Who knew that imaginary creatures could create such a real-life ruckus? It’s been a week since “Pokemon Go,” a free smartphone-based game app, was released. And ever since, legions of fun-loving Southern Nevadans have braved the oppressive heat to join other Americans with way too much time on their hands to chase Pokemon in parks, on city streets, in offices and wherever else the wily critters might turn up.

When a police officer shot her boyfriend Philando Castile during a traffic stop, Diamond Reynolds reached for a powerful new medium to bring the world into the car with them — Facebook Live, the in-app streaming feature that broadcast the bloody and emotional aftermath of the fatal shooting that left her boyfriend slumped in the driver's seat beside her.

In an interview last month about Facebook’s recent push into live streaming video, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg repeats the word “raw” like it’s some kind of sacred totem. Facebook Live is “raw and visceral,” he says. It’s this “new, raw” way to communicate.

They’re the unsanctioned shock troops of Bernie Sanders’ vaunted online army, digital rogues who've plagued Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid and embarrassed Sanders' campaign.

Bernie Sanders may not be winning with baby boomers, and he may not be winning with minorities. But the 74-year-old senator has locked up one vote: the producers and peddlers of Internet memes.

Friendship keeps us alive, so it's no wonder we worry whether social media has doomed it.

As an assistant professor of emerging media at UNLV, Benjamin Burroughs is no stranger to the world of tweets, snaps and vines.