me early on while watching the movie Iron Lung, which has so far taken $32m at the box office, despite being a grungy low-budget sci-fi thriller adapted from an independent video game few people outside of the horror gaming community have even heard of. Set after a galactic apocalypse, it follows a convict who must buy his freedom by piloting a rusty submarine through an ocean of human blood on a distant planet. Ostensibly, he’s looking for relics that may prove vital for scientific research, but what he finds is much more ghastly. So far, so strange.

The film was also written, directed and financed by one person – the YouTube gaming superstar Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach – who also stars. But that’s not the weird part, either. The weird part is that watching the film Iron Lung feels like watching Fischbach play Iron Lung the game. Maybe it’s the fact that he spends most of the movie sitting at the sub’s controls, trying to figure out how to use them correctly – like a gamer would. Maybe it’s that, as the film progresses, he has to solve a series of environmental puzzles linked by various codes, computer read-outs and little injections of narrative – just like in a video game. Long periods of the movie involve Fischbach trying to decide what to do next, the camera close up on his confused face. This is incredibly similar to watching his YouTube videos about playing Iron Lung, an experience he often found bewildering. It was the most metatextual experience I’ve had in the cinema since The Truman Show – but I’m not sure this is what Fischbach intended.

​In this week’s newsletter: Iron Lung, a largely unheralded indie horror game adapted for the big screen by a YouTuber is a hit of a very modern kind, built on blood, sweat and parasocial relationships

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Two very unusual films were released last weekend. One you will have absolutely heard of: Melania, the soft-focus hagiocumentary of the US first lady, which was plonked into thousands and thousands of often entirely empty cinemas across the globe by Amazon and Jeff Bezos in what is widely perceived as a favour-currier to the White House. Melania’s $7m takings in the US were marginally better than forecasted (and far ahead of the risible numbers for the film elsewhere) but, given the documentary’s vast cost, still represents a dramatic loss (especially if the rumour that Amazon paid for the film to be in some cinemas is true). Then again, this was a rare multimillion dollar film where the primary marker of success was probably not financial.

The other unusual film released last weekend you are less likely to have heard of, even though it dwarfed Melania’s takings. Adapted from a video game of the same name, Iron Lung is a grimy post-apocalyptic sci-fi horror in which a convict has to pilot a rusty submarine through an ocean of human blood on a distant planet. That peculiar plotline isn’t the most unusual thing about the film, though. No, what’s really remarkable is that Iron Lung came close to topping the US box office, earning $17m in its opening weekend, despite being entirely self-financed by an American YouTuber.

Online gaming legend Mark Fischbach writes, directs and stars in this feature about a convict on a vague intergalactic mission – but his barebones production has nothing to show

William Goldman’s old showbiz maxim continues to apply that nobody knows anything. Independently financed horror movie Iron Lung has been smuggled into multiplexes without the usual promotional hoopla, where it was keenly awaited by the massed followers of its Hawaiian writer-director-star Mark Fischbach, better known as YouTube gaming legend Markiplier. Many of us have long sensed culture is making a decisive break with the analogue in favour of the (perhaps terminally) online and Fischbach’s film makes that paradigm shift not just visible but visceral; it feels not unlike spending 12 hours on Twitch with all the curtains closed.

Though Markiplier is approaching the horror genre from a notionally fresh angle – by adapting Dave Szymanski’s eponymous space-submarine sim – he lands on the narratively rusty idea of an astronaut straying beyond his depth; this is Moon in dimmer light. Beset by ominous rumbles and mounting doubts about the state of mankind, the begrimed and squalid craft singlehandedly piloted by Fischbach’s straggle-haired convict Simon is indistinguishable from the average teenage bedroom. Our hero staggers round this intergalactic deathtrap completing vaguely specified missions – ram this, repair that, download something or other – like a harassed dad ticking off his Sunday to-do list. In this, Simon proves more proficient than Fischbach’s offscreen self, who is either stumped by or oblivious to the film’s fundamental issues.

From the person who scrolls on the toilet to the one without any social media, what do their digital habits tell us?

• Will Storr: we have lost so much of ourselves to smartphones – can we get it back?

Dayeon, 16: the teenager who spends less than an hour a day on screens

The mysterious Cornish electronic music pioneer has gained an extraordinary second life in the TikTok era. Writers and musicians explain why his glitchy slipperiness is so in tune with life today

QKThr, an obscure cut from Aphex Twin’s 2001 album, Drukqs, sounds like an ambient experiment recorded on a historic pirate ship. Shaky fingers caress the keys of an accordion to create an uncanny tone; clustered chords cry out, subdued but mighty, before scuttling back into dreamy nothingness.

This 88-second elegy has always been overshadowed by another song on Drukqs, the Disklavier instrumental Avril 14th, which alongside Windowlicker is the Cornish producer’s best-known track. But QKThr has become a weird breakaway success, featuring on nearly 8m TikTok posts, adorning everything from cute panda videos to lightly memed US presidential debates, and a fail video trend dubbed “subtle foreshadowing”.

Exclusive: German research into responses to health queries raises fresh questions about summaries seen by 2bn people a month

• How the ‘confident authority’ of AI Overviews is putting public health at risk

Google’s search feature AI Overviews cites YouTube more than any medical website when answering queries about health conditions, according to research that raises fresh questions about a tool seen by 2 billion people each month.

The company has said its AI summaries, which appear at the top of search results and use generative AI to answer questions from users, are “reliable” and cite reputable medical sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Mayo Clinic.

Plan follows pressure on broadcaster to put more content on platform, but raises questions about licence fee

• UK politics live – latest updates

The BBC could soon make programmes for YouTube, after being put under pressure to produce more content on the increasingly dominant digital platform.

The corporation would begin making some content released first on the platform under proposals that could be announced as soon as next week as it seeks to reach younger viewers, who are the heaviest users of YouTube.

Low-quality AI-generated content is now saturating social media – and generating about $117m a year, data shows

More than 20% of the videos that YouTube’s algorithm shows to new users are “AI slop” – low-quality AI-generated content designed to farm views, research has found.

The video-editing company Kapwing surveyed 15,000 of the world’s most popular YouTube channels – the top 100 in every country – and found that 278 of them contain only AI slop.

Flood of unreality is an endpoint of algorithm-driven internet and product of an economy dependent on a few top tech firms

In the algorithm-driven economy of 2025, one man’s shrimp Jesus is another man’s side hustle.

AI slop – the low-quality, surreal content flooding social media platforms, designed to farm views – is a phenomenon, some would say the phenomenon of the 2024 and 2025 internet. Merriam-Webster’s word of the year this year is “slop”, referring exclusively to the internet variety.

Our 20 favourite pieces of in-depth reporting, essays and profiles from the year

Victor Pelevin made his name in 90s Russia with scathing satires of authoritarianism. But while his literary peers have faced censorship and fled the country, he still sells millions. Has he become a Kremlin apologist?

Exclusive global rights to the year’s biggest night in film will move to the video platform for a four year period

The Oscars will be moving from broadcast to online as part of a multi-year new deal with YouTube.

From 2029, the video platform will have exclusive global rights to Hollywood’s biggest night, including the ceremony but also red carpet coverage, behind-the-scenes content and Governors Ball access. The deal will run until 2033.

Her delivery might be stilted – but Truss’ new YouTube show has grand ambitions: a ‘Trump revolution’ in Britain with the help of an influential US conservative ecosystem

Liz Truss, Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, began the first edition of her YouTube show with a vow to unmask “the evil-doers” attempting to bring down Britain, the US and Europe. She would, she explained, reveal how an “international network of leftists work to subvert democracy and the will of the people”.

Despite her bleak monologue, Truss pointed to hope from across the Atlantic. “We’re going to look at the Trump revolution and see how this can be achieved in Britain,” she said. “We’ll be talking to the leading lights of the Maga movement.”

Exclusive: More than 150 anonymous channels using cheap AI tools to spread false stories about Keir Starmer, study finds

YouTube channels spreading fake, anti-Labour videos have amassed more than a billion views this year, as opportunists attempt to use AI-generated content to profit from political division in the UK.

More than 150 channels have been detected in the last year that promote anti-Labour narratives, as well as outright fake and inflammatory accusations about Keir Starmer.

As midlife audiences turn to digital media, the 55 to 64 age bracket is an increasingly important demographic

In 2022, Caroline Idiens was on holiday halfway up an Italian mountain when her brother called to tell her to check her Instagram account. “I said, ‘I haven’t got any wifi. And he said: ‘Every time you refresh, it’s adding 500 followers.’ So I had to try to get to the top of the hill with the phone to check for myself.”

A personal trainer from Berkshire who began posting her fitness classes online at the start of lockdown in 2020, Idiens, 53, had already built a respectable following.

SuperLiz reboots herself inside a utility room, delivering nonsense so pure even her guests look trapped

We happy few. We unlucky few. In years to come when we are all still recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder, we will be able to say we were there. That we have seen things that cannot be unseen. The 8,000 of us who, through a mixture of curiosity and comedy, chose to watch Liz Truss commit a drive-by on herself. Though only a very few will have made it to the end.

Some won’t have even made it to the start. The show started an hour late because Liz forgot to put her watch back in October. Still, this was an award-winning YouTube TV show. Though not the awards anyone would want to collect.

Everyone’s favourite former PM is back! Her mission? To save Britain from its current ‘doomloop’ with, you guessed it, a YouTube talkshow

Will you be seeing a pantomime this year? Birmingham’s got Gok Wan and Biggins in Robin Hood, Bradford has Sinitta in Snow White, while Bromley landed Su Pollard for Beauty and the Beast. And at the end of YouTube’s infinite pier, there’s The Liz Truss Show, starring She’s-Behind-You herself. Curtain up on that one is tonight at 6pm.

According to the producers, Liz’s show “confronts the issues that others tiptoe around”. Wow. The lives, loves, and clinical explanations? Let’s just say I’d watch that. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be the format. Instead, like all seasonal entertainment, The Liz Truss Show is based on a fairytale. “The deep state and their allies in the media and politics tried to destroy me,” madam explains in a statement, “now I’m back.” Are the gilt markets the deep state now? Honestly, I can’t keep up. You’ll remember that the irony of Truss’s flameout at the hands of market forces was particularly acute given that she had spent an entire career explaining that free markets were the greatest judge of absolutely everything. Small ideological adjustment: free markets are now the greatest judge of everything except the ideas and personage of Liz Truss.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Britain’s briefest PM kept her fans waiting before launching her latest plea for Maga attention in the form of a ham-fisted YouTube talk show

In the lead-up to the launch of The Liz Truss Show – the hot new YouTube series from Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister – one phrase was repeated time and time again: “They tried to silence her.” Turns out they didn’t need to, because Truss was perfectly capable of doing that herself.

Episode 1, she tweeted, would be available on Friday at 6pm. Except, on Friday at 6pm, it was nowhere to be seen. By 6.05, with still no sign of it, her faithful began to grow itchy. “Where’s your show?” they tweeted at her. A few more minutes passed. “FFS Liz get your act together,” sighed another.

Auf seinem Youtube-Kanal „Gewitter im Kopf“ klärte er über seine Krankheit auf. Die Botschaft: Selbst darüber kann man lachen. Nun ist Jan Zimmermann mit 27 Jahren an einem epileptischen Anfall gestorben.