Aja Romano

Hi! I'm Aja and this is my portfolio. I'm a well known culture writer and critic, formerly a longtime staff writer at Vox, formerly staff writer for the Daily Dot. I'm also an editor, consultant, content manager, etc. Check out the sidebar for more. Talk to me at [email protected]. Website  •  About  •  Public Appearances  •   On Bluesky  •  On Tumblr  •  Say Hi!

[ajawrites]

Hi, Aja! I really loved your Fansplaining piece on KPDH! It made me realize I've missed reading your fandom writing. Do you have any plans to do more?

Hi! Ahh, thank you, that's so nice of you to say!

Outside of discussing a few other potential Fansplaining pieces with @elizabethminkel, I haven't really looked into doing more fandom reporting. I have been in contact with some geek media outlets about doing some book reviews, but that's not quite the same thing. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that culture writing isn't exactly in demand right now. Internet culture writing is a *little* more in demand (for horrible reasons), but that doesn't really translate to "fandom reporting." I was really sad I didn't get to write about the controversy over Sen Lin Yu and Alchemised, I have many words within me, lol.

However, if you want my fandom writing in a non-professional capacity, you might consider signing up for my little newsletter entirely about Wang Yibo! He is such a rich pop culture text and I have really enjoyed writing about him.

WWYD

What would Yibo do? This is a harder question to answer than you might expect. Let’s discuss! New to me and Yibo? Start here! Aja Romano is

[bookshop]

Internet culture and extremism

Something that's come up repeatedly since the shooting of Charlie Kirk is the role internet culture has played in producing a growing wave of violent extremist edgelords who may or may not be ironically committing mass shootings and public assassinations.

This is a topic that directly intersects with my career as a journalist. I have written about these threads so often that I thought it would be a good idea to compile my articles so that other people looking to understand this phenomenon more deeply can do some reading on the intersection of irony, meme culture, shitposting, gamer culture, misogyny and alienated young men, deep-seeded internet extremists, and global politics.

How We Got Here: A collection of reporting

2013: Anita Sarkeesian haters take down her YouTube — many point to Gamergate as the inflection point for the merging of the alt-right and the manosphere, but that arguably came even earlier, with the years-long harassment of Anita Sarkeesian.

2014: The sexist crusade to destroy Zoe Quinn — my original article on the incident that sparked Gamergate. (I covered Gamergate for years and I may pull all my Gamergate articles into another post.)

2016: The Leslie Jones hack is the flashpoint of the alt-right’s escalating culture war - pointing out the escalation of Gamergate tactics used to troll enemies of the far right

2016: How the alt-right uses trolling to confuse you into dismissing its ideology - an important article for understanding how extremists weaponize irony to obfuscate their real intentions.

2016: How the alt-right’s sexism lures men into white supremacy - the huge role misogyny plays in building an extremist culture among disaffected men

2017: What Rick and Morty fans’ meltdown over McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce says about geek culture - a glimpse into the memelord side of all this

2018: What a woman-led incel support group can teach us about men and mental health - a closer look at the way loneliness brings groups of internet users together

2018: YouTube's most popular user amplified antisemitic rhetoric. Again. - In addition to this article about Pewdiepie bringing me more harassment than anything I've written in my entire career, it's also notable for containing a quote that I've referenced repeatedly since, because it sums up the entire online strategy of white supremacists in a nutshell: When asked (on Gab) how to spread antisemitism online, the extremist responded, "Pretend to joke about it until the punchline really lands."

2019: How the Christchurch shooter used memes to spread hate — drawing on the 2016 article about the role of memes in spreading extremism, this piece explains why the extremist edgelord who livestreamed two mosque shootings filled his manifesto with memes

2020: What we still haven’t learned from Gamergate — reckoning with many of the themes discussed in these articles and my other reporting over the years, this piece is sadly still just as evergreen today as it was pre-pandemic.

2021: Why the Depp-Heard trial is so much worse than you realize — this piece outlines the way extremists had once again escalated gamergate tactics of brigading, not just to engage in targeted harassment of a single person, but to spread a misogynistic narrative online.

2025: The age of the meme shooter is here. My latest, for Foreign Policy, about the slippery role of meme culture and online extremism in grooming Charlie Kirk's shooter for violence.

Unfortunately I don't think I've written the last of these articles. Not by a longshot.

[ajawrites]

I also posted a mirror of this to LinkedIn as well, if anyone would like this in article format!

[fansplaining]

K-Pop’s Demons, Real and Fictional — Fansplaining

Netflix's KPop Demon Hunters has seen massive mainstream success in the U.S. What does that mean for real K-pop artists and their fans?

Our September piece is live! 💞 Longtime fandom reporter (and longtime K-pop fan) @bookshop / @ajawrites digs into the smash success of Kpop Demon Hunters, the complicated state of the K-pop industry right now, and why, despite media narratives in recent weeks, the fictional and real streams of K-pop might not actually be crossing.

While the film owes a great deal to its genre-spinning combination of anime tropes, Korean folklore, and a dash of Disneyfication, the media has granted most of the credit for the film’s wild popularity to its K-pop soundtrack. In fact, the film’s success seems to have erased months of handwringing throughout the first half of 2025 about whether K-pop is “in crisis.” The narrative of an underrated Cinderella film, buoying the global rise of K-pop with its smash-hit soundtrack, is a hard one to resist. But if no one expected KPDH to take over the latter half of 2025, does that mean it’s a game-changer for K-pop as a whole, or a fluke that has nothing to do with the broader K-pop fandom?

Read the whole piece or listen to an audio version via the link above!

[elizabethminkel]

When Aja told me they were no longer at Vox, I responded with a) a great deal of sympathy and support b) a very loud WOULD YOU WRITE FOR ME. 😅 And I was especially pleased when Aja pitched this idea, because watching KPDH's ascendance these past few months, I was curious about the connection back to K-pop. Very grateful to be able to publish such sharp reporting from an old pro!

[ajawrites]

So J.K. Rowling has shared two of my articles on the alt-right in two days *__*

The first one: How the alt-right uses trolling to confuse you into dismissing its ideology

The second one — an application of the general ideas in the first article to the recent controversy over Pewdiepie. 

[ajawrites]

I'll take "Posts that aged badly" for $1000, Alex

Here, a palate cleanser:

Is J.K. Rowling transphobic? Let's let her speak for herself.

🫠

[ajawrites]

Did the Tumblr purge of 2018 do more good than harm or vice versa? There's no denying many young people used this site and there were incidents, their protection is necessary. Bad actors were driven out but the benign mature community also lost a space.

Hi! While I think Wordpress acquiring Tumblr is an ultimate good, these types of purges historically don't accomplish much by way of protection and instead drive away marginalized communities seeking safe spaces for self-expression, as you noted. Sex positivity used to be a vital and core part of Tumblr culture; in the wake of the ban and the forced removal of many queer, exploratory, and sex-positive Tumblr accounts, Tumblr culture has — as i'm sure you've noticed — shifted towards puritanism and mistrust of anything overtly sexual, including sexual content and sexualized identity.

Puritanism took over online fandom — and then came for the rest of the internet

[ajawrites]

Highlights from 7 years at Vox!

I cannot believe it's been this long but here I am, just past my 7-year anniversary at Vox! I made a version of this post to celebrate my 3-year anniversary (in lieu of updating my portfolio, which still is woefully out of date), and i thought it might be fun to do it again!

So here is a retrospective of some of my favorite, most provocative, and most successful work from my last four years at Vox — an overview of everything from 2019 til now!

Articles that Poked at Bears:

Trans people deserve better journalism.

Is J.K. Rowling transphobic? Let’s let her speak for herself.

How many van Goghs is one Earth worth?

What the deepfake controversy about this Chinese actor says about conspiratorial thinking

Bridgerton has a rape scene, but it’s not treated like one

Why does Hillbilly Elegy feel so inauthentic and performative?

With “Dynamite,” BTS beat the US music industry at its own cheap game

Fave Reviews/Analysis:

The Chinese government’s unlikeliest standoff is with … fandom

Is Jeremy Strong the bad art friend?

One Good Thing: This Chinese dance show is the only thing I care about

The queering of Taylor Swift

The Untamed, streaming on Netflix, ripped my heart out and fed it to me. I can’t get enough.

Harry Potter and the author who failed us

Pixar’s Turning Red is an unlikely culture war battleground

The shadowy puzzle-box pleasures of Chinese spy thriller Hidden Blade

Pop Culture Deep Dives:

Why we can’t stop fighting about cancel culture

Conspiracy theories, explained

A history of “wokeness”

Why won’t American radio play more K-pop?

The delicate relationship between grief and fanfiction, explained by a psychologist

The internet’s most beloved fanfiction site is undergoing a reckoning

The right’s moral panic over “grooming” invokes age-old homophobia

Reports from the Hellscape:

Lil Nas X’s evil gay Satanic agenda, explained

Why the Depp-Heard trial is so much worse than you realize

How do you solve a problem like Joe Rogan?

How ’90s Christian radio enabled Rush Limbaugh’s toxic views

Revisiting the Christian fantasy novels that shaped decades of conservative hysteria

Kanye West’s antisemitic spiral, explained

The weird sorrow of losing Twitter

[ajawrites]

Not only are they having to deal with the emotional stress caused by the harassment, they’re still dealing with all of the things that make them marginalized, whether racism, transphobia, classism, whatever.

from an interview I gave to The Lily about 15 Minutes of Shame

I was pleased to be a guest commentator for the HBO documentary 15 Minutes of Shame, produced by Monica Lewinsky and directed by Catfish’s Max Joseph (who was amazing!)

[ajawrites]

Seriously... - Can I Still Read Harry Potter? - BBC Sounds

A fan of the boy wizard explores what it means to stop reading a beloved book.

I’m proving to be the world’s worst at updating my portfolio but I’m back, a year late, to add the fabulous BBC documentary short I got to do last year. Producer Sam Peach was kind enough to invite me to co-write and host the documentary as well as conduct interviews with the guests, and it was a great experience all around. Terrible context! But a great experience.

[ajawrites]

hi aja, i saw that you're going by they/them now in your author bios. i know it can be vulnerable to ask for different pronouns, so i hope people have been understanding about that. i will definitely make a note that you use they/them nowadays : )

Hi! Thanks for this note, that’s very sweet of you. I’ve been going by they/them for a while — I first asked my colleagues at Vox to refer to me as they/them and started putting they/them in bios etc at the beginning of 2018. But I have tried to remain lowkey about it, because I am pretty resigned to the fact that people will always see me as I look — as a frumpy fat woman, an earth mother — so I try to still allow for people to feminize me without it being a big deal.

It still fucks with me a little or a lot, though, so I really appreciate this! Thanks. :)

[destinationtoast]

Tumblr’s adult content ban hurts all of internet culture

Great article by @ajawrites .

[realmrsevilgenius]

AN ABSOLUTE MUST-READ!

“the fact is that the erotic and NSFW imagery on Tumblr includes everything from fanart to sex education and is a vibrant and much-valued part of the community. And while data analysts have uncovered that, yes, there is a lot of porn on Tumblr, it’s coming from only a tiny fraction — about a tenth of 1 percent — of the site’s creators. “

[ajawrites]

A bit late to the reblog, but thank you both for reading! <3

[ajawrites]

The Watcher with Aja Romano — Cool Breeze Over the Mountains

We FedEx'd this episode to your house three days ago and you're just now opening it!?

Oh, here’s another podcast appearance I did recently that I definitely wanted to ~memorialize~ on my very sporadically updated Tumblr portfolio: I sat down with the Keanu fans at the Cool Breeze podcast, where they have steadily been watching and analzying Keanu’s entire filmography, to discuss one of my favorite/least favorite Keanu films: the terrible jewel known as The Watcher. So many inexplicable directorial decisions! Such ambivalent pacing! Such terrible phoning-it-in acting from James Spader, who inexplicably took no flack for this film, while Keanu, who actually delivers a solid performance in context, took so much ragging! So much needless misogyny! So much inexplicable homoerotic killer/cop duality that ultimately goes nowhere because no one else besides Keanu will commit to the bit! 

I do love a good bad movie, and this is one I had a blast talking about. 

This all came about, btw, as a result of my unexpectedly popular Keanu Reeves explainer. Thanks, internet. <3

[ajawrites]

Ok boomer

TikTok's hottest meme is pitting the Youngs against the Olds, but the truth about this generational standoff can be found in its shades of gray. (Transcript here.)

Got to talk to Sean about my latest explainer for Vox, the “OK Boomer” meme and why it’s not at all the dismissive ageist retort it’s been branded. I always so enjoy these conversations! And in this case I’ve really loved seeing people link the Vox article as a further retort in conversations where people are misunderstanding the meme!

Also, just because I like having them all in one place, here are all my other Today, Explained episodes, including THE GOLDEN STATE KILLER ep which apparently terrified several listeners, woot:

The Deep Fake — explaining deepfake technology and the rise of celebrity porn manipulation on Reddit)

Congress just broke the internet — a rundown on the pernicious implications of Fosta/Sesta for the internet

Golden State Killer Opens Pandora’s Box — in which I tell you a true campfire story about one of the country’s most terrifying and notorious serial killers.

Delete your account — in which I explain why internet trolls pursued public figures like James Gunn and Sarah Jeong in 2018.

Tumblr’s war on sex — why Tumblr’s adult content ban is about so much more than just porn.

[ajawrites]

Hi Aja, I just watched a Star Is Born and was so troubled by the story line direction and ending. I started googling for reviews and came across your review. I found it interesting and worthy of thought because your view and assessment of the movie was a location on the map that I didnt see at all. Would love to bounce my interpretation off of you.

Hi! 

For context, my review of a Star is Born argues that the film portrays Ally, the titular star, as a side character in her own life, next to Bradley Cooper’s character, who consistently ignores her when she tells him no or tries to assert her own autonomy, and wears her down until she gives in to whatever he wants.

Thanks for reading the piece, and, sure, feel free to message me your thoughts!

[ajawrites]

I just finished a completely amazing and intense two-week stint at the National Critics Institute, which is part of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s slate of summer intensives designed to enrich and educate and diversify the world of the theatre and the performing and media arts. We spent the 2 weeks in a very focused cycle of attending and reviewing performances, shows, movies and even food across New England, and then workshopping and discussing our reviews with some of the greatest critics in the country. 

This year was the most competitive year in the NCI to date, which meant that I was profoundly grateful to be among some of the most fabulous and inspiring writers I’ve ever worked with. I’m so grateful to the NCI for choosing me to participate (and to Vox’s Constance Grady, who did the program last year, which is how I learned about it!), and especially to director Chris Jones for being so warm and thoughtful and encouraging every step of the way.

At one point I looked around and realized I was sitting in a room with Chris Jones, Eric Deggans, and Ben Brantley, getting feedback from all of them at once, and it’s just incredible to be gifted that kind of opportunity. I’ve learned so much from it, and I’ve come away with so much more confidence and ambition and belief in myself as a writer. 

To any of you who are interested in pursuing a career as a critic, I absolutely recommend this program and would be happy to speak to you more about it!

[ajawrites]

Highlights from 3 years at Vox!

I’ve been woefully remiss at updating my portfolio, but I thought it would be a great idea to put a retrospective here of some of my favorite, most provocative, and most successful work from my time at Vox thus far. 

Articles that Poked at Bears:

Hopepunk, explained 

A Star Is Born has a problem with consent.

YouTube’s most popular user amplified anti-Semitic rhetoric. Again.

S-Town is a stunning podcast. It probably shouldn't have been made.

Hamilton is fanfic, and its historical critics are totally missing the point.

Fave Reviews/Analysis:

Sexy Oklahoma!, explained

The Game of Thrones finale had a chance to break the wheel. It upheld the status quo.

Us’s big plot twist, explained

How Suspiria turns the color red into a plot point

Don't Breathe is one of the year's best horror films. It's an even better social allegory.

Sam Mendes’s The Ferryman balances rollicking family fun with a study of extremism

The Harry Potter universe still can't translate its gay subtext to text. It's a problem.

In remembering George Michael, don't forget the decades we spent shaming him.

Pop Culture Deep Dives:

The history of Satanic Panic in the US — and why it's not over yet

How K-pop became a global phenomenon

Pusha T vs. Drake: the long history of rap’s feud of the moment

Netflix’s re-translation of Neon Genesis Evangelion is drawing backlash for queer erasure

Janelle Monáe’s body of work is a masterpiece of modern science fiction

The secret behind internet erotica icon Chuck Tingle: his own life may be the best story he's ever written.

“Johny Johny Yes Papa”: the meme born from YouTube’s hellscape of kids’ videos, explained

How Ouija boards work. (Hint: It's not ghosts.)

Reports from the Hellscape:

The Leslie Jones hack is the flashpoint of the alt-right's escalating culture war

How the Christchurch shooter used memes to spread hate

How the alt-right uses trolling to confuse you into dismissing its ideology

How the alt-right’s sexism lures men into white supremacy

What a woman-led incel support group can teach us about men and mental health

Richard Spencer is an infamous white nationalist. Twitter says he’s not part of a hate group.

The fight to save net neutrality, explained

A new law intended to curb sex trafficking threatens the future of the internet.

Why Reddit’s face-swapping celebrity porn craze is a harbinger of dystopia

What Rick and Morty fans’ meltdown over McDonald’s Szechuan Sauce says about geek culture

[ajawrites]

Today, Explained: Delete your account

Dan Harmon quit Twitter. James Gunn was fired by Disney. Sarah Silverman defended a nine-year-old joke about molestation. Vox’s Aja Romano explains why internet mobs are digging up celebrities’ old social media posts.

Dan Harmon quit Twitter. James Gunn was fired by Disney. Sarah Silverman defended a nine-year-old joke about molestation. Vox’s Aja Romano explains why internet mobs are digging up celebrities’ old social media posts.

I really loved doing this interview regarding the recent trend of trying to “own” celebrities by digging up their old social media sins, and so I wanted to put it here!

Also just to note, I’ve really enjoyed all my interviews with Today, Explained — and here they are!

The Deep Fake — explaining deepfake technology and the rise of celebrity porn manipulation on Reddit)

Congress just broke the internet — a rundown on the pernicious implications of Fosta/Sesta for the internet

Golden State Killer Opens Pandora’s Box — in which I tell you a terrifying (true) campfire story about one of the country’s most terrifying and notorious serial killers.

Tumblr's war on sex — it’s so much more than just banning adult content.

[ajawrites]

No country takes its fluffy pop music more seriously than South Korea.

The other thing I meant to note is that Vox recently wonderfully packaged my guide to the growth and culture of K-Pop, which was a piece I really enjoyed writing and got lots of positive responses to. Plus, I got to showcase lots of fun and not-necessarily-mainstream K-pop groups and performers — like the recently debuted Holland, above. 

And I got to make gifs! I’m always happy when I get to make gifs. :D