An anonymous reader quotes a report from KOMO: Ermenildo Castro, 28, of Tacoma, allegedly told detectives that he was inspired by the 90's movie "Office Space" when he devised a plan to divert customer fees from his employer, Zulily.com, into his own bank accounts. According to court documents, Castro wrote software code that manipulated the online retailer's checkout page to send the shipping fees into his own account. The charges allege Castro netted $260,000 in stolen shipping fees. Seattle police detectives said Castro also used his position as a software engineer to manipulate prices on Zulily to purchase approximately $41,000 in merchandise for 'pennies on the dollar'.

According to police, the company's cybersecurity staff found a document on Castro's laptop titled 'OfficeSpace project', which outlined Castro's scheme to 'cleanup evidence' by manipulating audit logs and disabling alarm logging. The theft began in February and by March the company had identified discrepancies in the shipping fees being charged to customers, an SPD report states. Castro was part of the team assigned to investigate the discrepancies in shipping fees, according to the report. Zulily investigators eventually caught on to Castro's scheme and went to his house in Tacoma where they found boxes of merchandise piled up outside the front door and driveway, the report states. In total, Zulily's team said Castro had sent over 1,000 items sent to his house. Seattle police detectives wrote a narrative explaining how Castro's alleged scheme related to the movie "Office Space," including the plot outline on IMDB.com.

"In the Initech office, the insecure Peter Gibbons hates his job. His best friends are two software engineers Michael Bolton and Samir Nagheenanajar, that also hate Initech. When he discovers that Michael and Samir will be downsized, they decide to plant a virus in the banking system to embezzle fraction of cents on each financial operation into Peter's account. However[,] Michael commits a mistake in the software on the decimal place and they siphon off over $300,000. The desperate trio tries to fix the problem, return the money and avoid going to prison."

AI tools like DALL-E 2, Lensa AI, and Midjourney "can be told to create imagery in the style of a particular artist," notes this article in the Daily Dot.

Yet "The current legal consensus, much to the chagrin of many artists, concludes that AI-generated art is in the public domain and therefore not copyrighted." So... In response to concerns over the future of their craft, artists have begun using AI systems to generate images of characters including Disney's Mickey Mouse. Given Disney's history of fierce protection over its content, the artists are hoping the company takes action and thus proves that AI art isn't as original as it claims. Over the weekend, Eric Bourdages, the Lead Character Artist on the popular video game Dead by Daylight, urged his followers to create and sell merchandise using the Disney-inspired images he created using Midjourney.... "Legally there should be no recourse from Disney as according to the AI models TOS these images transcends copyright and the images are public domain."

Bourdages tweet quickly racked up more than 37,000 likes and close to 6,000 shares.

In numerous follow-up tweets, Bourdages generated images of other popular characters from movies, video games, and comic books, including Darth Vader, Spider-Man, Batman, Mario, and Pikachu.

"More shirts courtesy of AI," he added. "I'm sure, Nintendo, Marvel, and DC won't mind, the AI didn't steal anything to create these images, they are completely 100% original...."

Just two days after sharing the images, however, Bourdages stated on Twitter that he had suddenly lost his access to Midjourney.
The article notes that Bourdages reiterated his point in a later tweet. "People's craftsmanship, time, effort, and ideas are being taken without their consent and used to create a product that can blend it all together and mimic it to varying degrees."

In the real world, the construction of the World Cup infrastructure in Qatar has been marred by extreme temperatures and migrant worker deaths. In the metaverse, however, a digital replica of Lusail Stadium in Doha has none of that baggage -- and the virtual property can be raffled off as a prize for a lucky soccer fan. From a report: FIFA's virtual universe is part of the soccer organization's penchant for embracing the latest tech buzzword. In 2010, some matches were broadcast in 3-D. In 2018, it offered a virtual-reality experience. Now it's the metaverse.

While some superfans may fly to Qatar and shell out for a ticket to cheer alongside 80,000 other people during a game, metaverse-inclined fans can head to a virtual airport, wait several hours while they "fly" to Doha, visit a digital version of the stadium and enter nearby shops in the FIFA World Cup-branded village to buy digital merchandise such as scarves and flags, which they can later use to adorn their virtual houses to express their team spirit. That digital journey is thanks to Upland, a metaverse platform based in Mountain View, California, which is partnering with FIFA to provide a blockchain-based metaverse experience during the tournament. Upland isn't FIFA's only partner to provide immersive soccer-themed digital environments tied to the World Cup, which begins Nov. 20 and is the most-watched athletic event across the globe. Roblox has also built out a technicolor world where fans can play a game that's a mix of soccer and bowling.

Holiday bargain shopping is starting extra early this year. And that could be good news for shoppers, even if it signals slightly worrisome things for the economy. From a report: E-commerce giant Amazon announced plans Monday for "a new two-day global shopping event" exclusive to members of its Prime loyalty program. Dubbed Prime Early Access Sale, the promotion is similar to Prime Day, the annual sale held in July to generate a bonanza of orders and new subscribers. Rival retail giants Walmart and Target have already signaled plans to kick off holiday sales earlier than ever, setting the stage for a long holiday shopping season with significant discounts. With warehouses and store shelves suddenly full of inventory after two years of supply chain disruptions, deals will be easier to come by than since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, say retail experts.

Amazon's bonus sales event may be a sign that retailers are concerned that Americans will keep a tight grip on their wallets this holiday season because of fears over inflation, rising interest rates and predictions of an oncoming recession. An Amazon spokesperson said that the company -- with annual sales of more than $470 billion last year -- added the second online sale to help overcome such worries. "In light of inflation and economic head winds, we want to help members save throughout the season," said Amazon spokesperson Deanna Zawilinski. [...] Helping fuel the sales competition is an oversupply of merchandise -- including clothes, toys, electronics, furniture and other popular consumer goods -- that retailers ordered to meet expected consumer demand but that were delayed for months because of supply chain problems. The items are now taking up valuable space in warehouses and store shelves. With a recent surge in inflation and rising gasoline prices, Americans haven't been spending on such items as much as retailers anticipated. Store owners and retail operators now need to move those items off the shelves to make way for new holiday merchandise.

Walmart is making its first move into the metaverse. Starting Monday, the retailer will unveil two immersive experiences on Roblox's virtual platform. Walmart Land will feature fashion, beauty and entertainment items, while Walmart's Universe of Play will showcase toys, the company announced. From a report: Walmart follows companies from Nike to VF in a bid to get consumers' attention via virtual universes, where elements of video conferencing, gaming, social media and e-commerce blend together. Roblox has a community of more than 52 million daily users, and many of them are younger people, who are particularly valuable targets for corporate powerhouses.

"This is the first major initiative that we have in the metaverse," William White, Walmart's chief marketing officer, said in an interview. "This is another step for us in reaching our customers in unexpected ways." Walmart Land will offer a virtual store where Roblox users can use badges and coins earned on the platform to buy merchandise for their avatars. There will also be a "physics-defying Ferris wheel" that provides a bird's-eye view of the virtual world, plus unlockable tokens and badges that can be earned in games and competitions.

When games like Dragalia Lost shut down for good, what happens next? From a report: Dragalia Lost launched in 2018 as a statement of intent from Nintendo in partnership with Japanese developer Cygames. Nintendo may have first jumped into the field of mobile games in 2016 with the launch of games like Super Mario Run and Miitomo, but this was the first original property the company had produced exclusively for mobile devices. This free-to-play gacha game (a game whose content is generally free to access while charging microtransactions for loot boxes and randomized lotteries for rare and limited-time characters) had a flashy multi-region launch campaign collaborating with major Japanese musician DAOKO, banking on the game's success at home and abroad. And it was a hit. Less than a year after launch, the game had already earned over $100 million, with a steady stream of merchandise following soon after. Yet, as of last month, Nintendo and Cygames published the game's final update, and this week, it was revealed that the game would shut down on November 29th after just three years of operation.

Without any announcement from Nintendo of an official offline version or archive to memorialize the game after servers shut down and the game is no longer accessible to the public, fans are working across the community to preserve everything they can of a game they dedicated themselves to over the last few years. "Especially with games like Dragalia Lost and games that are on a live server and stuff, once the server closes down, you can't play that anymore," explains Sei, an active member of the game's community. "It's not like you can download a ROM of a Game Boy game and play it: once it's gone, it's gone." Free-to-play games have risen from an anomaly to the most profitable sector of the games industry. In 2012, the mobile games market hit $9 billion in revenue at a time when free-to-play revenue systems were only starting to grow more popular, challenging the norm of games charging a one-time price of entry.

At the same time, free-to-play revenue on PC was at an impressive $11 billion, thanks to titles like League of Legends, already eclipsing the revenue earned by premium titles. By 2020, free-to-play revenue across mobile, PC, and console accounted for over $96 billion. Unsurprisingly, the industry has adapted to increasingly cater to players in this bustling sector. Yet, for every headline boasting of the phenomenal revenue-generating success of titles like Fortnite or Pokemon Go comes a host of titles that burn out within a year or sometimes even less. Japan is one of the biggest regions for free-to-play games, particularly on mobile, where titles like Uma Musume: Pretty Derby have broken into the top 10 highest-grossing mobile games worldwide despite only being available in a single country. Yet, even games based on major properties like Bandai Namco's Tales of Luminaria have struggled, shutting down in under six months.

Amazon is lagging its chief rival Flipkart in India on several key metrics and struggling to make inroads in smaller Indian cities and towns, according to a scathing report by investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein. TechCrunch: The American e-commerce giant's 2021 gross merchandise value in the country, where it has deployed over $6.5 billion, stood between $18 billion to $20 billion, lagging Flipkart's $23 billion, the analysts said in a report to clients Tuesday that was obtained by TechCrunch.

India is a key overseas market for Amazon, where it competes with tycoon Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail, which launched grocery shopping on WhatsApp this week, Walmart-owned Flipkart and social commerce startups SoftBank-backed Meesho and Tiger Global-backed DealShare. Amazon has so far offered "a weaker proposition in 'new' commerce" in the country, the report added. At stake is one of the world's last great growth markets. The e-commerce spending in India, the world's second largest internet market, is expected to double in size to over $130 billion by 2025.

Users of Google "must recalibrate their thinking on what Google is and how information is returned to them," warns an Assistant Professor at the School of Information and Library Science at UNC-Chapel Hill.

In a new book titled The Propagandists' Playbook, they're warning that simple link-filled search results have been transformed by "Google's latest desire to answer our questions for us, rather than requiring us to click on the returns." The trouble starts when Google returns inaccurate answers "that often disrupt democratic participation, confirm unsubstantiated claims, and are easily manipulatable by people looking to spread falsehoods." By adding all of these features, Google — as well as competitors such as DuckDuckGo and Bing, which also summarize content — has effectively changed the experience from an explorative search environment to a platform designed around verification, replacing a process that enables learning and investigation with one that is more like a fact-checking service.... The problem is, many rely on search engines to seek out information about more convoluted topics. And, as my research reveals, this shift can lead to incorrect returns... Worse yet, when errors like this happen, there is no mechanism whereby users who notice discrepancies can flag it for informational review....

The trouble is, many users still rely on Google to fact-check information, and doing so might strengthen their belief in false claims. This is not only because Google sometimes delivers misleading or incorrect information, but also because people I spoke with for my research believed that Google's top search returns were "more important," "more relevant," and "more accurate," and they trusted Google more than the news — they considered it to be a more objective source....

This leads to what I refer to in my book, The Propagandists' Playbook, as the "IKEA effect of misinformation." Business scholars have found that when consumers build their own merchandise, they value the product more than an already assembled item of similar quality — they feel more competent and therefore happier with their purchase. Conspiracy theorists and propagandists are drawing on the same strategy, providing a tangible, do-it-yourself quality to the information they provide. Independently conducting a search on a given topic makes audiences feel like they are engaging in an act of self-discovery when they are actually participating in a scavenger-hunt engineered by those spreading the lies....

Rather than assume that returns validate truth, we must apply the same scrutiny we've learned to have toward information on social media.
Another problem the article points out: "Googling the exact same phrase that you see on Twitter will likely return the same information you saw on Twitter.

"Just because it's from a search engine doesn't make it more reliable."

A live-action film based on PAC-MAN is in the works from Bandai Namco Entertainment -- the company behind PAC-MAN -- and Wayfarer Studios, the production company founded by Justin Baldoni and Steve Sarowitz. The Hollywood Reporter reports: First introduced in the U.S. in 1980 -- and originally called Puck Man in Japan -- PAC-MAN became a coin-operated staple. The game is set in mazes where Pac-Man has to eat pellets while being pursued by colorful ghosts as the mazes get progressively more difficult. The game begat merchandise, several sequel games like Ms. PAC-MAN, as well as two television series, including a Hanna-Barbera produced ABC series and a Disney XD take.

The project will be based on an original idea from Chuck Williams (Sonic the Hedgehog) of Lightbeam Entertainment. Baldoni, Manu Gargi and Andrew Calof will produce on behalf of Wayfarer Studios, with Tracy Ryerson developing; Williams and Tim Kwok will produce on behalf of Lightbeam.

Crunchyroll announced that it's acquired Right Stuf, one of the world's leading online anime superstores. "Expanding Crunchyroll's eCommerce offerings, the acquisition aims to serve anime fans and collectors an even wider array of merchandise for online purchase including manga, home video, figures, games, music and everything in between," writes the company in a post. From the report: Founded in 1987, Right Stuf is a leading consumer source for anime pop culture merchandise online. By visiting its eCommerce portal, enthusiasts and collectors can find thousands of products, including Blu-rays, manga books, music, figurines, collectables, and more. Right Stuf also offers licensed anime home video products through its own label.

"For 35 years, Right Stuf's mission has been to connect anime fans with the products they love," said Shawne Kleckner, CEO of Right Stuf. "Joining forces with Crunchyroll allows us to accelerate and scale this effort more than ever before. There has never been a more exciting time to be an anime fan than today!" Kleckner and the Right Stuf team will join Crunchyroll's Emerging Businesses organization, led by Terry Li. Sony acquired Crunchyroll for $1.175 billion from AT&T, in a deal that closed in August 2021.

Amazon said its carbon footprint grew 18% in 2021, as the company's rapid growth during the pandemic overwhelmed nascent efforts to cut its contribution to the emissions warming the planet. From a report: The world's largest online retailer emitted 71.54 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent last year, Amazon disclosed on Monday in an updated edition of its sustainability report. That's up about 40% since the company first disclosed the figure, with data from 2019. Amazon's carbon intensity -- a measure that divides its emissions by gross merchandise sales -- fell 1.9%, an indication of the company's success in delivering products and running its warehouses, data centers and offices more efficiently. Amazon aims to become a "net zero" emitter of greenhouse gases by 2040.

Today, DALL-E 2, OpenAI's AI system that can generate images given a prompt or edit and refine existing images, is becoming more widely available. TechCrunch reports: The company announced in a blog post that it will expedite access for customers on the waitlist with the goal of reaching roughly 1 million people within the next few weeks. With this "beta" launch, DALL-E 2, which had been free to use, will move to a credit-based fee structure. First-time users will get a finite amount of credits that can be put toward generating or editing an image or creating a variation of an image. (Generations return four images, while edits and variations return three.) Credits will refill every month to the tune of 50 in the first month and 15 a month after that, or users can buy additional credits in increments of $15. Artists in need of financial assistance will be able to apply for subsidized access, OpenAI says. Along with new techniques to mitigate bias and toxicity in DALL-E 2's generations, OpenAI says that starting today it's granting users "full usage rights" to commercialize the images they create with the tool, including the right to reprint, sell and merchandise -- including images they generated during the early preview.

schwit1 writes: The Ohio State University has successfully trademarked the word "THE," in a victory for the college and its branding that is sure to produce eye rolls from Michigan fans and other rivals. Stating the full name of the school has become a point of pride for Ohio State's athletes when introducing themselves on television during games. The three-letter article "THE" has also become an important part of the school's merchandise and apparel. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office approved Ohio State's application Tuesday. The trademark applies to T-shirts, baseball caps and hats.

"'THE' has been a rallying cry in the Ohio State community for many years," said Benjamin Johnson, a spokesman for the university. Ohio State registered the word as a trademark to protect the university's brand, Mr. Johnson said. Ohio State's trademark and licensing program makes about $12.5 million annually for the university, which funds student scholarships and university programs, he said. "Universities historically are very particular about their trademarks, and they go to a lot of lengths to enforce their trademarks," said Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney, who noted Ohio State's trademark application on Twitter. "There is a lot of value in a university's brand."

Over the past year, large-scale robberies have swept through stores like Louis Vuitton in San Francisco's Union Square and a nearby Nordstrom, which was robbed by 80 people. Law enforcement and retailers have warned the public that this isn't traditional shoplifting. Rather, what they're seeing is theft organized by criminal networks. And there's a reason it's on the rise. From a report: "What fuels this as an enterprise is the ease of reselling stolen merchandise on online marketplaces," said Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who convened a national task force of state attorneys to make it easier to investigate across state lines. "It's no longer the age where it's done at flea markets or in the alley or in parking lots." Retailers say a total of $68.9 billion of products were stolen in 2019. In 2020, three-quarters said they saw an increase in organized crime and more than half reported cargo theft. Some big chains blame organized theft for recent store closures or for their decisions to limit hours.

For the U.S. Government's Homeland Security Investigations unit, organized retail crime probes are on the rise. Arrests and indictments increased last year from 2020, along with the value of stolen goods that was seized. While data is imprecise about the perpetrators, there's growing consensus that an entirely different group should be held accountable: e-commerce sites. Amazon, eBay and Facebook are the places where these stolen goods are being sold, and critics say they're not doing enough to put an end to the racket. The companies disagree.

Disneyland's Galaxy's Edge, aka "Star Wars Land," lets its visitors "immersively" experience the planet Batuu during the period between Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi and Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker. But there's some big changes coming, reports SFGate.com: Disney recently announced — at the "From a Galaxy Far, Far Away to Disney Park Near You" panel at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim 2022 event — that main characters from the immensely popular Disney Plus series "The Book of Boba Fett" and "The Mandalorian" would begin appearing at Disneyland.

Yes, including the universally adored, merchandise and meme-dominating Grogu, aka "Baby Yoda."

However, there is one sarlacc-sized snag: Those stories are set about five years after Return of the Jedi, and about 25 years before The Force Awakens, which raises a galaxy of questions about how this will impact Galaxy's Edge. The introduction of new characters into the attraction will either break the timeline of Star Wars land or, perhaps, unburden it from self-imposed shackles. This could be a good thing, the article suggests, since "Currently there is frankly not a lot of character interaction on Batuu." Kylo Ren pops in on occasion to interrogate guests, and some stormtroopers march around. Rey and Chewie pose for pics, R2-D2 wheels around, and Vi randomly shows up. But that's about it. There is no BB-8 or C-3PO, no Poe or Finn walking around, no Captain Phasma (who died in "The Last Jedi"). The cast members do their part to speak the local lingo of "bright suns" and "till the spire," but Black Spire Outpost feels somewhat unpopulated. It looks and feels like a Star Wars town, but lacks true full immersion. Oga's Cantina does feel lived in, and always crowded, but the closest immersive experience is Savi's Workshop, where building a lightsaber is a damn near religious experience, complete with the Force ghost voice of Yoda.

So how would new characters impact this? If Mando appears at Galaxy's Edge, are guests to assume he (and Grogu) are still bouncing about by the time of the sequel series...? The town of Black Spire Outpost might come to resemble Fantasyland, for instance, where multiple characters occupy their own zones and don't intersect...

Regardless, this change further populates Galaxy's Edge, which is good for the guest who wants to take a lot of character photos. It also allows Disney to roll out their most popular modern characters, and potentially open the door for them to showcase original trilogy and prequel trilogy characters (which are having a moment right now).

But it does create major story hiccups.

The New York Times reports: Images such as Ukrainian tractors towing away a disabled Russian tank and helicopter, although unverified, have not only helped fight Russian disinformation, but also helped support Ukrainian charities and even the Ukrainian military. The merchandise sales they have generated in the United States and elsewhere are surprising given that many people buying the T-shirts, stickers, coffee mugs and chocolate bars would never have thought about the Eastern European country before the conflict.
One example? Toronto-based Christian Borys, who decided to launch a site selling stickers of the Virgin Mary hoisting an antitank missile (adapted from a painting by the American artist Chris Shaw.) In eight weeks Borys' "Saint Javelin" site "has raised so far almost $1.5 million to assist the Ukrainian charity Help Us Help, which has branched into multiple services, and to provide protective equipment for journalists covering the war, he said." Mr. Borys, who had worked for the e-commerce platform Shopify before turning to journalism, said he created a website in half an hour, hoping to raise money to send to a charity for Ukrainian orphans. That night, he made 88 Canadian dollars in sales. By the time he added T-shirts at the end of February, the threat of war had turned into a full-scale invasion, and he said sales grew to 170,000 Canadian dollars a day — most coming from the United States. "The internet speaks in memes and it just became this crazy, viral sensation," he said. "I think it's because people were looking for a symbol of support, a way to support Ukraine, because they saw the whole injustice of everything...."

Three weeks ago, Mr. Borys, a Canadian of Ukrainian Polish origin, turned Saint Javelin from an all-volunteer effort to a full-time staff of four to keep up with demand. His website has branched out from the Virgin Mary to other saints: Saint Carl Gustaf wears a gas mask, while "Saint Olha, the Warrior Queen of Kyiv" wears a crown and hoists a bazooka over her camouflaged shoulders. "People on Instagram demand we make things basically," Mr. Borys said. "We get messages from people in Spain who say, 'Hey, we just shipped the C-90,' a shoulder-fired rocket propelled grenade launcher," he said. "And they'll say, 'Hey we want a saint for Spain' or a saint specific to that type of system."

A Charlotte, North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud after stealing and reselling merchandise from an Amazon warehouse, the Department of Justice said in a news release. The Verge reports: Between June 2020 and September 2021, Douglas Wright, Jr., an operations manager at Amazon's Charlotte warehouse, allegedly stole products with a total value of more than $273,000, using his access to get computer parts like internal hard drives and processors, according to the DOJ. Wright said in court on Friday that he shipped the products to his home, then sold them to a computer wholesale company in California. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. A sentencing date has not been set.

Whether its Pokemon cards, swords, or gift cards, the USPS Mail Recovery Center can accommodate all your shopping needs. From a report: Every year, the United States Postal Service auctions millions of dollars worth of undeliverable mail, an amount that could likely be far more if the USPS had any idea what it was selling, according to postal service documents. In 2020, as part of our special project on the USPS, Motherboard filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the USPS for a list of items auctioned by the Mail Recovery Center in Atlanta, Georgia, the USPS's "lost and found," a facility where some 67 million pieces of undeliverable mail annually are sent to. If the items are deemed to have a value of greater than $25, sentimental value, or otherwise possess "some material value," the items are stored in case the USPS receives an inquiry from the person who was supposed to get it.

After a period ranging from 30 days to "indefinitely," the USPS either recycles, destroys, or auctions the item. But the USPS doesn't auction the items individually. It contracts with GovDeals, a government surplus auction website, to sell them off in lots. Currently, the Atlanta Surplus Center has 645 lots on auction, with items ranging from gift cards to cell phones to laptops. But mostly the lots contain "general merchandise." Ironically, the lots must be picked up at the Atlanta facility, as the mail will not mail the lost mail to the winner of an auction. In response to Motherboard's request, the USPS said it doesn't keep much of any information about the auctions at all. "As information, the Postal Service does not have a record of the actual number of items auctioned, the sale prices of those items, nor the sale prices of the individual lots," the USPS said. The only information it included in the response was an annual breakdown of 2015 through 2019 of the number of lots auctioned and the total revenue from those auctions.

"Until recently," writes the NY Times' Jay Caspian Kang, "my daughter and I were somehow able to avoid the king of toy videos: Ryan Kaji." There's no one way to describe what Kaji, who is now 10 years old, has done across his multiple YouTube channels, cable television shows and live appearances: In one video, he is giving you a tour of the Legoland Hotel; in another, he splashes around in his pool to introduce a science video about tsunamis. But for years, what he has mostly done is play with toys: Thomas the Tank Engine, "Paw Patrol" figures, McDonald's play kitchens. A new toy and a new video for almost every day of the week, adding up to an avalanche of content that can overwhelm your child's brain, click after click. Kaji has been playing with toys on camera since Barack Obama was in the White House.

Here are a few of the companies that are now paying him handsomely for his services: Amazon, Walmart, Nickelodeon, Skechers. Ryan also has 10 separate YouTube channels, which together make up "Ryan's World" [31.2M subscribers], a content behemoth whose branded merchandise took in more than $250 million last year. Even conservative estimates suggest that the Kaji family take exceeds $25 million annually.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article — and for summarizing one of its most startling details. "Not too surprisingly, Ryan's mother and father paused their teaching and engineering careers to focus on Ryan's empire after seeing the reaction to Ryan's breakout 2016 video, which now has 2+ billion YouTube views."

The Times' reporter quips that the videos capture glimpses from "the only world in which children do not stare at screens" — then wonders if that's even true, sharing their observation from the filming of a special toy-themed TV show with Ryan.

"I overheard a crew member say to him, 'If you finish this scene, you can play Minecraft.' "

It's not your everyday fake news, explains the New York Times. (Alternate URLs here.) In Pittsburgh; Memphis, Tennessee; and Los Angeles, massive billboards recently popped up declaring, "Birds Aren't Real." On Instagram and TikTok, Birds Aren't Real accounts have racked up hundreds of thousands of followers, and YouTube videos about it have gone viral. Last month, Birds Aren't Real adherents even protested outside Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco to demand that the company change its bird logo.

The events were all connected by a Gen Z-fueled conspiracy theory, which posits that birds do not exist and are really drone replicas installed by the U.S. government to spy on Americans. Hundreds of thousands of young people have joined the movement, wearing Birds Aren't Real T-shirts, swarming rallies and spreading the slogan. It might smack of QAnon, the conspiracy theory that the world is controlled by an elite cabal of child-trafficking Democrats. Except that the creator of Birds Aren't Real and the movement's followers are in on a joke: They know that birds are, in fact, real and that their theory is made up.

What Birds Aren't Real truly is, they say, is a parody social movement with a purpose. In a post-truth world dominated by online conspiracy theories, young people have coalesced around the effort to thumb their nose at, fight and poke fun at misinformation. It is Gen Z's attempt to upend the rabbit hole with absurdism... Most Birds Aren't Real members, many of whom are part of an on-the-ground activism network called the Bird Brigade, grew up in a world overrun with misinformation. Some have relatives who have fallen victim to conspiracy theories. So for members of Gen Z, the movement has become a way to collectively grapple with those experiences. By cosplaying conspiracy theorists, they have found community and kinship [according to 23-year-old Peter McIndoe, who created Birds Aren't Real on a whim in 2017...]

Cameron Kasky, 21, an activist from Parkland, Florida, who helped organize the March for Our Lives student protest against gun violence in 2018 and is involved in Birds Aren't Real, said the parody "makes you stop for a second and laugh. In a uniquely bleak time to come of age, it doesn't hurt to have something to laugh about together."
McIndoe began selling Birds Aren't Real merchandise in 2018, according to the article, and now brings in "several thousand dollars a month" with some help from his friend Connor Gaydos.

"If anyone believes birds aren't real," Gaydos tells the Times, "we're the last of their concerns, because then there's probably no conspiracy they don't believe."