"Is this image Princess Diana's ghost or an optical illusion?" I DON'T KNOW, I'M SO CONFLICTED.

1. Before we proceed, we might all need to take a moment to acknowledge that we've reached the point in our culture where former editors of the New Yorker are writing fanfiction. Publicly, I mean; who knows what William Shawn scribbled in his most private notebooks, and in some sense who wouldn’t want to know, how many miles to Babylon, etc. But still. Fanfiction, in a “news magazine.”

2. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with fanfiction qua fanfiction. I’m not into it myself, but I read serial killer profiles at 3 a.m. when I can’t sleep, so no judgment. But the communications scholar Henry Jenkins has an awfully neat [...]