title: Northern Ireland

text: Neither government, however, extends its citizenship to all persons born in Northern Ireland. Both governments exclude some people born in Northern Ireland, in particular persons born without one parent who is a British or Irish citizen. The Irish restriction was given effect by the twenty-seventh amendment to the Irish Constitution in 2004. The position in UK nationality law is that most of those born in Northern Ireland are UK nationals, whether or not they so choose. Renunciation of British citizenship requires the payment of a fee, currently £372.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Irish is an official language of Northern Ireland as of 6 December 2022 when the Irish Language Act (Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act 2022) became law. The Irish Language Act officially repealed legislation from 1737 that banned the use of Irish in courts. English is a "de facto" official language. English is also spoken as a first language by 95.4% of the Northern Ireland population.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Under the Good Friday Agreement, Irish and Ulster Scots (an Ulster dialect of the Scots language, sometimes known as "Ullans"), are recognised as "part of the cultural wealth of Northern Ireland". The Irish Language Act of 2022 also legislated commissioners for both Irish and Ulster Scots.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Two all-island bodies for the promotion of these were created under the Agreement: "Foras na Gaeilge", which promotes the Irish language, and the Ulster Scots Agency, which promotes the Ulster-Scots dialect and culture. These operate separately under the aegis of the North/South Language Body, which reports to the North/South Ministerial Council.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The UK Government in 2001 ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Irish (in Northern Ireland) was specified under Part III of the Charter, with a range of specific undertakings about education, translation of statutes, interaction with public authorities, the use of placenames, media access, support for cultural activities, and other matters. A lower level of recognition was accorded to Ulster-Scots, under Part II of the Charter.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The dialect of English spoken in Northern Ireland shows influence from the lowland Scots language. There are supposedly some minute differences in pronunciation between Protestants and Catholics, for instance; the name of the letter "h", which Protestants tend to pronounce as "aitch", as in British English, and Catholics tend to pronounce as "haitch", as in Hiberno-English. However, geography is a much more important determinant of dialect than religious background.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The Irish language (), or "Gaelic", is the second most spoken language in Northern Ireland and is a native language of Ireland. It was spoken predominantly throughout what is now Northern Ireland before the Ulster Plantations in the 17th century and most place names in Northern Ireland are anglicised versions of a Gaelic name. Today, the language is often associated with Irish nationalism (and thus with Catholics). However, in the 19th century, the language was seen as a common heritage, with Ulster Protestants playing a leading role in the Gaelic revival.


title: Northern Ireland

text: In the 2021 census, 12.4% (compared with 10.7% in 2011) of the population of Northern Ireland claimed "some knowledge of Irish" and 3.9% (compared with 3.7% in 2011) reported being able to "speak, read, write and understand" Irish. In another survey, from 1999, 1% of respondents said they spoke it as their main language at home.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The dialect spoken in Northern Ireland, Ulster Irish, has two main types, East Ulster Irish and Donegal Irish (or West Ulster Irish), is the one closest to Scottish Gaelic (which developed into a separate language from Irish Gaelic in the 17th century). Some words and phrases are shared with Scots Gaelic, and the dialects of east Ulster – those of Rathlin Island and the Glens of Antrim – were very similar to the dialect of Argyll, the part of Scotland nearest to Ireland. And those dialects of Armagh and Down were also very similar to the dialects of Galloway.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The use of the Irish language in Northern Ireland today is politically sensitive. The erection by some district councils of bilingual street names in both English and Irish, invariably in predominantly nationalist districts, is resisted by unionists who claim that it creates a "chill factor" and thus harms community relationships. Efforts by members of the Northern Ireland Assembly to legislate for some official uses of the language have failed to achieve the required cross-community support. In May 2022, the UK Government proposed a bill in the House of Lords to make Irish an official language (and support Ulster Scots) in Northern Ireland and to create an Irish Language Commissioner. There has recently been an increase in interest in the language among unionists in East Belfast.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Ulster Scots comprises varieties of the Scots language spoken in Northern Ireland. For a native English speaker, "[Ulster Scots] is comparatively accessible, and even at its most intense can be understood fairly easily with the help of a glossary."


title: Northern Ireland

text: Along with the Irish language, the Good Friday Agreement recognised the dialect as part of Northern Ireland's unique culture and the St Andrews Agreement recognised the need to "enhance and develop the Ulster Scots language, heritage and culture".


title: Northern Ireland

text: At the time of the 2021 census, approximately 1.1% (compared to 0.9% in 2011) of the population claimed to be able to speak, read, write and understand Ulster-Scots, while 10.4% (compared to 8.1% in 2011) professed to have "some ability".


title: Northern Ireland

text: The most common sign language in Northern Ireland is Northern Ireland Sign Language (NISL). However, because in the past Catholic families tended to send their deaf children to schools in Dublin where Irish Sign Language (ISL) is commonly used, ISL is still common among many older deaf people from Catholic families.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Irish Sign Language (ISL) has some influence from the French family of sign language, which includes American Sign Language (ASL). NISL takes a large component from the British family of sign language (which also includes Auslan) with many borrowings from ASL. It is described as being related to Irish Sign Language at the syntactic level while much of the lexicon is based on British Sign Language (BSL).


title: Northern Ireland

text: Parades are a prominent feature of Northern Ireland society, more so than in the rest of Ireland or the United Kingdom. Most are held by Protestant fraternities such as the Orange Order, and Ulster loyalist marching bands. Each summer, during the "marching season", these groups have hundreds of parades, deck streets with British flags, bunting and specially-made arches, and light large towering bonfires in the "Eleventh Night" celebrations. The biggest parades are held on 12 July (The Twelfth). There is often tension when these activities take place near Catholic neighbourhoods, which sometimes leads to violence.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Since the end of the Troubles, Northern Ireland has witnessed rising numbers of tourists. Attractions include cultural festivals, musical and artistic traditions, countryside and geographical sites of interest, public houses, welcoming hospitality, and sports (especially golf and fishing). Since 1987 public houses have been allowed to open on Sundays, despite some opposition.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The Ulster Cycle is a large body of prose and verse centring on the traditional heroes of the Ulaid in what is now eastern Ulster. This is one of the four major cycles of Irish mythology. The cycle centres on the reign of Conchobar mac Nessa, who is said to have been the king of Ulster around the 1st century. He ruled from Emain Macha (now Navan Fort near Armagh), and had a fierce rivalry with queen Medb and king Ailill of Connacht and their ally, Fergus mac Róich, former king of Ulster. The foremost hero of the cycle is Conchobar's nephew Cúchulainn, who features in the epic prose/poem "An Táin Bó Cúailnge" (The Cattle Raid of Cooley, a "casus belli" between Ulster and Connaught).


title: Northern Ireland

text: Northern Ireland comprises a patchwork of communities whose national loyalties are represented in some areas by flags flown from flagpoles or lamp posts. The Union Jack and the former Northern Ireland flag are flown in many loyalist areas, and the Tricolour, adopted by republicans as the flag of Ireland in 1916, is flown in some republican areas. Even kerbstones in some areas are painted red-white-blue or green-white-orange, depending on whether local people express unionist/loyalist or nationalist/republican sympathies.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The official flag is that of the state having sovereignty over the territory, i.e. the Union Flag. The former Northern Ireland flag, also known as the "Ulster Banner" or "Red Hand Flag", is a banner derived from the coat of arms of the Government of Northern Ireland until 1972. Since 1972, it has had no official status. The Union Flag and the Ulster Banner are used exclusively by unionists. The UK flags policy states that in Northern Ireland, "The Ulster flag and the Cross of St Patrick have no official status and, under the Flags Regulations, are not permitted to be flown from Government Buildings."


title: Northern Ireland

text: The Irish Rugby Football Union and the Church of Ireland have used the Saint Patrick's Saltire or "Cross of St Patrick". This red saltire on a white field was used to represent Ireland in the flag of the United Kingdom. It is still used by some British army regiments. Foreign flags are also found, such as the Palestinian flags in some nationalist areas and Israeli flags in some unionist areas.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The United Kingdom national anthem of "God Save the King" is often played at state events in Northern Ireland. At the Commonwealth Games and some other sporting events, the Northern Ireland team uses the Ulster Banner as its flag—notwithstanding its lack of official status—and the "Londonderry Air" (usually set to lyrics as "Danny Boy"), which also has no official status, as its national anthem. The Northern Ireland national football team also uses the Ulster Banner as its flag but uses "God Save The King" as its anthem.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Major Gaelic Athletic Association matches are opened by the national anthem of the Republic of Ireland, "Amhrán na bhFiann (The Soldier's Song)", which is also used by most other all-Ireland sporting organisations.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Since 1995, the Ireland rugby union team has used a specially commissioned song, "Ireland's Call" as the team's anthem. The Irish national anthem is also played at Dublin home matches, being the anthem of the host country.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Northern Irish murals have become well-known features of Northern Ireland, depicting past and present events and documenting peace and cultural diversity. Almost 2,000 murals have been documented in Northern Ireland since the 1970s.


title: Northern Ireland

text: In Northern Ireland, sport is popular and important in the lives of many people. Sports tend to be organised on an all-Ireland basis, with a single team for the whole island. The most notable exception is association football, which has separate governing bodies for each jurisdiction.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The Irish Football Association (IFA) serves as the organising body for association football in Northern Ireland, with the Northern Ireland Football League (NIFL) responsible for the independent administration of the three divisions of national domestic football, as well as the Northern Ireland Football League Cup.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The highest level of competition within Northern Ireland are the NIFL Premiership and the NIFL Championship. However, many players from Northern Ireland compete with clubs in England and Scotland.


title: Northern Ireland

text: NIFL clubs are semi-professional or Intermediate.NIFL Premiership clubs are also eligible to compete in the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League with the league champions entering the Champions league second qualifying round and the 2nd placed league finisher, the European play-off winners and the Irish Cup winners entering the Europa League second qualifying round. No clubs have ever reached the group stage.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Despite Northern Ireland's small population, the Northern Ireland national football team qualified for the 1958 FIFA World Cup, 1982 FIFA World Cup and 1986 FIFA World Cup, making it to the quarter-finals in 1958 and 1982 and made it the first knockout round in the European Championships in 2016.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The six counties of Northern Ireland are among the nine governed by the Ulster branch of the Irish Rugby Football Union, the governing body of rugby union in Ireland. Ulster is one of the four professional provincial teams in Ireland and competes in the United Rugby Championship and European Cup. It won the European Cup in 1999.


title: Northern Ireland

text: In international competitions, the Ireland national rugby union team's recent successes include four Triple Crowns between 2004 and 2009 and a Grand Slam in 2009 in the Six Nations Championship.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The Ireland cricket team represents both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It is a full member of the International Cricket Council, having been granted Test status and full membership by the ICC in June 2017. The side competes in Test cricket, the highest level of competitive cricket in the international arena, and is one of the 12 full-member countries of the ICC.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Ireland men's side has played in the Cricket World Cup and T20 World Cup and has won the ICC Intercontinental Cup four times. The women's side has played in the Women's World Cup. One of the men's side's regular international venues is Stormont in Belfast.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Gaelic games include Gaelic football, hurling (and camogie), Gaelic handball and rounders. Of the four, football is the most popular in Northern Ireland. Players play for local clubs with the best being selected for their county teams. The Ulster GAA is the branch of the Gaelic Athletic Association that is responsible for the nine counties of Ulster, which include the six of Northern Ireland.


title: Northern Ireland

text: These nine county teams participate in the Ulster Senior Football Championship, Ulster Senior Hurling Championship, All-Ireland Senior Football Championship and All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Recent successes for Northern Ireland teams include Armagh's 2002 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship win and Tyrone GAA's wins in 2003, 2005, 2008, and 2021.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Perhaps Northern Ireland's most notable successes in professional sport have come in golf. Northern Ireland had three major champions in the space of just 14 months from the U.S. Open in 2010 to The Open Championship in 2011. Notable golfers include Fred Daly (winner of The Open in 1947), Ryder Cup players Ronan Rafferty and David Feherty, leading European Tour professionals David Jones, Michael Hoey (a five-time winner on the tour) and Gareth Maybin, as well as three recent major winners Graeme McDowell (winner of the U.S. Open in 2010, the first European to do so since 1970), Rory McIlroy (winner of four majors) and Darren Clarke (winner of The Open in 2011). Northern Ireland has also contributed several players to the Great Britain and Ireland Walker Cup team, including Alan Dunbar and Paul Cutler who played on the victorious 2011 team in Scotland. Dunbar also won The Amateur Championship in 2012, at Royal Troon.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The Golfing Union of Ireland, the governing body for men's and boy's amateur golf throughout Ireland and the oldest golfing union in the world, was founded in Belfast in 1891. Northern Ireland's golf courses include the Royal Belfast Golf Club (the earliest, formed in 1881), Royal Portrush Golf Club, which is the only course outside Great Britain to have hosted The Open Championship, and Royal County Down Golf Club ("Golf Digest" magazine's top-rated course outside the United States).


title: Northern Ireland

text: Northern Ireland has produced two world snooker champions; Alex Higgins, who won the title in 1972 and 1982, and Dennis Taylor, who won in 1985. The highest-ranked Northern Ireland professional on the world circuit presently is Mark Allen from County Antrim. The sport is governed locally by the Northern Ireland Billiards and Snooker Association who run regular ranking tournaments and competitions.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Motorcycle racing is a particularly popular sport during the summer months, with the main meetings of the season attracting some of the largest crowds to any outdoor sporting event in the whole of Ireland. Two of the three major international road race meetings are held in Northern Ireland, these being the North West 200 and the Ulster Grand Prix. In addition racing on purpose built circuits take place at Kirkistown and Bishop's Court, whilst smaller road race meetings are held such as the Cookstown 100, the Armoy Road Races and the Tandragee 100 all of which form part of the Irish National Road Race Championships and which have produced some of the greatest motorcycle racers in the history of the sport, notably Joey Dunlop.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Although Northern Ireland lacks an international automobile racecourse, two Northern Irish drivers have finished inside the top two of Formula One, with John Watson achieving the feat in the 1982 Formula One season and Eddie Irvine doing the same in 1999 Formula One season. The largest course and the only Motor Sports Association-licensed track for UK-wide competition is Kirkistown Circuit.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The Ireland national rugby league team has participated in the Emerging Nations Tournament (1995), the Super League World Nines (1996), the World Cup (2000, 2008, 2013, 2017, 2021), European Nations Cup (since 2003) and Victory Cup (2004).


title: Northern Ireland

text: The Ireland A rugby league team competes annually in the Amateur Four Nations competition (since 2002) and the St Patrick's Day Challenge (since 1995).


title: Northern Ireland

text: The Belfast Giants have competed in the Elite Ice Hockey League since the 2000–01 season and are the sole Northern Irish team in the league. The team's roster has featured Northern Irish-born players such as Mark Morrison, Graeme Walton and Gareth Roberts among others.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Geraldine Heaney, an Olympic gold medalist and one of the first women inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame, competed internationally for Canada but was born in Northern Ireland.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Owen Nolan, (born 12 February 1972) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player born in Northern Ireland. He was drafted 1st overall in the 1990 NHL Draft by the Quebec Nordiques.


title: Northern Ireland

text: In 2007, after the closure of UCW (Ulster Championship Wrestling) which was a wrestling promotion, PWU formed, standing for Pro Wrestling Ulster. The wrestling promotion features championships, former WWE superstars and local independent wrestlers. Events and IPPV's throughout Northern Ireland.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Unlike most areas of the United Kingdom, in the last year of primary school, many children sit entrance examinations for grammar schools.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Integrated schools, which attempt to ensure a balance in enrolment between pupils of Protestant, Roman Catholic, and other faiths (or none), are becoming increasingly popular, although Northern Ireland still has a primarily "de facto" religiously segregated education system. In the primary school sector, 40 schools (8.9% of the total number) are integrated schools and 32 (7.2% of the total number) are Gaelscoileanna (Irish language-medium schools).


title: Northern Ireland

text: The main universities in Northern Ireland are Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University, and the distance learning Open University which has a regional office in Belfast.


title: Northern Ireland

text: 356 species of marine algae have been recorded in the northeast of Ireland. As Counties Londonderry, Antrim, and Down are the only three counties of Northern Ireland with a shoreline this will apply to all of Northern Ireland. 77 species are considered rare having been recorded rarely.


title: Northern Ireland

text: The BBC has a division called BBC Northern Ireland with headquarters in Belfast and operates BBC One Northern Ireland and BBC Two Northern Ireland. As well as broadcasting standard UK-wide programmes, BBC NI produces local content, including a news break-out called BBC Newsline. The ITV franchise in Northern Ireland is UTV. The state-owned Channel 4 and the privately owned Channel 5 also broadcast in Northern Ireland. Access is also available to satellite and cable services. All Northern Ireland viewers must obtain a UK TV licence to watch live television transmissions or use BBC iPlayer.


title: Northern Ireland

text: RTÉ, the national broadcaster of the Republic of Ireland, is available over the air to most parts of Northern Ireland via reception overspill of the Republic's Saorview service, or via satellite and cable. Since the digital TV switchover, RTÉ One, RTÉ2 and the Irish-language channel TG4, are now available over the air on the UK's Freeview system from transmitters within Northern Ireland. Although they are transmitted in standard definition, a Freeview HD box or television is required for reception.


title: Northern Ireland

text: As well as the standard UK-wide radio stations from the BBC, Northern Ireland is home to many local radio stations, such as Cool FM, Belfast CityBeat, and Q102.9. The BBC has two regional radio stations which broadcast in Northern Ireland, BBC Radio Ulster and BBC Radio Foyle.


title: Northern Ireland

text: Besides the UK and Irish national newspapers, there are three main regional newspapers published in Northern Ireland. These are the "Belfast Telegraph", "The Irish News" and "The News Letter". According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (UK) the average daily circulation for these three titles in 2018 was:


title: Northern Ireland

text: Northern Ireland uses the same telecommunications and postal services as the rest of the United Kingdom at standard domestic rates and there are no mobile roaming charges between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. People in Northern Ireland who live close to the border with the Republic of Ireland may inadvertently switch over to the Irish mobile networks, causing international roaming fees to be applied. Calls from landlines in Northern Ireland to numbers in the Republic of Ireland are charged at the same rate as those to numbers in Great Britain, while landline numbers in Northern Ireland can similarly be called from the Republic of Ireland at domestic rates, using the 048 prefix.


title: Midsommar

text: Midsommar is a 2019 folk horror film written and directed by Ari Aster. The film stars Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor as a dysfunctional couple who travel to Sweden with a group of friends for a midsummer festival, only to find themselves in the clutches of a sinister cult practicing Scandinavian paganism. Supporting actors include William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren, Ellora Torchia, Archie Madekwe and Will Poulter.


title: Midsommar

text: A co-production between the United States and Sweden, the film was initially pitched to Aster as a straightforward slasher film set among Swedish cultists. While elements of the original concept remain in the final product, the film's plot centers on a deteriorating relationship, inspired by a difficult breakup which Aster himself experienced. The soundtrack, composed by British electronic musician Bobby Krlic (better known by his stage name The Haxan Cloak), takes inspiration from Nordic folk music. The film was shot on location in Budapest in the summer and autumn of 2018.


title: Midsommar

text: "Midsommar" was theatrically released in the United States on July 3, 2019, by A24 and in Sweden on July 10, 2019, by Nordisk Film. The film grossed $48 million and received positive reviews from critics, with praise for Aster's direction and Pugh's performance in particular.


title: Midsommar

text: American psychology student Dani Ardor is left deeply traumatized after her sister commits a murder-suicide by filling the house with carbon monoxide, killing herself and her parents. The incident further strains Dani's relationship with her increasingly distant boyfriend of four years, cultural anthropology student, Christian. As summer approaches, she learns that Christian and fellow students Mark and Josh have been invited by their Swedish friend Pelle to attend a midsummer festival at his ancestral commune, the Hårga, in rural Hälsingland, Sweden. The festival occurs only once every 90 years, and Josh, who is writing his thesis on European midsummer festivities, regards it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Christian had not discussed the trip with Dani, as he intended to break up with her before the tragedy with her family. After an argument, he reluctantly invites her along.


title: Midsommar

text: Upon arrival at the commune, they meet Simon and Connie, a couple from London who were invited by Pelle's communal brother Ingemar. He offers the group psychedelic mushrooms, and Dani has a bad trip, hallucinating about her dead family. The day after their arrival, the group witnesses an ättestupa ceremony, where two elders commit suicide by jumping from a cliff onto the rocks below. When one of the elders survives the fall, the commune members mimic his wails of pain, and promptly mercy-kill him by bludgeoning his skull with a mallet. Commune elder, Siv, attempts to calm Connie and Simon by explaining that every member of their community does this at the age of 72 and believes it to be a great honor.


title: Midsommar

text: Christian also decides to write his thesis on the Hårga commune, irritating Josh for plagiarizing his idea. Bothered by the ceremonies, Dani attempts to leave but is convinced to stay by Pelle. He explains that he too was orphaned after his parents perished in a fire, and the commune became his new family. Connie and Simon demand to leave and are supposedly driven to a nearby train station one at a time. During his thesis research, Christian is told that to avoid incest, outsiders are sometimes brought into the commune for "mating" purposes. He is propositioned and encouraged to participate but refuses. After unwittingly urinating on a sacred tree, Mark is lured away from the group by one of the female commune members. That night, Josh sneaks out of bed to secretly photograph one of the commune's sacred texts despite being forbidden by an elder from doing so. Josh has his head bludgeoned and dragged away when he is caught and distracted by a man wearing Mark's corpse's skinned face.


title: Midsommar

text: The following day, both Dani and Christian are separately coerced into taking a hallucinogenic drink. Dani wins a maypole dancing competition and is crowned May Queen. Afterward, Christian is drugged and participates in a coppulation ritual designed to impregnate Maja, a young female member of the Hårga, while older nude female members watch and mimic Maja's moans. Dani witnesses the ritual and has a panic attack while the commune's women surround her, mimicking her cries of sorrow. After the ritual, a nude Christian tries to flee. He discovers Josh's severed leg planted in a flowerbed and Simon's corpse on display in a barn after being subjected to a blood eagle. Christian is then paralyzed by an elder.


title: Midsommar

text: For the final ceremony, the commune leaders explain that the commune must offer nine human sacrifices to purge it of its evil. The first four victims are outsiders lured to them by Pelle and Ingemar, while the next four victims must be from the commune. As May Queen, Dani must choose either Christian or a commune member to be the final sacrifice. She chooses Christian, who is stuffed into a disemboweled brown bear's body and placed in a triangular wooden temple alongside other sacrifices. The commune members to be sacrificed are given drugs and told it will prevent them from feeling fear or suffering, but Christian is not and remains unable to move. The structure is set alight, and the commune members mimic the screams and wails of agony of those being burned alive. Dani initially sobs in horror and grief, but then she gradually begins to smile.


title: Midsommar

text: In May 2018, it was announced that Ari Aster would write and direct the film, with Lars Knudsen serving as producer. B-Reel Films, a Swedish company, produced the film alongside Square Peg, with A24 distributing. Aster's previous horror film, "Hereditary", had been a huge critical success, making over $80 million to become A24's highest-grossing film worldwide. According to Aster, he had been approached by B-Reel executives Martin Karlqvist and Patrik Andersson to helm a slasher film set in Sweden, an idea which he initially rejected as he felt he "had no way into the story." Aster ultimately devised a plot in which the two central characters are experiencing relationship tensions verging on a breakup, and wrote the surrounding screenplay around this theme. He described the result as "a breakup movie dressed in the clothes of a folk horror film." Aster has mentioned 1981 Albert Brooks film "Modern Romance" as an inspiration for "Midsommar", and also called it ""The Wizard of Oz" for perverts".


title: Midsommar

text: Aster worked with the film's production designer Henrik Svensson to develop the film's folklore elements and the traditions of the Hårga, while visiting Hälsingland together. He researched Hälsingegårds, "centuries-old farms that typically had painting on the walls", to develop a stylized version for the set, as well as midsummer celebrations in Swedish, German and English folklore. Aster also researched spiritual movements and communities, saying he particularly drew inspiration from Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy and the theosophy movement.


title: Midsommar

text: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Will Poulter, Vilhem Blomgren, William Jackson Harper, Ellora Torchia, and Archie Madekwe joined the cast in July 2018.


title: Midsommar

text: Some early scenes set in the United States were also filmed there; Dani's apartment was filmed in Brooklyn, New York City, as is the location in the film, whilst other scenes where Christian's friends interact were filmed in Utah. The majority of the film was shot in Hungary rather than Sweden, primarily due to financial constraints, but also as Sweden limits daily film shoots to no longer than 8 hours. Principal photography began on July 30, 2018 in Budapest, and wrapped in October 2018.


title: Midsommar

text: Harper said the shoot was "arduous" due to the heat. Wasps were highly abundant and a major issue on set. Pugh reflected "the shoot was totally nuts" and commended Aster's direction: "he was dealing with possibly 100, 120 people, additional extras and actors there, all speaking in three different languages and he was the captain of the ship".


title: Midsommar

text: Ahead of filming the drug use scenes, Reynor said that the cast discussed their own experiences with psychedelic mushrooms. On her breakdown scene with the Hårga, Pugh commended the other women involved, saying they "made this scene possible" as she typically struggles to cry on camera. She reflected: "I knew I would never be so open and so raw and so exhausted like I was that day ever again".


title: Midsommar

text: The sex scene between Christian and Maja was shot on the final day. Reynor said he spent time attempting to boost morale among the other cast members involved, none of whom spoke English, including Isabelle Grill (Maja) who was appearing in her first feature film role. He reflected he felt male nudity was unusual for a horror film, where female nudity is more typical. He said that he "advocated for as much full-frontal nudity as possible, I really wanted to embrace the feeling of being exposed and the humiliation of this character. And I felt really, really vulnerable, more than I had actually even anticipated.”


title: Midsommar

text: Svensson said that the mallet prop used for the senicide scene was a replica of one at a museum in Stockholm, and that the cliff-jumping was based on historic practices in Sweden. Costume designer Andrea Flesch developed the Hårga's costumes with antique linen from Hungary and Romania, and buttons from Sweden. Aster asked for the clothing to appear handmade, and for the Hårga to dress in white. Many of their costumes were hand embroidered with rune designs unique to individual community members, and signifying their families and occupations. Murals and tapestries in the background of some scenes indicate events in the film.


title: Midsommar

text: In April 2020, A24 announced it would be auctioning off props from its films and television series, including the 10,000-silk-flower May Queen dress worn by Florence Pugh, which was purchased by the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures for $65,000. Other items from the film that sold at auction were the bear headdress worn by Jack Reynor for $4,760, the mallet used to crush a cult member's skull for $10,000, and other villager costumes that sold in the $4,500 range. All the proceeds from the "Midsommar" collection raised over $100,000 for the FDNY Foundation.


title: Midsommar

text: Aster said that the visual effects for the psychedelic scenes involved considerable trial and error: "I'm sure for some of those shots we got to the point where we had 60 versions. In one iteration the tripping was way too distracting and you're not paying attention to the characters, and then you brought it down to the point where if you are paying attention to the characters, you'll never notice the tripping effects." The more minimal visual effects were settled on a week before the first screening.


title: Midsommar

text: There was around a six-week debate as to whether the film would be given a NC-17 or R rating by the MPAA for its US release due to its graphic nudity, with it eventually being given an R rating after cuts; an NC-17 rating is considered harmful to films' box office performance.


title: Midsommar

text: Aster wrote the film while listening to British electronic musician The Haxan Cloak's 2013 album "Excavation". Aster later recruited him to compose the film's score, credited under his real name Bobby Krlic. Krlic began composing the music before filming began, taking inspiration from Nordic folk music, and collaborating closely with Aster. The film makes use of diegetic music, where events on screen meld with the score.


title: Midsommar

text: "Midsommar" had a pre-release screening at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in New York City, on June 18, 2019. The film was theatrically released in the United States on July 3, 2019. It was released in Sweden on July 10, 2019.


title: Midsommar

text: Aster's original 171-minute cut of the film, which A24 asked Aster to trim down for a wide theatrical release, had its world premiere at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City on August 20, 2019. It was shown in theaters across the United States for a weekend starting on August 29, 2019. The director's cut was released as an Apple TV exclusive on September 24, 2019. On physical media, it saw a British release on Blu-ray and DVD on October 28, 2019, an Australian Blu-ray release on November 6, 2019 and a US release on Blu-ray in July 2020.


title: Midsommar

text: "Midsommar" was released on Digital HD on September 24, 2019, and on DVD and Blu-ray on October 8, 2019. The director's cut of the film was then released on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray as an A24 shop exclusive on July 20, 2020, in limited copies.


title: Midsommar

text: "Midsommar" grossed $27.5million in the United States and Canada, and $20.5million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $48million.


title: Midsommar

text: In the United States and Canada, the film was projected to gross $8–10 million from 2,707 theaters over its first five days. It made $3 million on its first day, including $1.1 million from Tuesday night previews, which "Deadline Hollywood" called a "smashing start". It went on to debut to $10.9 million, finishing sixth at the box office; "IndieWire" said it was "just decent" given its estimated $8 million budget, but the film would likely find success in home media. In its second weekend, the film dropped 44% to $3.7 million, finishing in eighth, and then made $1.6 million in its third weekend, finishing in ninth.


title: Midsommar

text: Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an average 3 out of 5 stars, with 50% saying they would definitely recommend it.


title: Midsommar

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 83% based on 400 reviews, and an average rating of 7.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Ambitious, impressively crafted, and above all unsettling, "Midsommar" further proves writer-director Ari Aster is a horror auteur to be reckoned with." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 72 out of 100, based on 54 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Midsommar

text: John DeFore of "The Hollywood Reporter" described the film as the "horror equivalent of a destination wedding", and "more unsettling than frightening, [but] still a trip worth taking." Writing for "Variety", Andrew Barker noted that it is "neither the masterpiece nor the disaster that the film's most vocal viewers are bound to claim. Rather, it's an admirably strange, thematically muddled curiosity from a talented filmmaker who allows his ambitions to outpace his execution." David Edelstein of "Vulture" praised Pugh's performance as "amazingly vivid" and noted that Aster "paces "Midsommar" more like an opera (Wagner, not Puccini) than a scare picture," but concluded that the film "doesn't jell because its impulses are so bifurcated. It's a parable of a woman's religious awakening—that's also a woman's fantasy of revenge against a man who didn't meet her emotional needs—that's also a male director's masochistic fantasy of emasculation at the hands of a matriarchal cult." In "The New York Times", Manohla Dargis was critical of the character depth behind Dani and Christian, finding them "instructively uninteresting" and stereotypically gendered as a couple.


title: Midsommar

text: Eric Kohn of "IndieWire" summarized the film as a "perverse breakup movie," adding that "Aster doesn't always sink the biggest surprises, but he excels at twisting the knife. After a deflowering that makes Ken Russell's "The Devils" look tame, Aster finds his way to a startling reality check." "Time Out"s Joshua Rothkopf awarded the film a 5/5 star-rating, writing, "A savage yet evolved slice of Swedish folk-horror, Ari Aster's hallucinatory follow-up to "Hereditary" proves him a horror director with no peer."


title: Midsommar

text: For "The A.V. Club", A. A. Dowd stated that the film "rivals "Hereditary" in the cruel shock department", and labelled it a "B+ effort". Writing for "Inverse", Eric Francisco commented that the film feels "like a victory lap after "Hereditary"", and that Aster "takes his sweet time to lull viewers into his clutches ... But like how the characters experience time, its passage is a vague notion." He described the film as "a sharp portrayal of gaslighting". Richard Brody of "The New Yorker" said that the film "is built on such a void of insight and experience, such a void of character and relationships, that even the first level of the house of narrative cards can't stand." He added, "In the end, the subject of "Midsommar" is as simple as it is regressive: lucky Americans, stay home." Emma Madden in "The Guardian" criticised the film for its depiction of disabled characters as "monstrous", and argued it resurrects harmful horror film tropes of ableism and eugenics.


title: Midsommar

text: Tomris Laffly of RogerEbert.com rated the film 4 out of 4 stars, describing it as a "terrifically juicy, apocalyptic cinematic sacrament that dances around a fruitless relationship in dizzying circles". A "Vanity Fair" article from December 2019 reflecting on the 2010s in horror films argued that "Midsommar" was part of a trend of "elevated horror" along with Aster's previous "Hereditary" and Robert Eggers directed "The Witch", and that it was an example of "horror at its best".


title: Midsommar

text: Writing in "The Guardian", Steve Rose describes "Midsommar" as "a powerful study of grief, betrayal, breakups, and more." Rose suggests that Dani's three male companions may be seen as representing "toxic masculinity", or analogues of the three male companions in "The Wizard of Oz" (namely the Tin Man, Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow). Rose proposes that the film may be read as a "parable of snarky, city-smart, modern rationalism undone by primal rural values". Alternatively, he proposes that the villagers' traditions could be read as far-right, white nationalist or eugenicist.


title: Midsommar

text: In "Vox", Alissa Wilkinson described "Midsommar"'s story as following Dani's emotional journey and following fairy tale conventions, where Dani loses her family at the beginning and goes on to become a Queen, as with Cinderella and Snow White. The article also notes the use of imagery foreshadowing later events throughout the film. Aster himself said "We begin as Dani loses a family, and we end as Dani gains one. And so, for better or worse, [the Hårga] are there to provide exactly what she is lacking, and exactly what she needs, in true fairy tale fashion."


title: Midsommar

text: Monica Wolfe discussed "Midsommar" as reflecting themes of globalization and American imperialism in a 2022 article in the "Journal of Popular Film and Television". Wolfe outlines the film's competing ideologies of femininity versus masculinity, academic knowledge versus folk knowledge, and capitalism versus communism, writing that "the horror of the film is driven by the objectified Other’s resistance to the imperial power’s desire to dominate physical place and own ideological space, but is complicated by a suggestion that, in this unique case, the Other is also a nationalist, right-wing power, and the tension between "home" and "foreign" reflects that of a new Cold War."


title: Midsommar

text: The film's central sex scene, between Christian and Maja, has been the subject of debate as to whether it depicts rape. An article in "Sexuality & Culture" asserts that "the ambiguous nature of this scene may be viewed as problematic because it blurs the line between consent and sexual assault" and that the film has implications for contemporary understandings of rape, particularly of males.


title: Don't Look Up

text: Don't Look Up is a 2021 American apocalyptic political satire black comedy film written, co-produced, and directed by Adam McKay from a story he co-wrote with David Sirota. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep. The film tells the story of two astronomers attempting to warn humanity about an approaching comet that will destroy human civilization. The impact event is an allegory for climate change, and the film is a satire of government, political, celebrity, and media indifference to the climate crisis.


title: Don't Look Up

text: Produced by McKay's Hyperobject Industries and Bluegrass Films, the film was announced in November 2019. Originally set for theatrical release by Paramount Pictures, the rights were acquired by Netflix several months later. Lawrence became the first member of the cast to join, with DiCaprio signing on after his discussions with McKay on adjustments to the script; the rest of the cast was added through 2020. Filming was initially set to begin in April 2020 in Massachusetts, but it was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic; it eventually began in November 2020 and wrapped in February 2021. The film began a limited theatrical release on December 10, 2021, before streaming on Netflix on December 24.


title: Don't Look Up

text: "Don't Look Up" was praised for the cast's performances and the musical score, but critics were divided on the merits of McKay's satire; some found it deft, while others criticized it as smug and heavy-handed. The film was received more positively by scientists. "Don't Look Up" was named one of the top ten films of 2021 by the National Board of Review and American Film Institute. It received four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, four Golden Globe Award nominations, including Best Picture – Musical or Comedy, and six Critics' Choice Award nominations, including Best Picture. It won Best Original Screenplay at the 74th Writers Guild of America Awards. The film set a new record for the most viewing hours in a single week on Netflix, and went on to become the second-most-watched movie on Netflix within 28 days of release.


title: Don't Look Up

text: Kate Dibiasky, an MSU doctoral candidate, discovers a previously unknown comet. Her professor Dr. Randall Mindy confirms that it will collide with the Earth in about six months and is large enough to cause a planet-wide extinction event. NASA confirms the findings and their Planetary Defense Coordination Office head Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe accompanies Dibiasky and Mindy to present their findings to the White House. They are met with apathy from President Janie Orlean and her son/Chief of Staff Jason.


title: Don't Look Up

text: Oglethorpe urges Dibiasky and Mindy to leak the news to the media, and they do so on a morning talk show. When hosts Jack Bremmer and Brie Evantee treat the topic frivolously, Dibiasky loses her composure and rants about the threat. Mindy receives public approval for his looks. Actual news about the comet's threat receives little public attention and the danger is denied by Orlean's NASA Director Jocelyn Calder, a top donor to Orlean with no background in astronomy. When news of Orlean's sex scandal with her Supreme Court nominee Sheriff Conlon is exposed, she distracts from the bad publicity by finally confirming the threat and announcing a project to strike and divert the comet using nuclear weapons.


title: Don't Look Up

text: The mission successfully launches, but Orlean abruptly aborts it when Peter Isherwell, the billionaire CEO of BASH Cellular and another top donor, discovers that the comet contains trillions of dollars worth of rare-earth elements. The White House agrees to commercially exploit the comet by fragmenting and recovering it from the ocean, using technology proposed by BASH in a scheme that has not undergone peer review. Orlean sidelines Dibiasky and Oglethorpe while hiring Mindy as the National Science Advisor. Dibiasky tries to mobilize public opposition to the scheme but gives up under threat from Orlean's administration. Mindy becomes a prominent voice advocating for the comet's commercial opportunities and begins an affair with Evantee.


title: Don't Look Up

text: World opinion is divided among people who believe the comet is a severe threat, those who decry alarmism and believe that mining a destroyed comet will create jobs, and those who deny that the comet even exists. When Dibiasky returns home to Illinois, her parents kick her out of the house and she begins a relationship with a young man named Yule, a shoplifter she meets at her retail job. After Mindy's wife confronts him about his infidelity, she returns to Michigan without him. Mindy questions whether Isherwell's technology will be able to break apart the comet, angering the billionaire. Becoming frustrated with the administration, Mindy finally snaps and rants on live television, criticizing Orlean for downplaying the impending apocalypse and questioning humanity's indifference.


title: Don't Look Up

text: Cut off from the administration, Mindy reconciles with Dibiasky as the comet becomes visible from Earth. Mindy, Dibiasky, and Oglethorpe organize a protest campaign on social media, telling people to "Just Look Up" and call on other countries to conduct comet interception operations. At the same time, Orlean starts an anti-campaign telling people, "Don't Look Up." Orlean cuts Russia, India, and China out of the rights for the comet-mining deal, so they prepare their own joint deflection mission, only for their spacecraft to explode. BASH's attempt at breaking the comet apart also goes awry and everyone realizes that humanity is doomed.


title: Don't Look Up

text: Isherwell, Orlean, and others in their elite circle board a sleeper spaceship designed to find an Earth-like planet, inadvertently leaving Jason behind. Orlean offers Mindy two places on the ship, but he declines, choosing to spend a final evening with his friends and family. As expected, the comet strikes off the coast of Chile, causing a worldwide disaster and triggering an extinction-level event. The shockwave strikes Mindy's house, killing everyone inside.


title: Don't Look Up

text: In a mid-credits scene, the 2,000 people who left Earth before the comet's impact land on a lush alien planet 22,740 years later, ending their cryogenic sleep. They exit their spacecraft naked and admiring the habitable world. Orlean is suddenly killed by a bird-like predator, one of a pack that surrounds the planetary newcomers.


title: Don't Look Up

text: Other cast members include Erik Parillo as Sheriff Conlon, Orlean's choice for Supreme Court Justice who ends up in a sex scandal with Orlean; Jon Glaser as Meow Man; Sarah Nolen as the puppeteer of Sammy; Allyn Burrows as Mr. Dibiasky, the father of Kate; and Tori Davis Lawlor as Mrs. Dibiasky, the mother of Kate


title: Don't Look Up

text: Additionally, Robert Hurst Radochia and Conor Sweeney appear as Randall and June's sons, Evan and Marshall Mindy. Hettienne Park appears as Dr. Jocelyn Calder, the Head of NASA. There are cameo appearances by Liev Schreiber as the BASH narrator, journalist Ashleigh Banfield as Dalia Hensfield, Sarah Silverman as comedian Sarah Benterman, Bollywood actor Ishaan Khatter as Raghav Manavalan and Chris Evans (uncredited) as film actor Devin Peters who stars in the film "Total Devastation" and attempts to be a centrist about whether or not to worry about the failure to divert the comet when humanity had the chance. Matthew Perry and Gina Gershon were cast for roles in the film, but had their scenes cut.


title: Don't Look Up

text: Produced by Hyperobject Industries and Bluegrass Films, the film was announced in November 2019 and sold by Paramount Pictures to Netflix several months later. Lawrence became the first member of the cast to join, with DiCaprio signing on after his discussions with McKay on adjustments to the script; the rest of the cast was added through 2020.


title: Don't Look Up

text: After "Vice" was released, David Sirota asked Adam McKay to use his "superpowers of humor and writing" to create a climate change movie that would be different from the "Mad Max"-type post-apocalyptic films that had previously been released. In an interview with "Entertainment Weekly", McKay described how he and Sirota came up with the premise of "Don't Look Up" while discussing the existential threat of climate change and their frustration over the lack of media coverage it was receiving:


title: Don't Look Up

text: I started talking to a lot of [climate] scientists. I kept looking for good news, and I never got it. Everything I was hearing was worse than what I was hearing on the mainstream media. So I was talking to [David Sirota], and we were both just like, "can you believe that this isn't being covered in the media? That it's being pushed to the end of the story? That there's no headlines?" And Sirota just offhandedly said, "it's like a comet is heading to Earth and it's going to destroy us all and no one cares." And I was like, "that's the idea!"


title: Don't Look Up

text: McKay has described the film as a "blend of broad comedy" with elements of disaster films and horror films.


title: Don't Look Up

text: Astronomer Amy Mainzer, principal investigator of NASA's NEOWISE mission that tracks Near-Earth objects, served as an "astrotech adviser" for the film. She provided scientific advice and supported with writing scenes from an early stage of production.


title: Don't Look Up

text: On November 8, 2019, it was announced that Paramount Pictures would distribute the film, with Adam McKay writing, directing, and producing under his Hyperobject Industries banner. On February 19, 2020, Netflix acquired the film from Paramount and Jennifer Lawrence was cast in the film. On May 12, 2020, it was announced that Cate Blanchett had joined the film. In September 2020, Rob Morgan joined the cast. In October 2020, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Himesh Patel, Timothée Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi (Scott Mescudi), and Tomer Sisley were added. McKay wrote the part of Dibiasky specifically for Lawrence, and spent four to five months going over ideas with DiCaprio, tweaking the script before the actor ultimately signed on. In November 2020, Tyler Perry, Melanie Lynskey, and Ron Perlman joined the cast. Mark Rylance and Michael Chiklis were revealed as part of the cast in February 2021. Paul Guilfoyle was announced in May. Matthew Perry had scenes filmed with Hill that were ultimately cut from the final film. Gina Gershon also filmed a scene with DiCaprio and Blanchett that was cut from the film. Leonardo DiCaprio received top billing on the film's posters and the trailers while Jennifer Lawrence was accorded top billing at the beginning of the film itself. This was also the case with earlier productions "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962) with James Stewart and John Wayne and "All the President's Men" (1976) with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.


title: Don't Look Up

text: Principal photography was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Filming commenced on November 18, 2020, at various locations in Boston, Massachusetts. Part of the film takes place in New York City with Boston standing in as New York. Filming also took place in other Massachusetts cities including Brockton, Framingham, and Westborough. On February 5, 2021, Jennifer Lawrence was mildly injured during filming when a controlled glass explosion went awry. On February 18, 2021, principal photography wrapped.


title: Don't Look Up

text: To promote the film, Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi released the single "Just Look Up" on December 3, 2021, a song that is also performed in the film.


title: Don't Look Up

text: On February 19, 2020, it was announced Netflix planned to release the film in 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, filming and release of the film were delayed. The film premiered in New York City on December 5, 2021. It received a limited theatrical release on December 10, and began streaming on Netflix on December 24. The film made an estimated $260,000 from 500 theaters on its first day, and a total of $700,000 in its opening weekend.


title: Don't Look Up

text: "Don't Look Up" was the most-streamed English-language film on Netflix during the week of December 20–26, 2021 with a viewership of 111.03 million hours, the second highest viewership for a movie during its debut weekend on Netflix. It was the second most-streamed-film of the week in the United States according to TV Time. Per Nielsen, the film had a viewership of 1.6 billion minutes in the United States. In the second week, it retained its first position with a viewership of 152.29 million hours, which also set the record for highest weekly viewership for any film ever on Netflix. It was the second most-streamed-film in the United States according to Nielsen with a viewership of 2 billion minutes, with its rise compared to previous week driven by a more even audience share among the 18–34, 35–49 and 50–64 age ranges.


title: Don't Look Up

text: The film retained its position on Netflix in third week with a viewership of 58.2 million hours. Per Nielsen it was the second most-streamed-film in the United States during the week with 807 million minutes viewed. In the fourth week it was displaced to the second position on Netflix's chart while garnering a viewership of 28.39 million hours. In the fifth week, which concluded 30 days after the film was released, it fell to the third position while garnering a viewership of 17.13 million hours. According to Nielsen, it was the sixth-most-streamed-film for the week with 278 million minutes viewed. For its first 28 days, it culminated a viewership of 359.8 million hours, making it the second most-watched film within 28 days of release on Netflix during this period of time.


title: Don't Look Up

text: In the sixth week, it was ranked fourth on Netflix with a viewership of 10.25 million hours. According to Nielsen, it was the ninth most-streamed film in the United States with a viewership of 165 million minutes. The following week, it fell to the seventh place in Netflix's rankings, while being viewed for 6.93 million hours. In the eighth week, it was ranked tenth with a viewership of 5.34 million hours. By March 20 the film had been streamed in 10.3 million households in the United States according to Samba TV, including 641,000 since the Oscar nomination announcements on February 8.


title: Don't Look Up

text: The "San Francisco Chronicle" Mick LaSalle praised the film and wrote, ""Don't Look Up" might be the funniest movie of 2021. It's the most depressing too, and that odd combination makes for a one-of-a-kind experience... McKay gives you over two hours of laughs while convincing you that the world is coming to an end." Richard Roeper of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars and said: "From Streep and DiCaprio and Lawrence through the supporting players, "Don't Look Up" is filled with greatly talented actors really and truly selling this material—but the volume remains at 11 throughout the story when some changes in tone here and there might have more effectively carried the day." Reviewing the film for the "Los Angeles Times", Justin Chang wrote, "Nothing about the foolishness and outrageousness of what the movie shows us—no matter how virtuosically sliced and diced by McKay's characteristically jittery editor, Hank Corwin—can really compete with the horrors of our real-world American idiocracy." Amit Katwala of "Wired" concluded that ""Don't Look Up" nails the frustration of being a scientist." Linda Marric of "The Jewish Chronicle" gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: "There is something genuinely endearing about a film that doesn't seem to care one bit about coming across as silly as long as its message is heard". Shruti Kotiya of Sportskeeda, suggests that ""Don't Look Up" also feels similar to Mike Judge's "Idiocracy", which is set in 2505 America, where mindless entertainment and violence are what really matter. It also sheds light on how the world's collective IQ has hit its lowest, which is why "Don't Look Up" is like a 21st-century version of it."


title: Don't Look Up

text: In a negative review, David Rooney of "The Hollywood Reporter" called the film "A cynical, insufferably smug satire stuffed to the gills with stars that purports to comment on political and media inattention to the climate crisis but really just trivializes it. "Dr. Strangelove" it ain't." Peter Debruge of "Variety" called the film a "smug, easy-target political satire" and wrote, ""Don't Look Up" plays like the leftie answer to "Armageddon"—which is to say, it ditches the Bruckheimer approach of assembling a bunch of blue-collar heroes to rocket out to space and nuke the approaching comet, opting instead to spotlight the apathy, incompetence and financial self-interest of all involved." In "The Guardian", Charles Bramesco wrote that the "script states the obvious as if everyone else is too stupid to realize it and does so from a position of lofty superiority that would drive away any partisans who still need to be won over." Reviews from right-wing publications were nearly unanimously negative. Madeline Fry Schultz of the American conservative publication "Washington Examiner" wrote that "McKay manages to deliver nothing more than a derivative and meandering "satire" of capitalism, Donald Trump, and climate deniers that will be forgotten in less than six months." Kyle Smith of American conservative publication "National Review" wrote that the film "expends 140 brain-injuriously unfunny minutes... propelling low-velocity spitballs at social media, Washington, tech moguls, Trumpism, and (this detail feels thrown in last minute) anti-vaxxers."


title: Don't Look Up

text: Nathan J. Robinson, editor of "Current Affairs", believes that "critics were not only missing the point of the film in important ways, but that the very way they discussed the film exemplified the problem that the film was trying to draw attention to. Some of the responses to the movie could have appeared in the movie itself." Slavoj Žižek, writing in "Compact", said that "critics were displeased by the light tone of "Don't Look Up!", claiming it trivializes the ultimate apocalypse. What really bothered these critics is the exact opposite: The film highlights trivialization that permeates not only the establishment, but even the protesters." In "The Guardian", Catherine Bennett viewed the film as astute and was caustic about the critical reviews. Writing for the American socialist publication "Jacobin", Branko Marcetic says that the plot of the film, while absurd, hardly exaggerates, noting that "much of our political elite are just as greedy and foolish, our media just as vapid, and our response to impending disaster exactly as mind-bogglingly irrational as in the movie." British journalist and environmental activist George Monbiot wrote in "The Guardian" that "no wonder journalists have slated it … it's about them" and added that for environmental activists like himself, the film, while fastpaced and humorous, "seemed all too real".


title: Don't Look Up

text: Bong Joon-ho, director of "Snowpiercer" and "Parasite", included "Don't Look Up" as one of his favorite films of 2021.


title: Don't Look Up

text: Since the film's release, numerous climate scientists and climate communicators have offered positive opinions on the film.


title: Don't Look Up

text: In an opinion piece published in "The Guardian", climate scientist Peter Kalmus remarked, ""Don't Look Up" is satire. But speaking as a climate scientist doing everything I can to wake people up and avoid planetary destruction, it's also the most accurate film about society's terrifying non-response to climate breakdown I've seen." Climate scientist Michael E. Mann also expressed support for the film, calling it "serious sociopolitical commentary posing as comedy". In an article for "Scientific American", Rebecca Oppenheimer questioned the film's use of a comet impact as an effective metaphor for climate change, given the large differences in timescale of these differing potential extinction crisis events and the nature of their impacts, but praised its depiction of science denialism and depiction of a botched attempt to address a "planet-killer" comet. Climate policy expert Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and McKay wrote a joint op-ed in "The Guardian" advocating for the value of humour in promoting action on climate change, in contrast with other media coverage.


title: Don't Look Up

text: Writing in "Physics World", Laura Hiscott said that this "genuinely funny and entertaining film" would appeal to scientists, who would appreciate the "nods to academia such as the importance of peer review, the 'publish or perish' problem and the issue of senior academics getting the credit for their PhD students’ discoveries".


title: Don't Look Up

text: One of the scenes in the film was compared on social media to a situation in Brazil. In that situation, microbiologist and science communicator Natália Pasternak Taschner criticized a news report made by TV Cultura on a live broadcast in December 2020. They told the Brazilian population to face the COVID-19 pandemic with "lightness", minimizing the risks. They also put pressure on the public to be content and uncritical of the Jair Bolsonaro administration's lack of effective response to the pandemic. Hearing about the comparisons, Pasternak thanked McKay, DiCaprio and Lawrence on Twitter with the video subtitled in English to thank them for the "incredible" film.


title: Don't Look Up

text: The topic of science communication is at the forefront of the film, as it revolves around Mindy and Dibiasky, two scientists, struggling to share the news of their discovery with politicians, talk show hosts, and civilians who are ignorant about the scientific facts of humanity's impending destruction by Comet Dibiasky. Many academic scholars of media and communication have written commentaries that analyze and critique the portrayal of science communication in the film.


title: Don't Look Up

text: In the Journal of Science Communication, Niels G. Mede writes "the film depicts sharp partisan divides, strong affective polarization, high distrust toward science within certain social milieus, and pronounced news media sensationalism, which have been found to be characteristic of the United States but not, or to a lesser extent, of several countries other than the US." From the same journal, writer Julie Doyle remarked that, "yet, as the film critiques existing structures and systems it does not imagine an alternative set of realities, nor explain the comet’s cause. In focusing upon the fictional stories of scientists, politicians, and media celebrities, the film fails to center any marginalized voices, continuing to privilege global north perspectives, even as these are satirised." Doyle comments that "climate communication needs to keep in place both climate mitigation and adaptation, making the historical and structural inequalities of capitalism and colonialism the interconnected stories of both."


title: Don't Look Up

text: One solution to Mindy and Dibiasky failed attempts to communicate the severity of the upending comet is undergoing media training. Indeed media training was brought up in the film multiple times, but most notably at the conference room at the New York Herald where the Chief Editor proposes media training to Mindy before the show. The concept of media training can come in different forms. Samer Angelone from a commentary journal on science communication writes, because “The style that scientists use to communicate science to peer scientists is mostly objective, complex, and full of technical jargon, which is difficult for the general public to connect to—even if it is in the same language.” Another way to mitigate science skepticism is through storytelling. Mede writes, "The film also illustrates that storytelling can be a promising strategy to mitigate these reservations..., showing how Mindy is advised before a TV interview that he is 'just telling a story' and must 'keep it simple.'"


title: Don't Look Up

text: Gendered discourse on emotions and mental health make its way into the film through the portrayal of a public's reaction to Mindy and Dibiasky's various media appearances. The scientists share their discovery on a morning talk show, The Daily Rip, in which Dibiasky has an emotional outburst over the show hosts' persistent attempts to sugarcoat the devastating news of the doomsday comet. Professor of media and communication Julie Doyle writes, "Gendered norms affect Mindy and Dibiasky’s public credibility and the mitigatory comet actions they promote. Following his own emotional outburst on TV, Mindy is subsequently recuperated through processes of celebritisation...hailed as a ‘sexy’ scientist offering rational and calm advise to the viewers; becoming chief science advisor to the White House to monitor the drone activities of tech billionaire Peter Isherwell; and embarking on a sexual affair with Evantee. In contrast, Dibiasky is discredited and side-lined from rational public commentary through (climate) memes."


title: Don't Look Up

text: Throughout the film, many notable historic figures from science and politics can be spotted, adding to the film's nuanced discussion about the relationship between science and politics.


title: Don't Look Up

text: The opening scene of the film features a figure of Carl Sagan on Dibiasky's desk. In a journal commentary for Sage Publications, Samer Angelone writes that “Sagan was an astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, and astrobiologist but, above all, he was an upholder of scientific credibility and communication.” Sagan advocated for the urgency to battle climate change, many viewers see the film as an allegory for, but his image is juxtaposed by a painting of George W. Bush, "who later tried to downplay this urgency." The film also "references the affinity of anti-science resentment and populism, showing how President Orlean and her team slander Mindy and Dibiasky using populist rhetoric...and gather in an Oval Office that has a portrait of the anti-establishment science skeptic Andrew Jackson."


title: 4chan

text: 4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, music, literature, history, fitness, politics, and sports, among others. Registration is not available and users typically post anonymously. , 4chan receives more than 22 million unique monthly visitors, of which approximately half are from the United States.


title: 4chan

text: 4chan was created as an unofficial English-language counterpart to the Japanese imageboard Futaba Channel, also known as 2chan, and its first boards were created for posting images and discussion related to anime. The site has been described as a hub of Internet subculture, its community being influential in the formation and popularization of prominent Internet memes, such as lolcats, Rickrolling, rage comics, wojaks, Pepe the Frog, as well as hacktivist and political movements, such as Anonymous and the alt-right. 4chan has often been the subject of media attention as a source of controversies, including the coordination of pranks and harassment against websites and Internet users, and the posting of illegal and offensive content. In 2008, "The Guardian" summarized the 4chan community as "lunatic, juvenile (...) brilliant, ridiculous and alarming".


title: 4chan

text: The majority of posting on 4chan takes place on imageboards, on which users have the ability to share images and create threaded discussions. , the site's homepage lists 75 imageboards and one Flash animation board. Most boards have their own set of rules and are dedicated to a specific topic, including anime and manga, video games, music, literature, fitness, politics, and sports, among others. Uniquely, the "Random" board—also known as /b/—enforces no particular rules. The main protagonist of the Japanese Yotsuba&! manga, Yotsuba Koiwai, has been described as an "unofficial mascot" of the website by "Wired" writer Justin Ling.


title: 4chan

text: 4chan is the Internet's most trafficked imageboard, according to the "Los Angeles Times". 4chan's Alexa rank is 853 though it has been as high as 56. It is provided to its users free of charge and consumes a large amount of bandwidth; as a result, its financing has often been problematic. Poole has acknowledged that donations alone could not keep the site online, and turned to advertising to help make ends meet. However, the explicit content hosted on 4chan has deterred businesses who do not want to be associated with the site's content. In January 2009, Poole signed a new deal with an advertising company; in February 2009, he was $20,000 in debt, and the site was continuing to lose money. The 4chan servers were moved from Texas to California in August 2008, which upgraded the maximum bandwidth throughput of 4chan from 100Mbit/s to 1Gbit/s.


title: 4chan

text: Unlike most web forums, 4chan does not have a registration system, allowing users to post anonymously. Posting is ephemeral, as threads receiving recent replies are "bumped" to the top of their respective board and old threads are deleted as new ones are created. Any nickname may be used when posting, even one that has been previously adopted, such as "Anonymous" or "moot". In place of registration, 4chan has provided tripcodes as an optional form of authenticating a poster's identity. As making a post without filling in the "Name" field causes posts to be attributed to "Anonymous", general understanding on 4chan holds that Anonymous is not a single person but a collective (hive) of users. Moderators generally post without a name even when performing sysop actions. A "capcode" may be used to attribute the post to "Anonymous ## Mod", although moderators often post without the capcode. In a 2011 interview on Nico Nico Douga, Poole explained that there are approximately 20 volunteer moderators active on 4chan. 4chan also has a junior moderation team, called "janitors", who may delete posts or images and suggest that the normal moderation team ban a user, but who cannot post with a capcode. Revealing oneself as a janitor is grounds for immediate dismissal.


title: 4chan

text: 4chan has been the target of occasional denial of service attacks. For instance, on December 28, 2010, 4chan and other websites went down due to such an attack, following which Poole said on his blog, "We now join the ranks of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, et al.—an exclusive club!"


title: 4chan

text: The site was launched as 4chan.net on October 1, 2003, by Christopher Poole, a then-15-year-old student from New York City using the online handle "moot". Poole had been a regular participant on Something Awful's subforum "Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse" (ADTRW), where many users were familiar with the Japanese imageboard format and Futaba Channel ("2chan.net"). When creating 4chan, Poole obtained Futaba Channel's open source code and translated the Japanese text into English using AltaVista's Babel Fish online translator. After the site's creation, Poole invited users from the ADTRW subforum, many of whom were dissatisfied with the site's moderation, to visit 4chan, which he advertised as an English-language counterpart to Futaba Channel and a place for Western fans to discuss anime and manga. At its founding, the site only hosted one board: /b/ (Anime/Random).


title: 4chan

text: Before the end of 2003, several new anime-related boards were added, including /h/ (Hentai), /c/ (Anime/Cute), /d/ (Hentai/Alternative), /w/ (Wallpapers/Anime), /y/ (Yaoi), and /a/ (Anime). Additionally, a lolicon board was created at /l/ (Lolikon), but was disabled following the posting of genuine child pornography and ultimately deleted in October 2004, after threats of legal action. In February 2004, GoDaddy suspended the 4chan.net domain, prompting Poole to move the site to its current domain at 4chan.org. On March 1, 2004, Poole announced that he lacked the funds to pay the month's server bill, but was able to continue operations after receiving a swarm of donations from users. In June 2004, 4chan experienced six weeks of downtime after PayPal suspended 4chan's donations service after receiving complaints about the site's content. Following 4chan's return, several non-anime related boards were introduced, including /k/ (Weapons), /o/ (Auto), and /v/ (Video Games). In 2008, nine new boards were created, including the sports board at /sp/, the fashion board at /fa/ and the "Japan/General" (the name later changed to "Otaku Culture") board at /jp/. By this point, 4chan's culture had altered, moving away from the "early, more childish," humour, as evident by the likes of Project Chanology; trolling underwent a so-called "golden age", taking aim at American corporate media.


title: 4chan

text: In January 2011, Poole announced the deletion of the /r9k/ ("ROBOT9000") and /new/ (News) boards, saying that /new/ had become devoted to racist discussions, and /r9k/ no longer served its original purpose of being a test implementation of xkcd's ROBOT9000 script. During the same year, the /soc/ board was created in an effort to reduce the number of socialization threads on /b/. /r9k/ was restored on October 23, 2011, along with /hc/ ("Hardcore", previously deleted), /pol/ (a rebranding of /new/) and the new /diy/ board, in addition to an apology by Poole where he recalls how he criticized the deletion of Encyclopedia Dramatica and realized that he had done the same.


title: 4chan

text: In 2010, 4chan had implemented reCAPTCHA in an effort to thwart spam arising from JavaScript worms. By November 2011, 4chan made the transition to utilizing Cloudflare following a series of DDoS attacks. The 4chan imageboards were rewritten in valid HTML5/CSS3 in May 2012 in an effort to improve client-side performance. On September 28, 2012, 4chan introduced a "4chan pass" that, when purchased, "allows users to bypass typing a reCAPTCHA verification when posting and reporting posts on the 4chan image boards"; the money raised from the passes will go towards supporting the site.


title: 4chan

text: On January 21, 2015, Poole stepped down as the site's administrator, citing stress from controversies such as Gamergate as the reason for his departure. On September 21, 2015, Poole announced that Hiroyuki Nishimura had purchased from him the ownership rights to 4chan, without disclosing the terms of the acquisition. Nishimura was the former administrator of 2channel between 1999 and 2014, the website forming the basis for anonymous posting culture which influenced later websites such as Futaba Channel and 4chan; Nishimura lost 2channel's domain after it was seized by his registrar, Jim Watkins, after the latter alleged financial difficulties. "Wired" later reported that Japanese toy manufacturer Good Smile Company, Japanese telecommunication Dwango, and Nishimura's company Future Search Brazil may have helped facilitate Nishimura's purchase, with anonymous sources telling the publication that Good Smile obtained partial ownership in the website as compensation.


title: 4chan

text: In October 2016, it was reported that the site was facing financial difficulties that could lead to its closure or radical changes. In a post titled "Winter is Coming", Hiroyuki Nishimura said, "We had tried to keep 4chan as is. But I failed. I am sincerely sorry", citing server costs, infrastructure costs, and network fees.


title: 4chan

text: On November 17, 2018, it was announced that the site would be split into two, with the work-safe boards moved to a new domain, 4channel.org, while the NSFW boards would remain on the 4chan.org domain. In a series of posts on the topic, Nishimura explained that the split was due to 4chan being blacklisted by most advertising companies and that the new 4channel domain would allow for the site to receive advertisements by mainstream ad providers.


title: 4chan

text: In a 2020 interview with Vice Media, several current or past moderators spoke about what they perceived as racist intent behind the site's management. They described how a managing moderator named RapeApe is attempting to use the site as a tool for the alt-right, and how Nishimura is "hands-off, leaving moderation of the site primarily to RapeApe." Neither Nishimura nor RapeApe responded to these allegations. Far-right extremism has been reported by public authorities, commentators and civil society groups as connected, in part, to 4chan, an association that had arisen by 2015.


title: 4chan

text: Poole kept his real-life identity hidden until it was revealed on July 9, 2008, in "The Wall Street Journal". Prior to that, he had used the alias "moot".


title: 4chan

text: In April 2009, Poole was voted the world's most influential person of 2008 by an open Internet poll conducted by Time magazine. The results were questioned even before the poll completed, as automated voting programs and manual ballot stuffing were used to influence the vote. 4chan's interference with the vote seemed increasingly likely, when it was found that reading the first letter of the first 21 candidates in the poll spelled out a phrase containing two 4chan memes: "mARBLECAKE. ALSO, THE GAME."


title: 4chan

text: On September 12, 2009, Poole gave a talk on why 4chan has a reputation as a "Meme Factory" at the Paraflows Symposium in Vienna, Austria, which was part of the Paraflows 09 festival, themed Urban Hacking. In this talk, Poole mainly attributed this to the anonymous system, and to the lack of data retention on the site ("The site has no memory.").


title: 4chan

text: In April 2010, Poole gave evidence in the trial "United States of America v. David Kernell" as a government witness. As a witness, he explained the terminology used on 4chan to the prosecutor, ranging from "OP" to "lurker". He also explained to the court the nature of the data given to the FBI as part of the search warrant, including how users can be uniquely identified from site audit logs.


title: 4chan

text: The "random" board, /b/, follows the design of Futaba Channel's Nijiura board. It was the first board created, and has been described as 4chan's most popular board, accounting for 30% of site traffic in 2009. Gawker's Nick Douglas summarized /b/ as a board where "people try to shock, entertain, and coax free porn from each other." /b/ has a "no rules" policy, except for bans on certain illegal content, such as child pornography, invasions of other websites (posting floods of disruptive content), and under-18 viewing, all of which are inherited from site-wide rules. The "no invasions" rule was added in late 2006, after /b/ users spent most of that summer "invading" Habbo Hotel. The "no rules" policy also applies to actions of administrators and moderators, which means that users may be banned at any time, for any reason, including for no reason at all. Due partially to its anonymous nature, board moderation is not always successful—indeed, the site's anti-child pornography rule is a subject of jokes on /b/. Christopher Poole told "The New York Times", in a discussion on the moderation of /b/, that "the power lies in the community to dictate its own standards" and that site staff simply provided a framework.


title: 4chan

text: The humor of /b/'s many users, who refer to themselves as "/b/tards", is often incomprehensible to newcomers and outsiders, and is characterized by intricate inside jokes and dark comedy. Users often refer to each other, and much of the outside world, as fags. They are often referred to by outsiders as trolls, who regularly act with the intention of "doing it for the lulz", a corruption of "LOL" used to denote amusement at another's expense. A significant amount of media coverage is in response to /b/'s culture, which has characterised it as adolescent, crude and spiteful, with one publication writing that their "bad behavior is encouraged by the site's total anonymity and the absence of an archive". Douglas cited Encyclopedia Dramatica's definition of /b/ as "the asshole of the Internets ["sic"]". Mattathias Schwartz of "The New York Times" likened /b/ to "a high-school bathroom stall, or an obscene telephone party line", while "Baltimore City Paper" wrote that "in the high school of the Internet, /b/ is the kid with a collection of butterfly knives and a locker full of porn." "Wired" describes /b/ as "notorious".


title: 4chan

text: Each post is assigned a post number. Certain post numbers are sought after with a large amount of posting taking place to "GET" them. A "GET" occurs when a post's number ends in a special number, such as 12345678, 22222222, or every millionth post. A sign of 4chan's scaling, according to Poole, was when GETs lost meaning due to the high post rate resulting in a GET occurring every few weeks. He estimated /b/'s post rate in July 2008 to be 150,000–200,000 posts per day.


title: 4chan

text: /mlp/ is 4chan's Pony board, which is dedicated to the discussion of Hasbro's "My Little Pony" franchise, particularly the animated television series "" and its spin-offs. While discussion of the show on 4chan initially began on /co/ (the comics and cartoons board), /mlp/ was eventually created in 2012 to discourage its proliferation to other boards. , in accordance to 4chan's global rules, pony-related threads and images may only be posted on /mlp/.


title: 4chan

text: First proposed in early 2019, the Pony Preservation Project is a "collaborative effort by /mlp/ to build and curate pony datasets" with the aim of creating applications in artificial intelligence. The developer of the popular text-to-speech web application 15.ai has worked closely with the Pony Preservation Project. The "Friendship Is Magic" voices on 15.ai were trained on a large dataset crowdsourced by the Pony Preservation Project: audio and dialogue from the show and related media—including , , spinoffs, leaks, and various other content voiced by the same voice actors—were parsed, hand-transcribed, and processed to remove background noise by the contributors of the Pony Preservation Project. According to the developer, the collective efforts and constructive criticism from the Pony Preservation Project have been integral to the development of 15.ai.


title: 4chan

text: The music board, /mu/, is dedicated to the discussion of music artists, albums, genres, instruments. Described as "4chan's best kept secret" and a "surprisingly artistic side of 4chan", /mu/ is used by users to share their music interests with similar minds and discover "great music they would never have found otherwise" with many moments of insightful candor that can affirm or challenge their own musical tastes. The board has gained notoriety for earnestly focusing upon and promoting challenging and otherwise obscure music. Some common genres discussed on /mu/ include shoegaze, experimental hip hop, witch house, IDM, midwest emo, vaporwave, and K-pop. There is a significant overlap between user bases of /mu/ and music site Rate Your Music. The board's culture has inspired many online music communities and meme pages on social media that emulate /mu/'s posting style.


title: 4chan

text: Publications such as "Pitchfork" and "Entertainment Weekly" noted the board played a significant role in popularizing various music artists, such as Death Grips, Neutral Milk Hotel, Car Seat Headrest, and Have a Nice Life. Prominent music critic Anthony Fantano began his career on /mu/ and developed a significant following there. Some artists, like Zeal & Ardor and Conrad Tao, admitted to posting their music anonymously on /mu/ to get honest feedback, as well as find inspiration from the board. In particular, Zeal & Ardor said their sound, which mixes black metal with spirituals, came from suggestions by two users. Andrew W.K. did a Q&A with the board's users in 2011, causing the servers to crash from the increased traffic. Death Grips seeded various clues on /mu/ in 2012 about their then-upcoming albums "The Money Store" and "No Love Deep Web". A rendition of "Royals" by Lorde appeared on /mu/ in 2012 before its official release, although she denied ever writing on the board in 2014. Singer Lauren Mayberry shared on Twitter in 2015 a link to a thread on /mu/ about her band's song "Leave a Trace" to showcase what online misogyny looks like. An alleged unreleased Radiohead song, titled "Putting Ketchup in the Fridge" and "How Do You Sit Still", was initially reported as genuine by "NME" and "Spin" until CNN revealed it was a hoax promoted by the board's users.


title: 4chan

text: The board has been acknowledged for sharing rare music recordings and unreleased materials, as well as finding albums thought to be lost. Notable examples include the works of Duster, "D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L" by Panchiko, and "All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling" by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. This was described by NPR as resembling "a secret club of preservationists obsessed with the articulation of a near-dead language". The board has attracted further attention for various projects done by its users. A group called The Pablo Collective posted a 4-track remix album of Kanye West's "The Life of Pablo" titled "The Death of Pablo" to /mu/, claiming it was based on a recurring dream from one of the board's users. A role-playing game based on Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", designed with help from the board's users, received coverage from "Polygon" and "Pitchfork".


title: 4chan

text: /pol/ ("Politically Incorrect") is 4chan's political discussion board. A stickied thread on its front page states that the board's intended purpose is "discussion of news, world events, political issues, and other related topics." /pol/ was created in October 2011 as a rebranding of 4chan's news board, /new/, which was deleted that January for a high volume of racist discussion.


title: 4chan

text: Although there had previously been a strong left-libertarian contingent to 4chan activists, there was a gradual rightward turn on 4chan's politics board in the early-mid 2010s, with the fundamentalist approach to free speech contributing. The board quickly attracted posters with a political persuasion that later would be described with a new term, the alt-right. Media sources have characterized /pol/ as predominantly racist and sexist, with many of its posts taking an explicitly neo-Nazi bent. The site's far-reaching culture of vitriolic and discriminatory content is "most closely associated" with /pol/, although only it features predominant Alt-Right beliefs; /pol/, like other boards, has been prominent in the dissemination of memes, in cases, featuring coordination to disperse Alt-Right sentiments. /pol/ "increasingly became synonymous with 4chan as a whole". The Southern Poverty Law Center regards /pol/'s rhetorical style as widely emulated by white supremacist websites such as "The Daily Stormer"; the "Stormer"s editor, Andrew Anglin, concurred. /pol/ was where screenshots of Trayvon Martin's hacked social media accounts were initially posted. The board's users have started antifeminist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-Arab Twitter campaigns.


title: 4chan

text: Many /pol/ users favored Donald Trump during his 2016 United States presidential campaign. Both Trump and his son, Donald Trump Jr., appeared to acknowledge the support by tweeting /pol/-associated memes. Upon his successful election, a /pol/ moderator embedded a pro-Trump video at the top of all of the board's pages.


title: 4chan

text: /r9k/ is a board which implements Randall Munroe's "ROBOT9000" algorithm, where no exact reposts are permitted. It is credited as the origin of the "greentext" rhetorical style which often center around stories of social interactions and resulting ineptness. By 2012, personal confession stories of self-loathing, depression, and attempted suicide, began to supersede /b/-style roleplaying, "otaku", and video game discussion.


title: 4chan

text: It became a popular gathering place for the controversial online "incel" community. The "beta uprising" or "beta rebellion" meme, the idea of taking revenge against women, jocks and others perceived as the cause of incels' problems, was popularized on the sub-section. It gained more traction on the forum following the Umpqua Community College shooting, where it is believed that hours prior to the murders, while other users encouraged him, 26-year-old perpetrator Chris Harper-Mercer also warned people not to go to school, "...in the Northwest." The perpetrator of the Toronto van attack referenced 4chan and an incel rebellion in a Facebook post he made prior to the attack, while praising self-identified incel Elliot Rodger, the killer behind the 2014 Isla Vista killings. He claims to have talked with both Harper-Mercer and Rodger on Reddit and 4chan and believes that he was part of a "beta uprising", also posting a message on 4chan about his intention the day before his attack.


title: 4chan

text: /sci/ is 4chan's science and mathematics board. On September 26, 2011, an anonymous user on /sci/ posted a question regarding the shortest possible way to watch all possible orders of episodes of the anime "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" in nonchronological order. Shortly after, an anonymous user responded with a mathematical proof that argued viewers would have to watch at least 93,884,313,611 episodes to see all possible orderings. 7 years later, professional mathematicians recognized the mathematical proof as a partial solution to a superpermutations problem that was unsolved for 25 years. Australian mathematician Greg Egan later published a proof inspired by the proof from the anonymous 4chan user, both of which are recognized as significant advances to the problem.


title: 4chan

text: /vp/ is 4chan's Pokémon board. Developed by members of /vp/, "Pokémon Sage" is an upcoming role-playing fangame that is set to feature an entirely new region, plot, and cast of human characters and Pokémon creatures.


title: 4chan

text: On April 11, 2020, an anonymous user leaked the source codes of "Pokemon Blue" and "Yellow", which contained references to "Pokémon Pink", a canceled companion game to "Pokémon Yellow".


title: 4chan

text: The "paranormal" board, /x/, is dedicated to discussing topics regarding unexplained phenomena, the supernatural, and non-political conspiracy theories. /x/ was initially launched in January 2005 as 4chan's general photography board; in February 2007, it was repurposed as a paranormal-themed board.


title: 4chan

text: Many of the earliest creepypastas (Internet horror-related legends) were created on /x/. The idea of the Backrooms gained popularity thanks to a thread on /x/ created on 12 May 2019, where the users were asked to "post disquieting images that just feel 'off'." There, the first photo depicting the Backrooms was uploaded and another user commented on it with the first story about the Backrooms, claiming that one enters the Backrooms when they "noclip out of reality in the wrong areas". After the 4chan post gained fame, several Internet users wrote horror stories relating to the Backrooms. Many memes were created and shared across social media, further popularizing the creepypasta.


title: 4chan

text: American model Allison Harvard first gained notoriety in 2005 as an Internet meme on the /x/ board where she became known as Creepy Chan. Known for her large eyes and peculiar interests like fascination with blood, photos she posted on her blog were widely circulated on the board. She gained mainstream notoriety in 2009 and again in 2011 by appearing on "America's Next Top Model". She would visit /x/ after new episodes of America's Next Top Model would air to see what was being written about her and participated in discussions.


title: 4chan

text: The SCP Foundation, a fictional secret organization documented by the collaborative writing wiki project of the same name, originated on /x/ in 2007, when the very first SCP file, SCP-173, was posted by an anonymous user. Initially a stand-alone short story, many additional SCP files were created shortly after; these new SCPs copied SCP-173's style and were set within the same fictional universe. A stand-alone wiki was created in January 2008 on the EditThis wiki hosting service to display the SCP articles. The EditThis website did not have moderators, or the ability to delete articles. Members communicated through individual article talk pages and the /x/ board.


title: 4chan

text: /x/ was the first place where the 2015 viral video "11B-X-1371" was posted. The board also contributed to investigating and popularizing the controversial "Sad Satan" video game.


title: 4chan

text: "[A] significant and influential element of contemporary internet culture", 4chan is responsible for many early memes and the site has received positive attention for its association with memes. This included "So I herd u liek mudkipz", which involved a phrase based on "Pokémon" and which generated numerous YouTube tribute videos, and the term ""an hero"" as a synonym for suicide, after a misspelling in the Myspace online memorial of seventh grader Mitchell Henderson. 4chan and other websites, such as the satirical Encyclopedia Dramatica, have also contributed to the development of significant amounts of leetspeak.


title: 4chan

text: A lolcat is an image combining a photograph of a cat with solecistic text intended to contribute humour, widely popularized by 4chan in the form of a weekly post dedicated to them and a corresponding theme.


title: 4chan

text: In 2005, the installment of a word filter which changed "egg" to "duck", and thus "eggroll" to "duckroll", across 4chan led to a bait-and-switch meme in which users deceitfully linked to a picture of a duck on wheels. This was then modified into users linking to the music video for Rick Astley's 1987 song "Never Gonna Give You Up". Thus, the "rickroll" was born.


title: 4chan

text: A link to the YouTube video of Tay Zonday's song "Chocolate Rain" was posted on /b/ on July 11, 2007 and then subsequently circulated by users, becoming a very popular internet meme. The portion of the song in which Zonday turns away from the microphone, with a caption stating "I move away from the mic to breathe in", became an oft-repeated meme on 4chan and inspired remixes. Fellow YouTuber Boxxy's popularity was due in part to 4chan.


title: 4chan

text: In his American incarnation, Pedobear is an anthropomorphic bear child predator that is often used within the community to mock contributors showing a sexual interest in children. Pedobear is one of the most popular memes on non-English imageboards, and has gained recognition across Europe, appearing in offline publications. It has been used as a symbol of pedophilia by Maltese graffiti vandals prior to a papal visit.


title: 4chan

text: 4chan has been labeled as the starting point of the Anonymous meme by The "Baltimore City Paper", due to the norm of posts signed with the "Anonymous" moniker. The "National Post"s David George-Cosh said it has been "widely reported" that Anonymous is associated with 4chan and 711chan, as well as numerous Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels.