Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.In my unbiased opinion... —KateRemember the “sad beige” influencer lawsuit? Dismissive headlines ended up obscuring a truly wild story. Plus, the ethics of that “influencer royal wedding” your FYP can’t stop talking about:all my life I dreamed of growing up and being on computerA few weeks ago, an internet culture journalist who wishes to remain anonymous was speaking on a panel with a technology reporter she had not met before. They introduced themselves.“When I said that I cover internet culture, he very quickly said he ‘doesn’t pay attention to all that,’” the journalist recalls. “It wasn’t the first time I’ve had someone adjacent to my beat purposely differentiate themselves from what I do.”I have also noticed this vibe shift. For the first half of my career, it was a battle to convince editors that internet culture stories or creators were worth covering. Then came the internet culture reporting boom of 2020.In the years since, traditional tech coverage and internet culture coverage have worked hand in hand. They need each other, in my opinion, because you can’t responsibly report on one without the context provided by the other. But in 2023, BuzzFeed News shut down, and with it their internet culture vertical. Since then, outlets like Business Insider, NBC News, and TechCrunch, all of which claimed some of the most needed internet culture reporting, laid off many of the journalists responsible for it.Now these former staff reporters are navigating the job market in an industry keen to distance itself from their beat. “You will mostly focus on front-of-book-style pieces and short features that examine the tech industry and the lifestyle and culture of the technorati (A fundamentally different task than covering ‘internet culture’),” reads the description of the open Weekend Reporter role at The Information.When Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg stood