#every cultures iteration of fried chicken is good
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FULL MOON SPECIAL.
(Summer.)
This year Spring came and went a little easier than usual. Aside from a stomach-churning break-up that neither my now ex-girlfriend or I wanted to take part of, the Spring revival brought a brand new charge that I haven’t experienced in a long time. Feelings of meeting someone rare and opening up to them for the first time. An opportunity with an art-school-type Korean girl who nicely put me down but ended in an amicable consolation. Taking snapshots with the who’s-who of the Press at the trendiest post-production parties. Extended drives out west with my friend Jewish Mary discussing thoughts, feelings, summer plans, and laughing out loud over getting to know each other as friends.
The mania continued when we all discovered two social-networking sites that year: Myspace and Facebook. Both had opened a wide portal for anyone who used it. Not only did they offer an opportunity for friends and classmates to keep in direct contact with each other, but it also doubled as a dating or hook-up site. When it first opened people would randomly contact each other through a very curious yet open world with plentiful results. This was before the term ‘stalking’ was taken seriously, and when people were more welcome and less discriminating.
One day I was curious and did a search for people who liked Deftones. The first thing that came up was this black-and-white photo of a girl eating a King of Diamonds playing by CouponDropDown" target="_blank">card with both hands and a happy chipper smile. I liked cute girls and I liked playing cards…and then I liked cute girls who liked eating playing cards, so who was I to pass this up? I jokingly messaged her to stop eating the King and cease being disrespectful. A day later, she replies.
Her name was Catherine. We messaged each other sparsely for two months being silly and then it stopped. I don’t know why. I assumed it just ran its course and that was that. I thought nothing of it, moved on and forgot about her.
**********
(Autumn.)
One afternoon in the campus news office I open my account to find a message waiting for me, feeling interested as always. Then I see who sent me that message: it was Catherine. Out of nowhere she decided to pop up and say hello…fifteen months later. What the circumstances were of why there was a fifteen-month silence between us I’ll never know. It did not matter anymore.
At first I could not remember who she was until it hit me, but it felt real good hearing from her again and I was amazed that she remembered me after a long silence. Very rarely in this nature would people do such a gesture these days. She told me she liked talking to me when we did which was why she contacted me again. There was no reason to not seize the opportunity to continue so we picked up where we left off. The rate of communication accelerated and quantified. Our next constant starts by getting to know each other.
What I first learned about Catherine had me very concerned. At the time, she found herself at home feeling lonely with a bottle of vodka nearby accompanied by a supply of painkillers and a pack of blades, extreme for someone I just started talking to. She was slipping and I pushed and persisted for answers because I am a savior to my friends. As she reached out to me, I had to reach out to her. I wanted to put the pieces together because I genuinely felt sorry for her. I was not as successful as first since she heavily guarded herself so I decided to tread very carefully.
Alternately, Catherine and I discussed philosophies and logic; life struggles, situations at hand and other miscellany. I discover that we had a good number of things in common. She listened to the very same music I was into when I was in high-school a decade before. (I preceded her by eight years and her birthday was only ten days after mine. I am a Virgo, she is a Libra.) She was into Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Nine Inch Nails, Stone Temple Pilots, and her number one Elliot Smith, certifying her as an alternative-rock sentry in my eyes. She wrote, did graphic design, and even attended the same university as I. She had creative qualities and I saw lots of potential in her, thus the race to rescue Catherine from her own personal black hole had become more essential, more so when I had week-long periods of not hearing from her.
Catherine should not have to drown herself every weekend in alcohol and loneliness nor let alone consume vicodin and oxycontin, so I felt. She also did not have to punish herself by cutting, either. All this as a result of social neglect and mostly being un-accepted in her high-school years, with her using and drinking as a means of coping now ignited due to meeting some guy at a party who introduced her to a sip of beer. I now gave her an opportunity to come out and be at a safer place, to bring her out and have dinner with me to discuss her situation.
During this time, I was going through a very heavy period of discovering music. Tower Records was going under and were closing its doors for good by the end of the year. One night after work I paid my final visit there and I picked up Public Image Limited, The Buzzcocks, Stereolab, and Jesu. Roy Ayers, Ladytron, Leonard Cohen, Boards Of Canada, and much more. Artists I either meant to try or even discovered out of nowhere. And back at the Press office, someone somehow uploaded a lot of music into one of our office computers ripe for the taking. Direct Control, Regulations, Stereo Total, NON, and MF Doom were playing endlessly while I furiously typed away articles for the next issues of the semester; after which I occasionally took a break for spicy fried rice at the campus’ Asian food quarter. A scent of lime was present, in tandem reminding me of the cold air and starry night skies complimenting that Autumn.
The turn of the New Year arrived when I was at the campus radio station doing a countdown set with several on-air staff. I contacted Catherine when the show was over. We decided the time was right to finally meet up after her Thursday secret meeting. We weighed our options including any given Greek diner for midnight breakfast, but we opt for American instead.
**********
(Full Moon, January.)
Daily errands were done. In the afternoon I went clothes shopping and bought a watch, a black t-shirt with a cassette printed on the front and a grey pocket t-shirt with some gold lettering. The scent of lime now replaced by a strong hue of blue and white static powder. Later that night, I spearheaded a radio station meeting as program director with several other talents about what extra equipment, wires, boards, and knobs to buy for our studios. After two hours of sitting through the meeting taking suggestions and going over schematics I finally conclude the meeting. All I had eaten so far was a Snickers bar but I wasn’t feeling hunger pangs. I was still standing.
I walk out of the building and it was extremely cold. A bright full moon and stars were out with absolutely no clouds or snow in sight. I called Catherine on my white cell-phone to let her know my meeting was over. Her secret meeting concluded as well. Both of us were on the way. We would trade several more phone calls to make sure we would stick to our guns.
I arrive at the American restaurant. It was a crowded Thursday night, the day of the week most students from campus migrate here to unwind and eat. Noisy as usual, lots of people talking, cups and glasses clinking, excitement and loud music fill the air. I sit at the lobby waiting to finally meet Catherine for the first time, wondering what she could really be. I had no idea what to expect or what she really looked like in person.
I was about to find out, and here she is.
I see Catherine walk into the restaurant. When I looked up at her for a moment to verify if it was her or not; everything registered to line up with themselves and I call her out. “Catherine!” I get her attention and she turns to me. We were thrilled to see each other and trade smiles and pleasantries. She was this young thin self, her neck-length Trixie hair, slim purple long-sleeve sweater and black jeans torn at the knees. She sits to my left in the lobby and our conversation starts off with three topics in a matter of five minutes: her secret meeting in Port Jefferson which she refused to divulge, how she drove out to and missed the record store in Ronkonkoma, and what was possibly wrong with her cable box. Five minutes later our maitre d’ escorts us to a window-side booth seated adjacent from eight loud and noisy frat boys who thankfully did not start in with us. After a year and a half, here was the first time we would get to talk to each other, face-to-face.
I order chicken stir-fry. Catherine orders only a diet Coke. “Are you sure?” I ask her, and politely she said she wasn’t hungry. I upped the ante and told her that dinner was on me and she could have anything she wanted, no worries. But she stopped at a diet Coke and said it was OK. I gave in and nicely obliged.
We went forward and re-iterated every conversation we had over the last three months. Catherine was very soft-spoken. So soft spoken that I had to lean toward her to focus on every word she said, and on one occasion I kindly told her to speak just a little louder. My undivided attention was on her when she said every word since she had the loveliest eyes I had ever seen. Big eyes. Lovely eyes. Obvious eyes. Memorable eyes. Cat eyes. Eyes that made her very cute. Eyes that ‘made’ Catherine.
We went more in-depth about the parallels we had. I was still very flattered Catherine was into the very music I was years prior. Had she went to high-school with me she would have been accepted to my circle of friends with no problem. She also mentioned that once she was a Cinema/Cultural Studies major on our campus. However, we had no classes together and the two years that she attended our university we did not once cross paths, but very well could have.
We talked and listened to each other more and more, progressing without one single hitch. No missteps, no awkward looks, no slip-ups, no back-pedaling. It was only Catherine and I sitting across from each other with all the time in the world having a complex yet honest, concerning, intelligent conversation; a type of conversation extremely rare in our disposable, attention-deficit, lowest-common-denominator world. She was that someone different than the rest who was exactly on my level. I was that someone who would give her the concern, understanding, and the attention she was looking for.
Our night, however, was drawing to a close and I wanted to end it on a high note. I asked Catherine if she had gotten a hold of Elliott Smith’s Figure 8, one which she was missing. She was in the midst of explaining herself when I take the CD out of my jacket pocket placed next to me and tossed it on the table right in front of her, a late Christmas present for a friend to bring herself and her spirits up. She was in total amazement. So much it spilt all over the table. She could not believe I would do such a thing for her.
Catherine then offered me anything I wanted. She even waved her money in my face for the CD which I absolutely dead-refused to take. What I wanted in return was to see her again, and soon.
**********
To this day, no one I have ever met in my life gave me a surreal thrill just by being with someone for three hours. I felt amazed that I even met her.
Catherine was without a doubt one of the most original and unique people I’ve met, ever. Hands down. No contest. She had a lot of things about her that no one could copy, because everything about her was hers. From the music she listened to, her philosophy, her good parts, her bad parts, even her looks…it was all hers, as if there was an art to her.
She was real interesting and because of her conversations I tried to reach out and look out for her. She made me want to look forward to meeting her again and in the process got my mind off a lot of things because she was really that special. I bought her that gift just to prove to her that I can help her out and bring her up in any way.
It was that feeling of meeting someone who was more to my liking, whose complexion was young, her personality, looks, and features unique and rarely seen, the feeling of assurance because you finally had the answers to those swirling questions. In front of me was someone I believed was truly special despite her severe misgivings and flaws. Despite her errors, I only thought about the good things, colors, and feelings about her.
Every now and then I go back and listen to everything from that era. All those sounds are a watermark of that time when I first met Catherine and conjure up everything else that occurred at the time. That clear cold weather and the memory of lime, infinity, and powdery static. That white cell-phone, the spicy rice. Nights of heavy snow on campus and long night drives home. The series of Wednesday night radio shows and our resident DJ’s coming over to visit at the turn of midnight. Those loud nights of campus techno events and meeting different shades of Jewish women with different colors of hair, skin quality, fashion sense, glasses, make-up, and sweat. Those feelings, thoughts, shades, hues, and patterns of purple, blue, grey, black, and white. But none of anything could come close to that one defining moment of meeting Catherine, where from that point on it would watermark and define an era in a time where everything added up to equal an apex.
**********
We met again in Spring a couple of times thereafter. We sat down over ice cream and even traded more music to each other. I still truly believed that Catherine was someone special and stood out from everyone I have ever met, and I seriously wanted to remain in touch with her. She happily obliged as she gave me a sympathetic goodbye hug in the end.
Later on that season I had an art report to do and she had an affinity for museums. I offered Catherine an afternoon in New York City and we went to the MOMA as I prepared my critique about Joan Miro’s Women, Birds And A Star. At the end of that mostly sunny day we said goodbye to the city and took the train ride home together; our discussion of each others’ individual lives, future plans, and possible outcomes comprised the final hour of the last time we would ever see each other…for a long, long time.
Permission granted by the very same subject presented here.
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100 Best Memes Of The Decade
Debora Westra for BuzzFeed News
This decade, memes became something not just for a handful of internet nerds who lurked on message boards; memes are now for everyone. The online culture of this decade hasn’t just changed the words we use, it’s changed how we express ourselves. Huge technological shifts of the 2010s led to this: widespread smartphone adoption and the rise of newfangled social media platforms like Vine. Memes also became a business — brands used meme-speak and accounts like @fuckjerry made big bucks by reposting memes.
To determine the ranking of this list, we considered the overall popularity of a meme, its longevity, and historical importance — what kind of impact it had on other memes and internet culture. Here they are:
100.
Yodeling Walmart Kid
View this video on YouTube
youtube.com
In 2018, 10-year-old Mason Ramsey sang a Hank Williams song in a Walmart, and the internet went nuts. But this time, the reaction to a precocious kid singing somewhat oddly (a sort of yodeling) was very different than it was in 2011 when Rebecca Black sang “Friday.” Instead of mocking the kid, the internet loved him, declaring the clip a “bop” that “slaps.” This is the change that happened over the decade: Instead of relishing cringe, the more memetic and ironic thing to do is embrace and love something like a child yodeling in a big-box store. Ramsey has gone on to have some version of mainstream success, performing country music to live crowds, and, well, good for him. —K.N.
99.
Moth Memes
Twitter: @thebobpalmer
Much like a moth is drawn to a flame, we were drawn to memes about moths and their unquenchable thirst for lamps in summer 2018. They got their start with a Reddit post that July, a close-up photo someone took of a moth, which people soon began captioning and photoshopping until it took on a life of its own as a meme. There’s really not much you can say about moth memes, besides that they are funny and good and I will love them until I die. —J.R.
Every generation has its subcultures, and in 2019, Gen Z’s was undoubtedly VSCO girls. The aesthetic comes with a number of signifiers: scrunchies (piled high on the wrist), Hydro Flask water bottles (covered in stickers), puka shell necklaces, oversized T-shirts, Crocs, Fjällräven backpacks, metal straws (save the turtles!), Carmex lip balm, and the ubiquitous catchphrases, “sksksk — and I oop.” The easy-breezy look, named for the photo editing app VSCO, was essentially “Tumblr girl” meets “basic white girl.” Though the style became trendy in earnest through Instagram and internet stars like Emma Chamberlain, it catapulted to popularity (and mockery) on TikTok. —J.R.
97.
Duck Army
View this video on YouTube
youtube.com
Kevin Innes, a Norwegian twentysomething, was in a store with his girlfriend one day when they came across a bin of squeaking duck-shaped (technically, the toy is a pelican) dog toys. To embarrass his girlfriend, he pressed down on the whole bin, and an unholy cacophony that sounds like the wheezing sum total of human misery was released. Innes posted to Facebook, then YouTube, and then someone else ripped his YouTube video and posted it to Vine, where it went viral. The beauty of this 2015 meme was a perfect Vine: absurd, easy to understand, surprising, and based on something that happened in real life. —K.N.
96.
Deep-Fried Memes
reddit.com
You might not even know what they’re called if you saw them, but a deep-fried meme is one of those pictures that has been screenshotted, edited, and reuploaded across Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit so many times that has started to degrade in quality. At first this deep-frying process was largely genuine, kids refiltering and remixing each other’s images. But as the phenomenon became more known, a second wave of ironically deep-fried images started to appear. It’s a fairly silly thing on its surface, but it also speaks to the innate desire for people to share stuff online. If Instagram had a share button, there’s a good chance this sort of thing would have never started happening in the first place. The walled culs-de-sac of proprietary platforms will never be able to stop the world’s teens from sharing a picture of Peter Griffin from Family Guy smoking a huge blunt. —R.B.
95.
Twitter Sign Bunny
|￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣|
vaccines save lives
you stupid motherfucker
|＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿|
(__/) ||
(•ㅅ•) ||
/ づ
02:12 PM – 01 Dec 2019
A series of ASCII image memes popped up on Twitter this decade: “Howdy, I’m the sheriff of,” “In this house we…” “got dat” cat, a stick figure falling off a building, or even the simple ¯_(ツ)_/¯ or (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻. These work in part because they visually take up a lot of space on the Twitter timeline, making them stick out and be more likely to be interacted with or remembered. Plus, there implies some element that the poster has some technical abilities to be able to summon the ASCII. But it’s the bunny that’s had staying power over those other ones. —K.N.
94.
Doggos and Puppers
This is Rey. She’s a very puptective doggo mommo. Will grrbork bork at any potential threat. 13/10 heartwarming as h*ck
12:00 AM – 20 Oct 2017
Dogs have been man’s best friend for thousands of years, but only around 2015 did they evolve into “doggos” and “puppers.” “Doggo-speak,” as NPR called it, arose in Facebook groups like “Dogspotting” before exploding on Twitter with the @dog_rates Twitter account. The lingo is characterized by cutesy nicknames for dogs (Samoyeds are “floofs” or “clouds,” corgis are “loaves,” any huge fluffy dog is a big boofin’ woofer) and onomatopoeia (a doggo can “bork,” or stick their tongues out and do a “blep” or “mlem”). To me, it’s a fascinating as “h*ck” thing that an entire dialect, with all its own grammar and syntax and vocabulary rules, could spring up in an organic way online. —J.R.
93.
Planking
CC BY-SA 3.0 / Donkey100 / Via commons.wikimedia.org
In 2011, everyone was taking pictures lying facedown on the ground, rigid as a board. It was a thing, and that thing was called planking. Plankers would assume the pose in unexpected places — atop a car, inside a supermarket freezer, even across two camels — then get a buddy to snap a picture. The trend got so big The Office even did a cold open about it. Soon, it spun off into other photo pose trends, including owling and leisure diving, but it also sadly led to at least one death.
Eight years later, these photo memes can feel a bit old-school, but they represent a key moment when ready access to cameras (both the digital kind and iPhones, which were still pretty new) was still a novelty, and people were leaning into ways to use it creatively. —J.R.
The point of bros icing bros was simple: At any point during the day, present a warm bottle of Smirnoff Ice to your bro, and he has to get down on one knee and chug the cursed beverage. However, if he produces his own bottle immediately, he is exempted, and it is you who must chug. This prank was the peak of IRL-memeing in 2011. Smirnoff denied any sort of marketing stunt, which makes sense if you consider that the central conceit is that being forced to drink a Smirnoff Ice is a form of punishment. The meme threatened a resurgence in 2017, but never really caught on again. —K.N.
91.
Bone App The Teeth
In 2016, someone posted a pic of white bread just absolutely smothered in corn and captioned it with a phrase that ignited a million memes: “bone app the teeth.” Those four words — sometimes edited to “bone apple tea,” “bone ape tit,” or even more bonkers iterations — became the battle cry for shitty food porn posters everywhere. It’s a pretty simple meme, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at a picture of Goldfish sushi or a chicken noodle watermelon without completely losing it. —J.R.
90.
Clowns
Instagram: @davie_dave
Remember that brief moment in fall 2016 when towns around the US were overtaken by mass hysteria over scary clowns being spotted in the woods (which then immediately stopped being a concern when Trump got elected and everyone suddenly had other stuff to worry about)? Yeah, that was a thing that happened. Clowns had quite a ~moment~ in the latter half of the 2010s. Less than a year after the clown sightings, a remake of the horror movie It came out, prompting a ton of memes of Pennywise in the sewer and dancing (and, of course, people wanting to fuck the It clown). The clown memes just kept going from there, with clown photos being used as reaction images to illustrate our most dumbass moments. Sometimes I wonder if those clowns are still in the woods. I hope they’re happy. —J.R.
89.
Kim Kardashian Breaks the Internet
Jean-Paul Goude / papermag.com
In November 2014, Kim Kardashian appeared on the cover of Paper magazine bearing her whole entire ass. It went massively viral, and people immediately got to work photoshopping it into a centaur, Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” (which had just come out), the turkey in a Norman Rockwell painting, you name it. The phrase on the cover “break the internet,” would go on to become timeworn, but it all started with Kim K and her big, glossy butt. —J.R.
88.
Bed Intruder
View this video on YouTube
youtube.com
In July 2010, Antoine Dodson appeared on the local news in Alabama after a home invader attempted to assault his sister, saying: “He’s climbin’ in your windows, he’s snatchin’ your people up… So y’all need to hide your kids, hide your wife…” The news clip went viral, and a few days later, Dodson’s words were remixed into the Auto-Tuned “Bed Intruder Song,” which made it onto the Billboard 100 charts and become the most-viewed YouTube video of 2010.
“Bed Intruder Song” captured two powerful vectors that would come to define the rest of the decade: a normal person being propelled to some sort of viral fame, and a critical backlash over the exploitative race, gender, and class dynamics. At the time, some people pointed out that turning a video of poor black man expressing anguish over the attempted sexual assault of his sister was problematic. Years later, this feels even more true. Dodson went on to a strange post-virality career, with a reality show that never got off the ground, celebrity boxing matches, controversial statements about being gay, and a Trump endorsement. —K.N.
87.
Alex From Target
Alex LeBoeuf / Twitter: @auscalum (deleted)
In November 2014, a young woman tweeted a photo of a teenage checkout clerk at Target with Alex on the nametag. Her tweet was simply, “YOOOOOOOO,” signaling that, well, this teen boy was cute. The tweet went viral, and people fell in love with this mysterious Alex from Target, creating memes and tributes in his image, leading anyone over the age of 23 to wonder: What the fuck is happening here?
There was some legitimate confusion over how and why Alex’s photo blew up. An internet marketing company stepped forward, claiming that it had gotten the original girl to tweet the photo of Alex as a viral marketing stunt, and seeded the meme with inorganic retweets and promotion. But the woman who made the tweet (whose Twitter account is now suspended) said she had never heard of the marketing company, and that she just randomly found the photo on Tumblr and tweeted it out, and it seems that the marketing company was trying to claim stolen viral valor.
But the ending wasn’t so great for the guy at the center of it. Alex LaBeouf, who went by Alex Lee as a stage name, eventually dropped out of high school because he had missed so many days to fly to Los Angeles for appearances on talk shows. He was homeschooled and joined the 2015 DigiTour, a tour for social media stars, mainly Vine stars at the time. In a 2017 video, he said that his managers at the time had stolen $30,000 from him, and since then he’s abandoned his public social media accounts. —K.N.
86.
Insane Clown Posse’s “Miracles”
View this video on YouTube
youtube.com
The music video for “Miracles” debuted in April 2010. The song had been kicking around since 2009, but the video is what really did it. It’s been viewed 18 million times — and watching it back in 2019, it is still just as deranged as it was when it debuted. A lot of the meme songs on this list exist in that uncanny valley of like “misunderstood banger.” I want to be clear: “Miracles” is not that. It is a nonsense song. And while it’s best remembered for its “fuckin’ magnets, how do they work” and “Magic everywhere in this bitch” lines, I would argue the best part is the line about pelicans: “I fed a fish to a pelican at Frisco Bay / It tried to eat my cellphone, he ran away / And music is magic, pure and clean / You can feel it and hear it but it can’t be seen.” Damn, that’s real. —R.B.
85.
First-World Problems
Thinkstock / Twitter: @ughshaye
When you’re eating nachos and one stabs the roof of your mouth, when one pillow is too low but two pillows is too high; these sorts of issues — annoying, but generally indicating your life is pretty easy and privileged — were best summarized by the early-2010s macro image “First-World Problems.” A lot of things feel dated about “first-world problems” memes, ranging from the style of the image all the way to the use of the concept of countries being first world vs. third world. But the meme was also one of the first concerning social privilege, which many people would learn about for the first time in the 2010s. —J.R.
84.
Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge
vine.co
Kylie Jenner dominated the 2010s, particularly with the launch of her Kylie Lip Kits in 2015. The now-billionaire’s lips had been the subject of gossip and envy that year when she suddenly debuted thick, pillowy lips (the result of lip fillers, though she denied it until two years later). The star kicked off something of a lip-plumping craze, and teens starting trying to plump their own lips by sticking them in shot glasses and sucking till they swelled up. Needless to say, it did not come doctor-recommended.
The rise in popularity of injectable fillers and the instabaddie takeover are inextricably linked to the Kardashian/Jenner family’s influence. Each trend made way for the other, clearing the way for a bunch of teens to damage their faces to score Kylie-level lips. —J.R.
83.
Sad Keanu
nerdlikeyou.com
Keanu Reeves kickstarted the decade as a meme after a paparazzi photo of him eating a sandwich on a park bench was shared on 4chan. “Instead of Chuck Norris, let’s make Keanu Reeves a meme,” one redditor wrote as the image started to spread. Which is interesting to think about — that this particular decade, one so heavily shaped by increasingly radicalized social media platforms, began with users of heavily male communities like 4chan and Reddit deciding to abandon an aggressively masculine meme like Chuck Norris and instead embrace a picture of disheveled loneliness. Splash News, the agency behind the photo, has attempted to remove the picture from the internet via DMCA takedowns, but Reeves and his sandwich have proved too popular (and photoshoppable) to really scrub away. As for how Reeves feels about the whole thing, at the time he told the BBC, “Do I wish that I didn’t get my picture taken while I was eating a sandwich on the streets of New York? Yeah.” —R.B.
82.
“Haven’t Heard That Name in Years”
Twitter: @goIfkart
As you read this list, you’re probably at various points looking at a meme, taking a drag on a cigarette, and saying, “Gangnam Style? Haven’t heard that name in years.” —K.N.
If you dumped a bucket of ice over your head in summer 2014, it was probably to raise money for ALS research in the Ice Bucket Challenge. The challenge involved participants dousing themselves in ice water on video, then nominating others to either do the same or make a donation to fund ALS research. Many did both, using the viral videos to promote the cause, and the ALS Association wound up raising more than $100 million in a month. The rare meme that did demonstrable good. Sadly, the man who inspired the meme died in December 2019. —J.R.
80.
“I’m in Me Mum’s Car, Broom Broom”
View this video on YouTube
youtube.com
A Vine of a British girl in her mum’s car (broom broom) was a perfect Vine: It makes no sense, it doesn’t follow any known comedy format, it’s vaguely cringe, and yet it’s so silly it’s guaranteed to make you laugh. The brief and glorious life of Vine thrived on these moments of surprising and unexpected humor. TikTok is the closest thing we have now to Vine, and yet it requires a certain knowledge of its memes and tropes to “get” it. “I’m in me mum’s car, broom broom” only requires you to be a human with a pulse to find Tish Simmonds’ 2014 masterpiece funny. —K.N.
79.
The Rent Is Too Damn High
Kathy Kmonicek / AP
The thing about Jimmy McMillan’s slogan for the 2010 New York gubernatorial campaign is that he’s absolutely correct: The rent IS too damn high, and he was accurately predicting the coming housing market crisis in New York City. McMillan was a minor local politics figure, having run for mayor a few years earlier. But it was the televised debates for the governor’s race in 2010 that brought him national fame for his flamboyant facial hair, gloves, and his one-issue campaign platform. He was parodied on Saturday Night Live, and a meme was born. —K.N.
78.
“What Does the Fox Say?”
View this video on YouTube
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Few music videos of 2010s hit it bigger than one by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis, as they tried to answer a perplexing question: What does the fox say? The video — which featured a cast of people dressed up in animal costumes and a whole slew of sounds a fox might purportedly say — was named the top trending video on YouTube in 2013. It’s a video that feels definitively old, and it’s hard to imagine it coming out now and being earnestly enjoyed, but we were doing lots of things more earnestly back then. And I’d bet you anything you still know the words. —J.R.
77.
Hot Dogs or Legs
times-new-romann.tumblr.com
Showing off your tan in 2013? The trendiest vacation humblebrag in 2013 was snapping a pic of your thighs and captioning it “hot dogs or legs.” The meme first went viral on Tumblr but had a long life on Instagram afterward. This was mostly annoying, unless it was actually hot dogs, which was pretty funny. –J.R.
76.
Darude’s “Sandstorm”
View this video on YouTube
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One of the bright spots about the 2010s is the way that young people immediately understood and identified the parts of shit culture of the ’90s and ’00s, and mercilessly mocked it. Guy Fieri, Shrek, Bee Movie, and the hit 1999 techno song “Sandstorm” by Darude. To be fair, “Sandstorm” is probably the best and most well-known trance song, but still, it’s incredible silly. It also became a huge meme to namedrop the song in the comment sections of random YouTube videos. What’s silliest about it is the idea that it has lyrics (it does not), and they’re simply dun dun dun dun dun dun DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN dun dun dun dun. —K.N.
75.
*Record Scratch*
*record scratch* *freeze frame* Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.
03:44 PM – 25 Aug 2016
*record scratch* *freeze frame* Yup, that’s me. I’m a meme you could not stop seeing all over your feed in 2016. The meme was based on the clichéd movie trope in which a protagonist would begin to explain how they got themself into a ~wacky situation~. The meme spread quickly, with Twitter users aligning the text with all sorts of images. This was not the first text-based Twitter meme, nor would it be the last, but its takeover was so big it eventually became a Twitter trope in and of itself. —J.R.
74.
Double Rainbow
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What makes Paul Vasquez’s effusive awe at seeing a double rainbow distinctly from 2010 as opposed to 2019 is how it’s barely what we’d call a “meme” now. It’s a viral video, sure, and it was one of the first truly huge and popular ones. In many ways, even though it happened in 2010, it resembled the memes of the 2000s more: It went viral after Jimmy Kimmel’s show account tweeted it, and it spread over email and Gchat from person to person.
The things we think of as memes now are mostly defined by being iterative: a photo you can write new captions over and over ad nauseum and can mean a million different things. But “Double Rainbow” is just a funny video – you watch it once, you laugh, and that’s it. It’s more of the Tosh.0 version of the internet where there are funny things to be found than the Distracted Boyfriend or Pepe the frog version where there are existing memes that we make our own meaning out of. The monetization of the video was also (by current standards) primitive: He appeared in a Microsoft ad. —K.N.
73.
Mannequin Challenge
There were a lot of dance crazes and video fads in the 2010s — the suddenly widespread use of phones with cameras made it possible — but few grew as big as the Mannequin Challenge of 2016. The videos involved standing as still as a statue, usually with the song “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd playing. The meme’s origins lie with a group of Florida high schoolers, and within just a few weeks there were Mannequin Challenge videos from pro sports teams, then– presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and quite possibly your family on Thanksgiving. The Mannequin Challenge went viral because it was the stationary dance craze version of the “Cha Cha Slide” — it was family-friendly, everyone could catch on pretty quickly, and it was something that could bring everyone together. —J.R.
72.
“Harlem Shake”
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In early 2013, a dance meme was born. Set to the techno song “Harlem Shake” by Baauer, the premise was to start off dancing very mildly, and when the beat drops, all hell breaks loose and a large group of people dance wildly. It’s stupid, I know. As quickly as the meme came to life, it died: A few days after the first few videos went viral, BuzzFeed’s office did a version (Ryan is in the horse mask; I run and hide into a conference room), and six days after that, the Today show anchors did one, which seemed to everyone to signal the end of the meme. But the real nail in the coffin was in 2017 when FCC chair Ajit Pai did a video to help explain the end of Net Neutrality. —K.N.
71.
Bottle Flipping
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If you were a teen in 2016, you probably flipped a bottle or two. The trend really took off when high school student Mike Senatore executed a flawless flip at his school talent show to rapturous applause. After that, everyone was flipping bottles, and a “replica bottle” signed by Senatore himself fetched over $11,000 on eBay. Teens do all sorts of kooky things, but to this day, it’s hard to watch a video of a perfect bottle flip and NOT feel unbridled joy and triumph. —J.R.
70.
Bronies
Katie Notopoulos / BuzzFeed News
The world first learned of bronies when in 2011 Wired wrote about the adult men who loved the rebooted My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic show. For the next five years, bronies seemed to dominate every aspect of internet culture — they were rampant on Reddit, 4chan, DeviantArt, Twitter, Tumblr, and even IRL conventions (and of course, horrible, horrible version of pony porn, known as “clop”). The fandom morphed through every phase of an online community, including a small faction of fascist bronies, creating fan art of the colorful horses in Nazi uniforms.
No group since furries has been as routinely mocked as the bronies. And yet, now that they’ve sort of faded away slightly, we sort of miss them. —K.N.
68.
Bee Movie
quilavastudy.tumblr.com
According to all known laws of memes, there is no way Bee Movie should have been able to go viral. And yet, posting the entire script to the 2007 movie somehow became a big Tumblr meme. The reasons for this semi-flop movie becoming a meme aren’t totally clear. Perhaps it was the realization of how grotesque the plot is (a bee and a human woman fall in love), perhaps it was that star Jerry Seinfeld was having a moment. Or maybe because it was just because it’s random and shitty movie, which is inherently funny. Unlike beloved childhood characters Shrek or SpongeBob, Bee Movie’s mediocrity is what makes it memeable. The crummier, the more nonsensical the meme, the better. The layers of ironic detachment have to be so thick that to pretend to love Bee Movie and post its entire script is something only someone with a truly online brain in 2015 could be capable of. —K.N.
67.
¯_(ツ)_/¯ (Shruggie)
Fun fact: The symbol in the center of the shruggie is a Japanese Katakana character called “Tsu.” It’s commonly used in Japanese fiction to represent the end of a line of dialogue. Kind of perfect right? Nothing left to say? Shruggie time. The shruggie was the perfect emoticon of the Obama era: a slightly worried-looking, yet pleasantly numb smirk, throwing its hands up at everything’s lack of meaning. Also, it just looks really cool! Things are going to probably only get worse over the next decade, so I say we bring the shruggie back. Let’s all really get into casual nihilism. I mean, everything’s fucked, so why not, right? ¯_(ツ)_/¯ —R.B.
66.
Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”
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The infectious pop song became a hit in early 2012, and by late spring, the distinctive rhyme scheme of the chorus had become a meme. Example: This still of Marty McFly and his mom in Back to the Future: “Hey I just met you / and this is crazy / but I’m from the future / and I’m your baby.” Or a tweet by @jwherrman: “HEY, I JUST MET YOU / AND MY DOG IS CRAZY / WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF / HE HAS RABIES.” —K.N.
65.
Dashcon
notsafeforweabs.tumblr.com
There was a time right around the middle of this last decade where the internet was a largely more innocent place. Nerdy fandom subcultures built around TV shows like My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Sherlock, Doctor Who, and Supernatural weren’t quite in the mainstream yet, nor did people fully understand the realities of what happens when you bring a bunch of people from the internet together in real life. That giddy naivete died with Dashcon. The unofficial Tumblr-based convention wasn’t quite a Fyre Festival–level disaster, but the level of secondhand embarrassment it generated seems to have killed an entire mode of internet use. One could even argue that Tumblr — the little social network that could — lost its last bit of grip on the larger culture of the internet. From the sad photos of cosplayers sitting in a weird ball pit to the haunting photos of empty of showrooms to accusations later of fraud, for fandom internet there was a before and after Dashcon. Based on things like Tanacon and Fyre Festival, though, it seems like those who do not learn from Dashcon are doomed to repeat Dashcon. —R.B.
64.
Galaxy Brain
reddit.com
This 2017 meme has staying power because it’s so simple and applies to so many things. The format shows several different concepts in increasing order of brainpower, culminating with something ridiculous. It speaks so perfectly to how we argue and discuss any topic online: a basic idea, a smarter take, slowly devolving into anarchy. —K.N.
63.
Loss.JPG
cad-comic.com
There’s really no way to sugarcoat what loss.JPG is. It’s a four-panel web comic about a miscarriage that has evolved into some weird Where’s Waldo? game played on social media. The story behind the infamous comic is that Ctrl-Alt-Del creator Tim Buckley wanted to make his series more mature. His audience recoiled at the mature storyline and found the whole thing incredibly lame. To make matters worse, the text-less comic was uploaded to the site with the filename loss.JPG. There’s a good chance you’ve come across loss.JPG parodies and never even realized that’s what they were. Buckley has spoken a bit about the meme over the years. “Perhaps I had miscalculated my demographic’s ability/willingness to approach such a sensitive subject matter,” he said. “As much as I hate to admit it because I certainly don’t want to make light of the subject matter itself, I found them quite amusing.”
But still the meme remains. And there’s a good possibility it will continue to stick around well into the next decade, if only because it’s too tasteless to ever really address directly. —R.B.
62.
Baby Shark
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The origins of why a techno version of a public domain campfire song became accurately described as “‘Sicko Mode’ for babies” isn’t totally clear. Normally, internet culture has no interest in what the parents of young infants and toddlers are doing (gross, old people). And yet somehow the catchy story of a multigenerational shark family (doo doo doo doo) meant for babies became inescapable. In a review for the live stage show of Baby Shark, the New Yorker wrote, “It wasn’t Disney or Nickelodeon executives who plucked it from among the millions of other videos on YouTube. Instead, babies themselves made it a juggernaut, by relentlessly clicking Play on their parents’ phones. It might be the first genuine example of baby pop culture.” —K.N.
61.
Infinity War Memes
yoongis-home-moved.tumblr.com
TV shows and movies that become their own sort of visual meme language all tend to come from the same place emotionally. There seems to be a certain secret sauce for cracking through the zeitgeist, and it largely comes down to particular kind of glee people get from taking the piss out of something serious. Avengers: Infinity War wasn’t the first Marvel film to get memed (Bruce Banner’s “That’s my secret, Cap” line from The Avengers was the first big one), but Infinity War hit in a big way. I’d argue that all came down to its shocking ending where literally half of everyone’s favorite superheroes all died horribly. First were the Infinity War spoilers-without-context posts, followed by the “I don’t feel so good, Mr. Stark” memes, and then there were even thicc Thanos memes. Ultimately, Infinity War memes didn’t have a huge staying power, but it seems to have rewired the way audiences digest big blockbuster movies; if you jump on Twitter right as you get out of the theater and start retweeting memes, you suddenly don’t feel so silly for crying when Spider-Man dies. To be honest, thicc Thanos is much more traumatizing. —R.B.
60.
Binders Full of Women
bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com
Mitt Romney made a truly weird gaffe in a 2012 debate when he answered a question about pay equality — describing how, as governor, he asked to see more women candidates for Cabinet positions and was shown “binders full of women.” Twitter, in peak parody account mode, immediately latched onto this weird and vaguely sexist turn of phrase. A parody Tumblr was made that posted photos of binders. People flocked to Amazon listings of binders to write funny reviews.
Now it seems laughable that this was the biggest gaffe of the election, the most shocking thing a politician said. Yet in the 2012 internet ecosystem, this perfectly played out a cycle of political memes that we don’t really have the stomach for anymore. No one’s making a “grab them by the pussy” Tumblr. —K.N.
59.
“Gangnam Style”
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Here’s the thing about Psy’s 2012 hit: It’s extremely good. The song is catchy, but it’s the visuals in the music video that propelled it to an international hit and the most-viewed YouTube video for years. It’s a video you want to watch more than once, one you want to show it to your friends. The fact that it was by an artist unfamiliar to most people outside of South Korea didn’t matter. The videos that would later best its YouTube record — “Despacito,” “See You Again” — did so more because of how long their respective songs stayed at the top of music charts than the nature of the video itself.
But “Gangnam Style” is a wildly entertaining as a video. The sets and backup characters change constantly, Psy’s style of deadpan serious rapping while lying on an elevator floor with a man in a cowboy hate gyrating over him is funny. Psy’s pony-riding dance is funny. It was the dance, of course, that people did at weddings and high school dances and flash mobs. —K.N.
58.
Forever Alone
knowyourmeme.com
Constructing a linear narrative out of internet content is extremely complicated — things connect across time and space in ways that make a traditional retelling almost impossible. That said, if there is a story of the internet in the 2010s, I’d argue it’s about loneliness and the bizarre and surreal ways people try to overcome it. So perhaps it’s fitting that this decade started with FunnyJunk user Azuul’s May 2010 rage comic “April Fools” — the first appearance of the phrase “forever alone.” Azuul’s swollen-faced character has more or less gone extinct, but the phrase, and more importantly, the meaning behind the phrase, have gone on to define the core irony of the internet: We are deeply isolated, yet connected enough to each other to commiserate about it. —R.B.
57.
Wholesome Memes
Twitter: @tenderfiresign
Ah, wholesome memes. In a decade in which things online (and offline!) tended to be pretty bleak, wholesome memes were a salve. In these memes, the punchline lies in the genuine surprise of an online joke actually being pure and good — particularly about “loving and supporting” one’s friends, significant other, or yourself. —J.R.
56.
There’s Always a @dril Tweet
Without a doubt, @dril is the most important person on Twitter of the 2010s. He has a specific absurdist take on living in some modern digital hellworld where his boss doesn’t let him kiss his ferrets at work, people keep asking him about fucking the Betsy Ross flag, and his candle budget is out of control. He never breaks character — there’s never a “but seriously folks, I’m sorry about that last tweet” — and has, miraculously, nearly maintained his anonymity.
@dril’s fans have taken some of his tweets and turned them into specific terms for online existence: “Corncobbing” is when someone has been owned and refuses to admit it; “help my family is dying” is a reference to the candle budget tweet.
During and after the election, people noticed that often there was an old Trump tweet that said something almost the opposite of what he had just said, coining the phrase “there’s always a tweet.” Soon people started to notice that Trump’s tweets had an odd similarity to @dril tweets and that you could often find an old @dril tweet with a parallel message. —K.N.
55.
Game of Thrones Memes
reddit.com
Like Infinity War, Game of Thrones became its own genre of meme. It wasn’t the first peak TV drama to do so — I’d argue Breaking Bad set the stage for it — but GoT did something both Breaking Bad and movies like Infinity War didn’t: It got much worse over time. Game of Thrones, especially in its early seasons, was an outrageously grim, dark show full of sex and violence, which made the memes it generated feel even more fun and risqué to share. But as the show’s ratings increased and its digital footprint became nearly unavoidable, it also became a much stupider show. Somewhere in that uncanny valley of extremely serious and incredibly stupid was the perfect breeding ground for memes. Much like the army of White Walkers pouring into Winterfell in an episode shot so dark people had to desperately try to readjust their TV settings, once internet users smell blood in the water, they’re going to swarm. —R.B.
54.
You Know I Had to Do It to Em
Twitter: @LuckyLuciano17k (deleted)
There’s something so visceral about the YKIHTDITE photo. You either get why it’s funny, or it’s just a random photo. I also think people notice things about this photo in different orders. For instance, I notice the sock tan lines and the diamond earrings first. The tweet also begs us to answer the question of what exactly “it” is that he had to do to ‘em. Luciano’s pose — hand in hand, loafered power stance — has evolved into something akin to an internet-wide Where’s Waldo? with people photoshopping him into anything they can. People even go on pilgrimages to where the photo was taken (it’s in Florida, obviously). Like I said, I can’t explain why it’s funny, but it is. Maybe that’s the “it” that he’s doing to ‘em. —R.B.
For a brief time in early 2017, people were transfixed by Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe, who would slice steak and sprinkle salt on it, but, like, in a sexy way? (See #13) A still image of “Salt Bae” tossing on the salt like it’s fairy dust became a meme representing any time we’re being our most extra selves. (Oh yeah, and then he hugged Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro at his restaurant and Marco Rubio doxed him for it. Becoming a meme is a rich tapestry.) —J.R.
52.
Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams
timmie-cee.tumblr.com
The theory that 9/11 was an inside job, as evidenced by the fact that jet fuel can’t melt steel beams, was floated in the 2005 documentary Loose Change, which, despite being Alex Jones–level conspiracy theory, became incredibly popular on YouTube. It takes countless levels of irony to use the phrase (along with “Bush did 9/11”) as a joke. On some level, it’s not unlikely that a young person has been exposed to Loose Change or some other truther and perhaps believes it a little bit. On another level, they’re making fun of boomers and truthers who actually believe it. And then there’s the gallows humor of laughing at a tragic event that only those too young to remember could exhibit. It’s not callousness that made this a meme; it’s a reaction to the noxious conspiracy theories that flourish online and the disillusionment of an event that led to a war that’s lasted the entire lifetime of the young people who make the joke. —K.N.
51.
Cringe
knowyourmeme.com
True cringe is something posted in earnest, and being earnest is the enemy of internet culture in the 2010s. Irony is the online currency. Cringe as a concept started on Reddit, where r/cringepics and a YouTube-focused version posted awkward and embarrassing earnest photos and videos taken from social media. R/CringeAnarchy, a more cruel board that tended to make fun of women and minorities, was banned in 2019 by Reddit (other forms of cringe boards are still active).
“Cringe” became a catchall for something embarrassing and uncool. Hillary Clinton tweeting in meme-speak was cringe. Your old LiveJournal is cringe. BuzzFeed is cringe. Everyone has posted cringe; it’s universal, and that’s why we’re so obsessed with it. —K.N.
49.
Drake/”Hotline Bling”
imgflip.com
Drake has been a massively popular and famous rapper for the entire decade, and there’s always been memes about pop stars. But Drake has managed to be more memeable than his musical peers, except for maybe Kanye West. There’s been the “In My Feelings” dance challenge, where people dance out the side of a moving car to his 2018 hit, the “hope no one heard that” lyric from “Marvins Room,” Drake’s myriad of faces and expressions while he watches basketball games, images of his character from Degrassi: The Next Generation, and the handwritten scrawl of the cover art for his album If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late.
But it’s the video for “Hotline Bling” that was memed a million times. The Day-Glo colors and goofy dancing made for perfect GIFable moments. The meme was nearly killed when Donald Trump danced to it on Saturday Night Live, but a version managed to live on: Drake shaking his finger to one thing, and smiling in acceptance to another thing. —K.N.
48.
Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life”
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“Bring Me to Life” is like the goth cousin of “All Star.” It works for the same reason. It’s from that ridiculous Ben Affleck Daredevil movie. It has a call and response. Its sadder lyrics definitely fit my general mood about all of life right now. Also, Amy Lee can sing! This song is a genuine banger. When is the Evanescaissance coming? —R.B.
47.
Ryan Gosling
feministryangosling.tumblr.com
Hey, girl. Ryan Gosling was more than just a Hollywood heartthrob in the 2010s — he was also the basis of multiple memes. First came the Tumblr “Feminist Ryan Gosling,” in which photos of the actor were superimposed with quotes that mixed feminist texts with shit your imaginary hot-yet-sensitive boyfriend might say (this was 2011, so the sheer concept of a man openly calling himself a feminist was still a Big Deal and kind of a pantydropper, which is bleak in retrospect!!).
On a completely different note, the actor became an online sensation again in 2013. In the Vine series “Ryan Gosling Won’t Eat His Cereal,” creator Ryan McHenry would feed real-life spoonfuls of cereal to an onscreen Gosling, who would “reject” the bite by turning away or appearing to slap away the spoon during intense movie moments. In 2015, McHenry died of cancer when he was just 27 — and in his memory, Gosling made a Vine of himself actually eating cereal. —J.R.
46.
ASMR
me drinking iced coffee on an empty stomach knowing it’s going to make me feel like shit
05:00 PM – 11 Aug 2018
One of the decade’s hottest trends was getting a bunch of tingles down your spine. Among the biggest genres on Youtube, “autonomous sensory meridian response” videos usually involve people whispering, tapping on a glass, or even crunching on pickles straight from the jar. For some, the sounds provoke a sensory response that feels extremely calming and euphoric, and may help listeners go to sleep. Though many had long experienced the strange tingly feeling, it wasn’t until recently that people knew what to call it. Following conversations on message boards about the nameless sensation, a woman named Jennifer Allen coined the term in 2010 and made a Facebook group in its name.
From there, it entered the popular consciousness, becoming gradually more well-known over the decade. Many enjoyed it in earnest, but it also was widely parodied. There were celebrity ASMR videos, and ASMR creators became YouTube celebs in their own right. One of the biggest ones, a teen girl named Makenna Kelly, became the basis for a ton of memes. Some of these YouTubers became famous for their funnier themed ASMR videos, such as “1300s A.D. ASMR: Nun Takes Care of You in Bed (You Have the Plague).”
Self-care and wellness were major buzzwords in the 2010s, which helped popularize the relaxing videos. But perhaps the most interesting part is how social media helped many people name the bizarre neurological phenomenon they’d experienced their whole lives and find out they weren’t alone. —J.R.
45.
Cropped Gay Porn
Instagram: @http://bit.ly/2ElyLuw
Porn! It’s the central driving force of the internet (see #13). So much of the web culture created in this last decade has been defined by an explosion of diverse and global points of view suddenly entering the mainstream (and the conflicts that sometimes rise up when that happens). So it makes sense that most defining porn meme of the 2010s is cropped gay porn. It’s cheeky, it’s wildly inappropriate, and, fuck, it was so big. The meme really climaxed with the “Right in front of my salad” clip, where two adult film actors interrupt a woman peacefully eating her salad by having sex behind the kitchen counter. It’s sort of nice to think that no matter how crazy things get, there’s one thing that can still bring us all together online, and that’s porn. —R.B.
44.
Cash Me Ousside
View this video on YouTube
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Imagine you’re Dr. Phil. Having helped families and individuals through countless crises on your television show, you’re feeling pretty good about your abilities. There is nothing you, a couch, and a camera can’t fix. Then one day, a 13-year-old Floridian named Danielle Bregoli comes on set and rocks your world. After she calls your audience a bunch of hoes, you repeat the accusation, just making sure you heard right. When she confirms, the audience goes berserk, and Bregoli gets upset. You hear her say “Cash me ousside, howbow dah?” five magical words used to challenge the audience to a fight. The phrase lives on in infamy. And now you, Dr. Phil, are part of one of the decade’s greatest memes. —Alex Kantrowitz
43.
Spider-Man Pointing at Spider-Man
ABC / MARVEL
It’s simple: Spider-Man points at another Spider-Man. What’s not to get. It’s us, looking at ourselves. Iconic. —K.N.
42.
Nickelback
youtube.com
The Canadian band has miraculously remained untouched by the trend of critical reassessment and appreciation of pop music. They occupy an uncanny valley of being wildly popular AND wildly reviled by anyone who considers themselves a person of taste. For a while, they occupied a space as the punchline to something bad (there was a time in 2014 where you could use a Facebook graph search to find which of your friends “liked” Nickelback and unfriend them).
But it was the still from the video for “Photograph” where singer Chad Kroeger holds up a photo, along with the memorable lyric “look at this photograph,” that blew up in the second half of the decade. The meme ultimately died when President Donald Trump tweeted a version where the photo Kroeger holds is of Joe Biden golfing with his son and another American who also served on the board of a Ukrainian company at the center of the impeachment inquiry. Nickelback’s label filed a copyright claim, and the video has been removed from Trump’s tweet. —K.N.
41.
Rebecca Black
View this video on YouTube
youtube.com
It’s Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday! In 2011, then–13-year-old Rebecca Black made her debut with “Friday,” and looking forward to the weekend was never again the same. The music video went enormously viral, but it was widely dubbed the “worst song ever.”
Still, it was also a hit, and the song debuted at No. 72 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was covered on Glee, and Black even appeared as herself in Katy Perry’s music video for “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.).” Two years later, Black got in on the joke, releasing a sequel to “Friday” — named, of course, “Saturday.” Whether you think “Friday” slaps or is a nightmare, I’d bet you anything you’ll know all the words until you die. —J.R.
40.
“Come to Brazil”
diorc.tumblr.com
If you’ve ever clicked through on a tweet from any sort of celebrity, chances are you’ve seen the phrase “come to Brazil” written over and over in the replies. According to Know Your Meme, the first time the phrase was tweeted at a celebrity was April 2008. Then, when Justin Beieber joined Twitter in 2009, it exploded in popularity. I once asked some members of BuzzFeed Brazil why exactly it was such a common occurrence among Brazilian internet users. I was told the answer is actually pretty simple — American musicians rarely tour Brazil. But to really best understand why Brazilians mass-send it though, on a deeper level, you probably need to know the concept of “zuera,” Brazilian slang for “zoeira” which means “heavy fun.” It basically means that moment when a meme becomes a meme and spirals completely out of control. COME TO BRAZIL, MIGAAA. —R.B.
Guns or glitter? Touchdowns or tutus? One of the most inescapable party themes of the 2010s was that of the gender reveal. At gender-reveal parties, expecting parents and their loved ones gather to find out what kind of genitals their unborn child will have. This is often accomplished by cutting a cake, with pink or blue frosting revealing whether it was a boy or a girl.
Party planners tried to one-up each other, sometimes executing the big reveal using explosives — which, as you might guess, often had disastrous results. In 2018, a father-to-be accidentally ignited a wildfire in Arizona. The following year, a grandmother was killed in an explosion, and there was even a gender-reveal plane crash.
As our understanding of gender (and how it was not the same thing as sex) evolved over the decade, so did criticism and mockery of gender-reveal parties. And some people had changes of heart; in 2019, Jenna Karvunidis, the lifestyle blogger who had the first viral gender reveal in 2008, criticized the parties, which she said put “more emphasis on gender than has ever been necessary for a baby.” She added, “PLOT TWIST, the world’s first gender-reveal party baby is a girl who wears suits!” —J.R.
38.
*tips fedora*
Twitter: @MoonOverlord
One of the most magical things about the internet is when we all collectively realize something is a thing. For instance, sometime between 2010 and 2012, everyone on the internet realized that every town has a couple weird guys who wear fedoras, trench coats, fingerless gloves, have terrible facial hair, and talk to women like they’re 12th-century knights. Long before these dudes turned into violent incels, there was just a really nice moment where we could all agree that these dudes were goofy and awful and fun to rag on. Swag is for boys; class is for gentlesirs, m’lady. —R.B.
37.
This Is the Future Liberals Want
36.
Ted Cruz, the Zodiac Killer
During his run for president in 2015 and 2016, a widely circulated, joking conspiracy theory accused Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of being the Zodiac Killer, the unidentified serial killer who murdered at least seven people in California between the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Cruz was born in 1970 — after the first killings — so he is probably not the Zodiac Killer, in my expert journalistic opinion. But for many people he just…seems like kind of a weird dude, right? He pretty much made the perfect candidate for a bonkers conspiracy theory about a decades-old serial killer.
It seems like Cruz got a kick out of it eventually, though. He later acknowledged the meme, tweeting an image of the Zodiac Killer’s cypher on two separate occasions. —J.R.
35.
Confused Math Lady
TV Globo
If there was one dominant theme in the 2010s, it was “I have no idea what’s going on right now.” This was expressed in a bunch of different ways, from the fact that teens and the internet curled up with increasingly obscure memes and terms meant to confuse the Olds (the boomers don’t know what “sksksksk” is) to the rise of explainer journalism like Vox or email newsletters/catch-you-up-quick news like the Skimm. We are all confused. We have no idea what’s going on. If you take the time to catch up on one story, you’ll miss what’s happening elsewhere.
Hence, Confused Math Lady, a meme featuring an actor in a Brazilan soap opera looking confused, spread on Brazilian internet. By 2016, the GIF of the confused woman became a four-panel comic with various math symbols over it, suggesting she’s trying to solve some complex calculus problem. Confused Math Lady is us, trying to understand it all. —K.N.
34.
“Old Town Road”
youtube.com
Country music fandom went mainstream in the 2010s, and with it came the rise of the “yeehaw agenda” at the end of the decade. The term described a reclamation of country aesthetics among black Americans, who have long been erased from extremely white cultural depictions of the Wild West (despite the fact that 1 in 4 cowboys were black).
The concept exploded in popularity at the end of 2018 when rapper Lil Nas X released his breakout hit “Old Town Road,” a country rap song that became one of the biggest singles of the year — only getting bigger after being disqualified from the Billboard Hot Country chart over claims that it did “not embrace enough elements of today’s country music.” In response, the artist released a remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, practically daring critics to say it wasn’t country enough.
The song was a viral hit, and videos featuring it — particularly one of Lil Nas X surprising a bunch of elementary school superfans, and countless transformation TikToks — only boosted it more. The song broke records as the longest-running No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100, and Lil Nas X became the first openly gay black artist to win at the Country Music Awards. —J.R.
33.
American Chopper Yelling
vox.com
Paul Teutul Sr. and his son, Paulie, were the stars of American Chopper, a 2000s reality show about their custom motorcycle shop. Not infrequently, they argued. The show was popular at the time, but not particularly cool or internet-y during its run. So it was slightly surprising when in 2018, stills of a scene of an argument between father and son became a meme. The more esoteric the argument — the role of media communication in science, Lord of the Rings plot holes, linguistics — the better. Part of the joy of the meme was seeing macho men argue about anime, but also acknowledging that a lot of our online lives is over-the-top screaming arguments about trivial things. —K.N.
32.
Brands Acting Like People
At the end of the day, consumers are people. And people crave authenticity. It’s what they look for in their relationships, their entertainment, and, yes, their brands. Which is why the orange juice account pretends to have depression now, and everyone likes it, and it’s good.
05:06 PM – 04 Feb 2019
Largely inspired by the Denny’s Tumblr in 2013, brands’ tweets over the decade have steadily grown to become surreal, humanoid, and Extremely Online. As the companies tried to figure out how to navigate their role in online spaces, there were missteps (who could forget the SpaghettiOs tweet about Pearl Harbor, or the time DiGiorno used a hashtag about domestic violence to make a pizza joke?). Eventually, many came into their own with genuinely fun and bonkers tweets, with MoonPie, Steak-umm, and Wendy’s being standouts. But in early 2019, things kind of jumped the shark when SunnyD just really went for it with a full-on depression tweet.
“I can’t do this anymore,” SunnyD tweeted in February. Immediately, all the other memey brand accounts got in on it, basically staging an intervention for the orange drink brand in crisis. “Hey sunny can I please offer you a hug we are gonna get through this together my friend,” Pop-Tarts tweeted. “Buddy come hangout,” tweeted Corn Nuts. It was pretty bleak, and many saw it as making light of mental illness and suicide. Most recently, brands started, uh, acting horny, in a nightmare Twitter thread started by Netflix. Who knows what other horros we’ll see in 2020? Brands! —J.R.
31.
Arthur’s Fist
The children’s show Arthur turned 20 in 2016, and with it came a ton of Arthur memes. But none had nearly as much staying power as a still image of Arthur’s clenched fist. Just a flat cartoon image of an aardvark’s curled-up hand, it somehow embodied such passion, such fury, that the meme became instantly relatable. —J.R.
30.
Florida Man
Florid Man Charged With Assault With a Deadly Weapon After Throwing Alligator Through Wendy’s Drive-Thru Window http://bit.ly/2Ppcn9P
11:48 PM – 08 Feb 2016
A meme that mocks someone’s shoes might seem to be more mean-spirited than other memes of the decade. It’s a catchphrase to laugh at someone for wearing ugly footwear, after all. But the most effective examples of the meme, including the Instagram video (and then Vine) that started it all, are always about punching up — taking a small shot at someone more powerful, like a teacher, a celebrity, or even Jesus.
But like “on fleek” and other viral catchphrases and memes, the “what are those” meme spread without any control from its creator, Brandon Moore. In a 2018 interview with HuffPost, Moore said that he “felt sick” when he heard his catchphrase in the movie Black Panther, because it was a reminder of how he had missed a chance to copyright or watermark his video and had seen his creative work monetized by others without him benefitting at all. Six months after the interview, Moore died in his sleep at age 31. —K.N.
28.
Kanye West
Twitter: @kanyewest (deleted)
Is Kanye West a meme? Is he a collection of memes? Is he the original material that gets remixed into memes? Is he all of these things? Perhaps. Kanye’s “Imma Let You Finish” moment happened in September 2009, but was still humming along by the time the decade started (the internet was slower then). For a while, his Twitter account was an endless source of internet content: “I hate when I’m on a flight and I wake up with a water bottle next to me like oh great now I gotta be responsible for this water bottle.” Damn. Huge mood. And then, of course, like many memes, he went full MAGA after the election of Donald Trump. For much of the decade, it seemed like all of culture either flowed from or through West. Based on the reviews for his newest album, Jesus Is King, and the general lack of buzz around his Sunday Service project, that might be something we’re leaving in 2010s. Although, he did just bless us with Silver Kanye, so who knows really. —R.B.
27.
Dat Boi
ppt.wz51z.com
In the same way that a bunch of the X-Men are all blue for some reason, the internet really likes green frogs. Sadly for Dat Boi, he hasn’t had the same staying power as Pepe or Kermit. The version of Dat Boi that we all know was first posted in April 2016. In many ways, he’s the last meme specifically from Tumblr — a nice, wholesome shitpost featuring a picture stolen from an AP physics textbook that doesn’t really make any sense but is just kind of funny. Dat Boi, in my opinion, is the platonic ideal of a meme: It’s funny, it works as a cute little wink for superusers, it doesn’t make a lot sense, and it disappears before getting turned into some dumb brand tweet. —R.B.
26.
Harambe
On May 28, 2016, a gorilla who went by Harambe was fatally shot at the Cincinnati Zoo after attacking a 3-year-old boy who had climbed into the enclosure.
The incident absolutely dominated the news cycle, and it quickly spawned a ton of memes. People made videos of Harambe’s banger of a funeral, paid homage in their yearbook photos, and even painted street art in his memory. All across the land, dicks were out for Harambe.
It’s more than a little dark for a dead gorilla and an injured toddler to become meme fodder, but that’s exactly what happened. Harambe memes should not be funny, which means they totally, always will be. —J.R.
25.
Damn Daniel
View this video on YouTube
youtube.com
High schooler Josh Holz loved taunting his friend Daniel Lara by following him around, filming him, and commenting on his sneakers. When he compiled the videos and tweeted it, the world loved hearing a creepy voice saying “Damn, Daniel, back at it again with the white Vans.” The teens boys went on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and received a lifetime supply of Vans. In 2019, both Daniel and Josh are in college. Josh is studying fashion and works for, you guessed it, Vans. —K.N.
24.
Tiffany Pollard
Vh1
A still of Tiffany Pollard, best known as New York from the VH1 dating show Flavor of Love, lying on a bed in her clothes, hands folded in her lap, sunglasses on, seeming to stew in quiet anger, became a meme in 2015 and continued for the rest of the decade. In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Pollard described what she was actually feeling in that moment: “I just remember being so alone, so pissed off; I wanted to get away from those girls … I was really having a rough time in that moment and I think me sitting there was actually me just trying to center myself, centering myself through this bad energy I was dealing with.”
Pollard’s memeability goes beyond that one image of her lying on the bed. Her over-the-top personality is what made her a standout reality star in the ’00s, and that same quality made her perfect for reaction GIFs in the ’10s. —K.N.
22.
Blinking White Guy
Drew Scalon / giantbomb.com
One of the biggest reaction memes of the decade, the “blinking white guy” perfectly summed up when you truly just could not believe what you were seeing. The man is Drew Scanlon, and the specific blink came from a gaming video he appeared in in 2013, though it wouldn’t become a meme until early 2017. It’s a simple reaction, but it seemed to say it all at a time when the world was a confusing mess and people were feeling pretty dang incredulous a lot of the time.
“As long as they’re not mean, I don’t have a problem with the tweets,” Scanlon told BuzzFeed News in 2017. “I think we need more positivity on the internet these days.” —J.R.
21.
Minions
Universal Pictures
Ah, yes, the official mascots of every boomer’s divorce announcement Facebook post. These little bastards took over the internet with a speed that was honestly unparalleled. Their disgusting yellow bodies flooded news feeds like a DDoS attack. I think to understand exactly how the great Minionfication of the internet happened you have to separate it out into two movements. First, there were people genuinely posting Minion memes. Then came the second wave, where people started using Minion memes to make fun of the people who posted Minion memes. I’d love to say that we’re in the clear now and we can leave these beasts in the 2010s, but Minions: The Rise of Gru is coming out on July 3, 2020, so get ready, everyone. —R.B.
20.
Milkshake Duck
The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the duck is racist
08:07 AM – 12 Jun 2016
Coined by @pixelatedboat, a milkshake duck is some person or entity that enjoys a viral moment and then is swiftly exposed as problematic. The ultimate example was Ken Bone, a man in a distinctive red sweater and mustache who asked a question during a presidential town hall debate in 2016 — who after becoming the meme of the night, was discovered to have a spicy sexual Reddit user history. Cancel culture may not be real, but milkshake ducking certainly is. —K.N.
19.
Gavin
Twitter: @gavinthomas
There’s a good chance you know Gavin’s face even if you don’t know Gavin’s name. It’s sort of incredible to include Gavin Thomas on this list because he was literally born in 2010 at the start of the decade. He first went viral when his uncle Nick Mastodon started putting him in Vines. Gavin really solidified himself as a meme when he turned 5 years old. Suddenly, he was everywhere. He had this extremely relatable confused grimace that really seemed to capture the zeitgeist in 2015 and 2016 (not totally sure what was going on at the time that would explain why). He’s 9 years old now and has a million followers on Instagram. For all the cautionary tales out there about what life after being a meme is like, so far it seems like Gavin’s doing all right. His family seems to be looking after him and, more bizarrely, it also feels like the internet at large is looking after him. He grew up on social media, and it does feel like we’re all invested in making sure he ends up OK. —R.B.
18.
Shrek
Dreamworks / reddit.com
Even though the first Shrek came out in 2001, it took a few years for the internet to really embrace the green Scottish ogre. Ever since, it feels like he’s buzzed just below the surface of mainstream internet culture — always there, always talking about onions. My theory as to why he’s stayed so popular? Aside from maybe a postmodern riff on the extreme overcommercialization of children’s entertainment (see Minions), I think there’s actually something really relatable about a big, fat ogre who doesn’t want to leave his swamp. It’s the perfect metaphor for being online. —R.B.
17.
“Do It for the Vine”
View this video on YouTube
youtube.com
Vine shut down on my birthday, and because of that, I’ve always felt a weirdly intimate connection to Vine. A good friend once told me he thought of a Vine as one sentence in the visual grammar of video. Everything you need to convey one idea in a video you could do in a six-second Vine. It was a revolution and you could argue it has had a more profound legacy on how we create and share videos than bigger platforms like YouTube or Netflix. For a long time, I, like many people, believed that Vine was shut down too soon. Now, I think it actually shut down exactly when it should. Social networks probably shouldn’t last! It’s weird that we still use Twitter.
The phrase “do it for the Vine” comes from a song created by YouTuber Kaye Trill and it immediately became the anthem of a summer full of people doing extremely outrageous things. Many of the original great “do it for the Vine” posts have been deleted, sadly. But, luckily, we’ll always have the YouTube compilations. —R.B.
16.
Real Housewives
Bravo / Instagram: @smudge_lord
Memes are often tied to some technological advance, such as the six-second looping video or the quote-tweet format. At the start of the decade, animated GIFs were actually hard to make. You needed Photoshop, which is expensive and hard to use. Sourcing high-quality video to turn into a GIF was also harder. In a pre-Giphy world, truly good animated GIFs were prized and hoarded, saved in folders on a desktop to use in reactions. On Tumblr, the main source of GIFs, there was a vast gulf between the number of users actually making GIFs and the amount of people reposting them. One of the early and prolific makers of high-quality reaction GIFs was the RealityTVGIFS.tumblr.com, made by a man named T. Kyle McMahon (who now works for Bravo), who pumped out GIF after GIF from the Bravo universe, particularly the Real Housewives series. Because of the format of the show, where the women were literally asked to react directly to the camera, the Housewives were perfect for emotional reaction GIFs.
The enduring power of the Real Housewives through the decades was proven in 2019 by the popularity of an image of an early season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, where one Housewife is yelling while another holds her back, juxtaposed with a white cat named Smudge scowling at a dinner table. —K.N.
15.
The Joker
The Joker obviously existed long before social media, but the character’s glee-filled take on chaotic nihilism has, for better or worse, become inseparable from how we imagine a very specific kind of kind internet user: angry, insular, often violent, male.
Over the last decade, a symbiotic relationship has evolved between new Hollywood iterations of the Joker and the internet’s digital underbelly. Starting in 2008, Heath Ledger’s anarchist, anti-capitalist Joker became the unofficial mascot of 4chan’s Anonymous hacktivist movement. The idea of a nameless grungy psychopath burning piles of dirty money, throwing a city into chaos to satisfy his twisted rage, was a perfect avatar for a generation of Occupy-adjacent millennials graduating into a global economic recession and harnessing technology to claw back control of their own lives. Jared Leto’s 2016 take on the Joker, even though none of them would ever admit it, mirrored the rise of Gamergate somewhat perfectly, giving the world a sniveling misogynist covered in face tattoos, singularly focused on controlling the anatomy of Suicide Squad’s standout woman character Harley Quinn. All the clown prince was missing was a vape to better embody late millennial toxic masculinity. So it’s fitting, then, that we close out the decade with Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, a chain-smoking, self-described mentally ill loner who hijacks mainstream media via an act of extreme violence and sets off a reactionary protest movement.
The Joker isn’t always a serious meme, like with the most recent Joker film giving us the scene of Phoenix dancing down a flight of stairs in Harlem. Instead, it’s something closer to SpongeBob, a visual and emotional language we use to express a part of ourselves online. As for whether the Joker will continue to evolve alongside social media, well, there are rumors already circulating of another Phoenix-led Joker film, so it’s likely he’s not going away anytime soon. —R.B.
14.
Why You Lyin’
View this video on YouTube
youtube.com
The beauty of Nicholas Fraser’s Vine in his backyard singing “Why you always lyin’” over the music of “Too Close” by Next is that it makes no sense for why it exists. Why is his shirt open? Why is there a toilet in the yard? Who is lying and why is he so seemingly happy about accusing someone of lying? And yet, it turns out 2015 was the right moment for this meme to exist and serve as the perfect totem for the impending post-truth internet. Now, replying with a screenshot of Fraser’s smiling face is internet shorthand for “this is a lie.” —K.N.
13.
Being Horny
.@tedcruz my young daughters and sons follow you for good wholesome content can you please explain this???
04:40 AM – 12 Sep 2017
If you think about it, being horny is like when content trends before it becomes a meme (sex is the meme). And whether it’s Ted Cruz faving a porn tweet on 9/11 or Kurt Eichenwald screenshotting Chrome tabs full of hentai, if someone is online long enough, they will be caught being horny and it will be embarrassing. The only silver lining is that it can happen to any of us. My hope for the next decade is that we all just accept that most of the time people are online, they’re also probably looking at pornography or sexting with each other. That’s what this whole thing was made for! Horny users of the web, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains! —R.B.
12.
Distracted Boyfriend
Stock photo memes had a moment in 2017, but none became as big or enduring as the one that became known as “Distracted Boyfriend.” The photo depicted a man checking out a woman while his own girlfriend glared at him with disgust. It quickly became a meme, though photographer Antonio Guillem told the Guardian at the time he “didn’t even know what a meme [was] until recently.” The photo has now been around a few years, but it’s still a classic, popping up as a meme pretty often and perfectly embodying so many emotions: deception, distraction, heartbreak, loss, and hope. —J.R.
11.
Doge
shibaconfessions.tumblr.com
The only meme of the decade to inspire an actually used form of blockchain currency, Doge was a breath of fresh air in 2013 when people were starting to feel burned out about what the first iteration of what “memes” were. “Memes” now means something different — funny tweets screenshotted and posted to Instagram, or absurd teen humor. But in a darker, earlier time, “memes” were something like rage comics or the Forever Alone Guy. They took themselves seriously in a sense, and were the domain of redditors or angry 4chan guys, or something a brand used in a Super Bowl ad to seem relevant. Then, a friendly Shiba Inu appeared with funny language and words around him, just being amused and delighted by the world. This wasn’t FFFFUUUUUUU, it was such wow. Doge was here to make us happy. Of course by now, the phrase “such wow” is cringey and outdated, but it had a good long run. —K.N.
10.
Kermit
Lipton Tea
The lovable green amphibian became one of the most memeable nonhuman characters of the decade, next to perhaps only SpongeBob and Shrek. Two massive memes, Kermit sipping tea and Evil Kermit, earned the Muppet his place in meme Valhalla, and made a bunch of smaller memes (Sad Kermit puppet, Kermit in the car) take off. There’s something deeply funny about children’s characters behaving like naughty adults, by the idea of Kermit having shady opinions about others while he sips his tea or encouraging you to do something dangerous or sexual or drug-related. Part of the joy of Kermit memes is that everyone knows Kermit; he’s not obscure or niche. And yet someone, the official Twitter account for Good Morning America to be precise, called the Kermit-sipping-tea meme “tea lizard.” —K.N.
9.
Reaction GIFs
NBC / Via giphy.com
It’s hard to remember a time when reaction GIFs weren’t ubiquitous, but they really rose to prominence in 2012 with the launch of the Tumblr blog #whatshouldwecallme. The blog posted GIFs paired with ~relatable~ captions — for example, the GIF of Homer Simpson disappearing into the bushes, captioned, “When I’m in an argument with someone and realize I’m completely wrong.” This blog was a huge deal at the time, inspiring countless spinoffs, particularly at colleges. Though it was a pretty fresh meme format at the time, #whatshouldwecallme posts just look a lot like the way we communicate online today. —J.R.
8.
Guy Fieri
Fun fact: Guy Fieri is so ubiquitous and embedded in the language of American social media that we basically got to the very end of making this list and realized he didn’t have his own entry, even though he’s referenced throughout. Becoming a meme these days is pretty easy: You do something or appear in a piece of media, people latch onto it because of some innate and relatable reason, and voilà, you’re viral. But to stay a meme is a much harder feat. Usually it involves a bizarre and inexplicable alchemy of having chaotic high/low culture energy and a total lack of self-awareness. Memes can’t know they’re memes. Guy Fieri is embodiment of this. He looks like a failed ‘90s energy drink marketing campaign, he drives around in convertibles eating absolute garbage (he literally has a recipe for nachos made in a trash can) and seemingly cannot fathom that his entire persona is ridiculous. Even when he does lean into his memeness, he still doesn’t really seem to get it, like with his recent Baby Yoda photoshop. Whether Gen Z continues to latch on to the Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives host is unclear. Only time will tell whether or not Flavortown can survive the ages. —R.B.
7.
The Dress
Cecilia Bleasdale
“Black and blue or white and gold?” was the question that seemingly everyone on earth was asking on one day in early 2015. A woman in Scotland showed her friends a photo her mother took of a dress she planned to wear to a wedding, and a friend of the woman posted it to Tumblr, asking for help — “what colors are this dress?” She submitted it as a question to BuzzFeed’s Tumblr, and former BuzzFeed employee Cates Holderness reposted it to our account. From there, it blew up as a fun visual gag that was infuriating and odd.
The Dress was posted to BuzzFeed the same day two llamas escaped in Arizona, and a live TV police chase of the two animals enthralled the internet as adorable mayhem broke out. In retrospect, that two such happy, carefree, unproblematic things took over the internet on the same day seems like wild serendipity. It also feels like the last day the internet felt purely joyful, before the onslaught of the 2016 election took place and things took a darker turn.
The dress is, indeed, black and blue, even though over two thirds of the millions of BuzzFeed readers who voted said they thought it was white and gold. In 2018, a similar sensory illusion, this time auditory, went viral over whether a voice was saying “yanny” or “laurel.” But somehow, the special feeling just wasn’t there again; it felt like trying to recreate some old magic that was lost, like kids who have graduated hanging back at high school. —K.N.
6.
“This Is Fine” Dog
K.C. Green / Via kcgreendotcom.com
The dog engulfed in flames, denying that anything is wrong, is from a 2013 webcomic Gunshow by K.C. Green. In the full comic, the dog’s face eventually melts, while he continues to drink his coffee and insist he’s OK, but the version that became a symbol of the decade is just the first two panels where he says “this is fine.”
The meme has been used a lot to describe various political situations: The official @GOP Twitter used it once, and a senator even described the comic on the House floor while describing how Russian election interference was not fine. But the staying power of the dog is about how we all grin and bear it through everything that’s happened over this decade that feels like the house is on fire — the climate crisis, elections, the disappointing last season of Game of Thrones. There is nothing that captures the 2010s more than “this is fine” dog. —K.N.
5.
Smash Mouth’s “All Star”
me.me
Like Shrek, Smash Mouth’s “All Star” is another one of those millennial nostalgia points that has evolved into something bigger than itself thanks to the internet. It’s lasted for several reasons: One, it’s just a damn good song; two, the lead singer of Smash Mouth looks like Guy Fieri; three, it was on the Shrek soundtrack; four, it’s a cheery song about how shit everything is — which is exactly how it feels to be online. —R.B.
What makes “on fleek” a crucial meme for understanding the 2010s is not simply why the meme was catchy, but what happened to the meme after it left the hands of its creator and what that says about the commercialization and monetization of memes — i.e., who gets paid and who gets credit. Kayla Newman, who goes by Peaches Monroee online, was a teen when she posted a Vine musing that her eyebrows were “on fleek” because she thought she looked good. The Vine caught on because it’s simple and fun and enjoyable. Soon, brands were using the phrase on their social media. IHOP tweeted “pancakes on fleek.” Denny’s tweeted “Hashbrowns on fleek.” JetBlue and Taco Bell also used it, and the phrase all of a sudden seemed inescapable in marketing. Corporations were using Newman’s invention of a phrase without giving her any credit or compensation.
In the Fader, Doreen St. Félix wrote how “on fleek” is an example of an endless trend of black teenagers creating the memes, lingo, and jokes that make up internet culture, and how those black teens are often uncredited and don’t profit when brands use their creative works. This is in contradiction to a handful of white teens who also went viral around the same time: The “Damn, Daniel” boys got free Vans and appearances on talk shows; the Walmart yodeling boy got a record deal, as did Danielle Bregoli, the “cash me ousside” girl.
In 2017, Newman started a GoFundMe campaign to launch a beauty line, but it only raised around $17,000 of the $100,000 she was hoping for. In a 2017 interview with Teen Vogue, Newman said if she had known the phrase would catch on like it did, she would’ve been more aggressive about it, adding that she was trying to trademark the phrase. —K.N.
3.
Pepe the Frog
Matt Furie
None of us wanted to write about Pepe. What’s even left to be said about him that hasn’t been said already? He started as a chill frog in a 2008 comic by artist Matt Furie. He then became a consistent, but largely forgettable fixture of 4chan in the early part of the decade. The first time I saw him was in a meme that read, “We are the middle children of history. Born too late to explore Earth, born too early to explore space.” I thought it was pretty funny. Sometimes he’d be in memes about blasting the toilet bowl with piss to clean it. He’s something different now — a literal hate symbol that is still being used by far-right extremists and white nationalists.
In the course of his transition from slacker goof to hate symbol, he’s taught us a lot about symbols — not just how the internet works — but he’s also maybe revealed something deeper about how symbols work. Furie has famously tried to litigate Pepe away from fascists, but it hasn’t really worked. Pepe’s effectively theirs now. It’s a grim, but important reminder that all culture can be hacked and warped and poisoned. All speech, online and off, is political. And all symbols, even chill frogs, require protection and upkeep. Feels bad, man. —R.B.
2.
Crying Jordan
Stephan Savoia / AP
Michael Jordan wept during his 2009 induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, but it wasn’t until at least 2012 that the still of his face, red-eyed with tears streaming down both cheeks, became a meme. It started with sports fans but soon spread to become an enduring and universal image for faux sadness. It’s a bit of an anomaly for a celebrity photo meme; Michael Jordan isn’t particularly memey otherwise, and although he was one of the biggest celebrities in the world in the ’90s, he hasn’t been in the spotlight this decade. Perhaps his role in the movie Space Jam has lent him some level of internet irony that makes the meme so satisfying. Jordan has said through a spokesperson that he doesn’t mind the popularity of the meme, so long as it’s not used for commercial purposes. However, his former teammate and friend Charles Oakley did tell TMZ that Jordan actually isn’t amused. That feeling Jordan may have — a moment of vulnerable emotion being plastered all over the internet for laughs — of course would be best depicted by, well, the Crying Jordan meme. —K.N.
1.
SpongeBob
Nickelodeon / dearnville.tumblr.com
Did anything result in as many memes in the 2010s as SpongeBob? The show, which started in 1999 and is still going 20 years later, is so deeply entrenched in pop culture it would be hard to count how many memes have come out of it. But let’s try: There’s been caveman SpongeBob, mocking SpongeBob, tired naked SpongeBob, “ight Imma head out” SpongeBob, traveling SpongeBob, Krusty Krabs vs. Chum Bucket, evil Patrick, blurry Mr. Krabs, sleeping Squidward, and so many more.
The meme’s staying power can be attributed to a few things. It was an enormously popular show with a nearly universal sense of nostalgia for millennials and Gen Z’ers, who are the most prolific of meme creators. The simple art and animation style also beget some of the most instantly understandable reaction memes. May SpongeBob memes continue to prosper until [SpongeBob narrator voice] one eternity later. —J.R.
CORRECTION
Dec. 14, 2019, at 19:59 PM
T. Kyle MacMahon’s name was misstated in an earlier version of this post.
Drake starred in Degrassi: The Next Generation. An earlier version of this post misstated which Degrassi series he was on.
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This week we’re talking about food! (Doesn’t it all look awesome?)
So here’s the thing about food: There’s a lot that I haven’t gotten to try yet, and a lot that I haven’t gotten pictures of yet. But that’s okay, I’m going with what I’ve got!
Food, in my opinion, is one of the best ways to represent culture. The ingredients in a dish and the methods used to prepare it can say a lot about where you’re from and what you’re accustomed to. How you serve that dish, what time of the year and what setting you eat it in, and who you serve it to can tell stories about social structure, day to day life, holidays, family... anything, really. Everything comes from context.
The context I have observed in my homestay is this: breakfast is served at 7:30, but you don’t have to eat right away. Lunch comes between 11:30 and 2pm, and that serve time depends on what you’re doing in the day. Dinner is at 7:30. You can eat early or you can eat late, but the food is ready and waiting at 7:30. Meals can be eaten individually or as a group- the only one that is consistently eaten as a group is dinner. Also, the television is on at most meals. It’s usually playing the news in the morning and a gameshow called EEG at night. At 8 pm, the telenovelas start. And Gaby loves to watch them with you as you finish your dinner.
Some recurring trends I’ve noticed are the ingredients. Avocado, mainly. Probably around half of the meals I’ve eaten have contained avocado in some way, shape, or form. Frankly, I’m thrilled. I love avocado. (Fun fact! Avocado is called plata in Peru) I’ve also noticed tons of tomatoes. Also a favorite of mine. Tomatoes get sliced up fresh and placed in salad- both cooked and fresh- or layered on sandwiches, or served up as a garnish. Tomatoes are everywhere. I see a splash of red in my food and it’s most definitely a tomato. And on the topic of tomatoes, I’ll mention ketchup- it’s sweet! Ketchup in the US is kind of a vinegary flavor that highlights the acidity of tomatoes. Here, the second ingredient is sugar. Far from being a bad flavor, sweet ketchup actually pairs great with mayonnaise- which usually has some lime juice in it!
And now for an A-to-Z of some of the highlights of Peruvian cuisine!
Ají de gallina: shredded chicken in a creamy yellow sauce made from yellow chilis (ají amarillo), cheese, and milk. Often served with bread or boiled potatoes, occasionally garnished with walnuts. I had this for the first time over boiled potatoes in Chincha, and it was absolutely delicious! Not at all spicy, but full of wonderful chicken, cheese, and ají flavors.
Alfajores: crumbly sandwich cookies made of flour or cornstarch cookies filled with manjar blanco (caramel-like, similar to dulce de leche, a reduction of milk and sugar) and covered in powdered sugar. I haven’t had any Peruvian alfajores yet, but I have made them before! If you like shortbread cookies and caramel, these are the treat for you.
Anticuchos: popular street food (and favorite of Carlos). Cuts of stew meat or beef heart marinated in vinegar and spices such as cumin, ají, and garlic that are skewered and grilled. Often served with boiled potatoes or bread. I haven’t tried any yet, but I fully intend to before I leave!
Arroz con leche: rice pudding! My favorite iteration of this so far is arroz zambito- rice pudding kissed by the sun. It’s traditional rice pudding that is sweetened by chancaca and flavored with coconut, raisin, and aniseed. We were served arroz zambito when we went to Mundo Libre in Pachacamac. It’s a warm dessert, but the perfect end to a meal.
Causa: a potato dish usually made as a potato cake or stuffed roll. Yellow potatoes blended with oil, lime juice, and ají amarillo are used to make a paste, which is the causa itself. The type of causa I had in Chincha was a roll stuffed with shredded chicken, served cold. An odd experience, but very good.
Ceviche: an extremely popular seafood dish, characteristic of coastal regions such as Lima. I haven’t eaten any ceviche yet, as it is seafood, but I’ve heard it’s quite good if you enjoy fish. There are many different types of ceviche, but they are typically made from fresh raw fish that has been cured in citrus juice and spiced with ají or chili peppers.
Chicha morada: classic Peruvian beverage made from purple corn. Made with sugar, cinnamon, and clove, and served with pretty much any meal you choose. Takes a little getting used to, but absolutely delicious! Personally, I think it pairs best with savory meals.
Chicarrones: fried pork belly or intestines. In Peru, it is boiled with seasoning until no water remains, then fried in its own fat. I haven’t had them yet, but they’re another popular street food and favorite of Carlos.
Chifa: a Peruvian take on Chinese cuisine! Think of all the Chinese food you have in the United States… and make it sweeter. I’ve had Chifa one time since I’ve been here and honestly… I mostly ate the wontons. Everything was really good, but the wontons were excellent. Also, chifa tends to be served with Inca Kola!
Churros: best found at a street cart in Parque Kennedy. There are tons of different types of curros, but my favorite are hot and filled with melted manjar blanco. S/. 2.50 in Parque Kennedy and worth every centimento.
Cuy: guinea pig. Straight up guinea pig. Again, not something I’ve eaten yet. It’s a big food source in the Andes, but less so here on the coast. Give me a few days- I’m headed to Cusco and I’m going to try it.
Empanadas: stuffed bread/pastry that can be baked or fried. Empanadas can have a ton of different types of fillings. I’ve had chicken and I’ve had cheese, and they’re all delicious. One curious thing about the chicken empanadas is that they nearly always have quail eggs inside with the chicken filling. It takes a little getting used to, but it’s good.
Inca Kola: practically the national drink of Peru. Seriously. Inca Kola was made in Peru in 1935 and has since exploded throughout Latin America. The true flavor of Inca Kola is lemon verbena, but everyone tastes it slightly different. The flavor is commonly referred to as cotton candy or bubblegum. It’s definitely a drink that needs some adjusting to. After three weeks, I’ve found that Inca Kola is probably my favorite soft drink. It smells like bubblegum and tastes like… well, tastes like Inca Kola.
Lomo saltado: beef stir fry typically served with rice. Can also be made with chicken (which I prefer). The meat is thinly sliced and fried with onions, tomatoes, soy sauce, and ají amarillo. Each time I’ve gotten any type of saltado, it also has French fries. And each time I’ve gotten saltado, it’s been delicious.
Mazamorra morada: a popular dessert made from purple corn and fruit. I haven’t eaten any yet, but it supposedly tastes like blackberry pie filling. It tends to be thickened with flour or corn starch and spices with cinnamon and cloves (like chicha morada) and served cold.
Papa a la huancaína: a cold dish that consists of boiled potato slices covered in Huancaína sauce. The sauce is yellow and creamy, as its base is the ají amarillo pepper. It is often served with hard-boiled egg quarters, a black olive, lettuce leaves, and tomato slices. Typically an appetizer and not a main dish. I’ve had these potatoes several times, and each time it surprises me that they’re cold. Even so, they are by far one of the most tasty and iconic foods I’ve had here in Peru.
Papa rellena: a type of croquette. In Peru it is a baked potato dough filled with chopped beef, onions, eggs, and whole black olives, with cumin and other spices. Once stuffed, the potato ball is deep-fried and is served with an accompanying ‘salsa criolla’ or ají sauce. We had papas rellenas for dinner a few days back, and while they were a little odd, they were pretty good. I could definitely get more behind this dish if it had slightly less black olives.
Picarones: vaguely circular pieces of deep-fried dough. Kind of like a donut, actually, but crispy and covered in honey. Picarones are served hot from the fryer, but the honey is always cold. I’ve had street picarones and I’ve had restaurant picarones and both are delicious. I fully intend to find a recipe and attempt to make some back home.
Pisco sour: the actual national drink of Peru. Though I am of legal drinking age here in Peru and I have had a couple of drinks in safe company, I have not tried pisco sour. I’m not sure if I will while I’m here, but I’d like to find a way to brink some pisco back to the states so I can mix up the drink for my parents. Pisco sour is a cocktail. The base liquor is pisco, which is mixed with fresh-squeezed lime juice, simple syrup, and egg whites. These ingredients are shook in a cocktail shaker with ice, then poured into a glass (sans ice) and garnished with Angostura bitters. Served straight up.
Tejas: a dumpling-shaped sweet created in the Ica region. The filling is typically a whole walnut and manjar blanco, and the exterior is a sugar-based shell similar to fondant. There are versions of tejas that are accurately named chocotejas, as the exterior is made up of a chocolate shell instead of a sugar one. I got to try some chocotejas this past weekend when I was in Ica, and they were excellent! If I thought they could survive three more weeks and a plane ride to the US, I would have gotten some to bring home.
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With Their Restaurants Closed, Chefs Turn to Instagram Live to Inspire Home Cooks added to Google Docs
With Their Restaurants Closed, Chefs Turn to Instagram Live to Inspire Home Cooks
Miami chef Brad Kilgore in a series of cooking videos he published to TikTok
How social media offers valuable information and a sense of community as folks stay at home
To say that the COVID-19 pandemic has been a wake-up call for many is an understatement. It has exposed a number of flaws throughout society, but perhaps among the most fundamental is the lack of knowledge we have as a whole of how to, in some cases, do just about anything in the kitchen. Though a portion of the population with the means to do so continues to patronize restaurants via delivery and takeout, others — either by choice or circumstance — are left to fend for themselves. And as anyone would expect in this day and age, these kitchen novices are turning to the internet and social media for guidance.
Social-distancing measures have forced even more of our lives to be lived online. I’ve joined virtual workout classes to keep myself from becoming too sedentary, danced for hours at #ClubQuarantine, and listened as various people and organizations discuss the ways we can fight to protect the #TooSmallToFail restaurant industry. But most prominent in my feed are the many chefs, recipe developers, and other food personalities doing what they can to teach the masses how to boil water. Massimo Bottura recently took to Instagram Live to show viewers how to make a meal of ribs, mashed potatoes, and radicchio with prosciutto; chef Angela Dimayuga, along with Jon Gray and Pierre Serrao of Ghetto Gastro, joined everyone’s favorite food person, Samin Nosrat, on Instagram Live to make cornbread to go with some baked beans. Countless food bloggers are hopping onto Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok to demonstrate the key to soft-scrambled eggs or how to make pickled onions, and the amount of information available through ephemeral videos and static posts feels endless.
“It has been very organic and it’s fun. It gives us purpose — that’s the main thing.”
Soraya Caraccioli-Kilgore and her husband, Brad Kilgore, of Alter and other Miami restaurants — which closed for a week before reopening for delivery and takeout with new menus Tuesday — started sharing videos on their Instagram accounts as a way to pass the time. “We were home and we were really bored. I was starting to get really sad and [was] thinking, ‘What are we gonna do?’ We’ve been doing this for 14 years,” she says. “I was going to make a banana bread that day, period, and we’re like, why don’t we just do a video?” After seeing people posting their finished loaves and sharing how much they enjoyed watching the couple cook together, the Kilgores decided to do something every day, including taco Tuesdays and wine Wednesdays with their friend Amanda. “It has been very organic and it’s fun. It gives us purpose — I think that’s the main thing.”
For chefs who have seen their restaurants close or cut back operations due to the pandemic, the videos are motivated by boredom, yes. But for many, they’re outlets that can also be used to stay in contact with restaurant regulars, fundraise for their staffs or other industry organizations, and combat a sense of helplessness during this weird time.
Pastry chef and Eater Young Gun Zoë Kanan left NYC restaurant Simon & the Whale at the beginning of the year to explore new opportunities and found herself in unfamiliar territory. “Not having the umbrella of a restaurant family has left me feeling like a team of one,” she says. Her turn to the internet for a sense of community also started with banana bread, inspired by a recent trip to Vietnam. “I found old frozen bananas in my freezer and was also craving some comforting flavors,” Kanan says. “I shared the recipe online as a way to connect with my community: If I can’t bake for people directly, I can at least guide them in my way. I like knowing we all measured out the same amounts, followed like motions, and tasted something similar. It’s how I could help.”
Natalia Vallejo of Cocina al Fondo in San Juan, Puerto Rico, says she shares what she cooks at home “to motivate and inspire others by placing my talent at the service of others... Many have never cooked so much in their lives, and I consider it a good moment in time to give people back a connection to their food.” The James Beard Award-nominated chef hopes to teach, transmit love, and make people feel as if they are not alone despite physical isolation. “We are a great community and we are together in this,” she says. “In the end, the essence of restaurants and diners is that underlying connection.”
Poi Dog Philly’s Kiki Aranita’s aim was simple when she began posting cooking videos on her personal Instagram page: “It was a way to entertain myself.” She tried offering delivery and takeout at her Hawaiian restaurant, but decided against it after two days in order to put the safety of her employees first. “As much as we tried to avoid contact with people, it was happening, and I just didn’t feel comfortable, even though my employees wanted to come in.”
That’s when the motivation behind her social media presence shifted. “I wanted to do this to keep driving traffic to our page so that people see that they have two ways of supporting our staff,” Aranita says. One is to encourage people to visit the restaurant’s online shop and buy merch to keep revenue incoming. The other is to amplify “our virtual tip jar to benefit our employees and the employees of two other food trucks that became brick and mortars around the same time we did.”
Aranita also wants to help the various charities that had to cancel events. “I’m gonna start wearing the Rent the Runway dresses for the events that I had canceled while making the food so that I can also highlight all these organizations, like Women Against Abuse, Vetri Community Partnership, and No Kid Hungry,” she says. “If I wear the dresses and prepare the food that I was going to make for the event, then hopefully viewers will also donate to the charity.”
Some have been able to use online-only videos as a way to generate additional revenue. “Everyone’s jumped to delivery. And we had a little bit of delivery business prior to this, but it wasn’t enough to survive off of,” says Brian Jupiter of Chicago’s Ina Mae Tavern and Frontier restaurants. In a brainstorming session with staff, the chef landed on selling meal kits to pair with a live instructional video. The first iteration ran Monday for Ina Mae’s Nashville fried chicken po’ boy. They sold about 80 meal kits during the day, and that evening, those people tuned in to the restaurant’s Instagram page to learn how to make it at home. Jupiter already has plans for a brunch kit that he’ll demo along with his daughter “to give people ideas of what they can do with children at home.” Beyond that, “I’d do it twice a week if I can, because it’s a form of engaging with the people who have supported me over the years.”
All note that it’s been more than just friends, family, and restaurant regulars who have engaged with their content. “People from around the world have been tuning in,” Caraccioli-Kilgore says.
“I chatted with people I know and others I don’t about the comforts of banana bread, Vietnam, baking tips, and more,” Kanan echoes.
From takeout to restaurant merch, GoFundMe campaigns to virtual tip jars, the restaurant industry is doing all that it can simply to survive. “To have something that’s completely out of your control completely affecting your bottom line is tough,” Jupiter says.
“We’re in fight mode for our employees more than anything,” Caraccioli-Kilgore says. “I’m just trying to make sure that they have jobs and they’re putting food on the table.”
Overall, the support these chefs and restaurateurs are receiving from the public has not gone unfelt. “The amount of love that I feel like the industry has gotten from non-restaurant people, it’s honestly humbling,” Caraccioli-Kilgore says.
As serious at the situation is, there is often levity and, albeit sometimes dark, humor in these posts. “I think part of the humor in my videos is that I’m used to cooking for 500 people instead of cooking for one,” Aranita says. “While people are still getting used to the idea of isolation, I hope to entertain them a little bit and encourage people to stay at home.”
Aaron Hutcherson is a writer, editor, and recipe developer based in New York City.
via Eater - All https://www.eater.com/pop-culture/2020/3/26/21195591/restaurant-chefs-virtual-cooking-classes-instagram-live-tiktok-coronavirus-impact-covid-19
Created March 27, 2020 at 03:22AM
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Weight Watchers will now be known as “WW.” The 55-year-old company just announced that it is rebranding to focus more on overall health. Its new tagline: “Wellness that works.”
It’s a change the company has been building up to since 2015. Oprah Winfrey came on as an investor when Weight Watchers was in decline and announced that she lost a lot of weight on the program while also still eating bread every single day. The company’s fortunes have improved since then, but it is shooting for $2 billion in revenue, according to Fortune, a goal that has been in its sights for almost a decade but has not yet come to fruition.
It’s not surprising that Weight Watchers is distancing itself from dieting. We are in a moment when the concepts of wellness and self-care have become all-important. Talking openly about dieting is becoming taboo, and the body positivity movement is on the rise. Weight Watchers had to change to stay relevant, and it’s been increasingly talking up wellness and a healthy lifestyle for a few years now. Tellingly, in an op-ed in the New York Times in March decrying the company’s plan to offer free memberships to teens as young as 13, Jennifer Weiner wrote, “You could almost believe that the company was preparing to change its name from Weight Watchers to Self-Esteem and Healthy Habits Central.”
But is Weight Watchers, and our culture of dieting, truly changing? Not really. No matter its name, WW is first and foremost a company that wants to help you lose weight in a society that prioritizes weight loss. Everything else is essentially just marketing.
Weight Watchers was founded in 1963 by a Queens housewife named Jean Nidetch. She had struggled with her weight and went to an obesity clinic when she was over 200 pounds; according to her obituary, she hid cookies in her hamper to eat late at night. Then, the story goes, she invited several overweight friends of hers over for a commiseration session, which ended in a pact to try to lose weight together. Nidetch lost more than 60 pounds, and Weight Watchers was born.
Historically, members went to weekly support meetings for lectures and a weigh-in. This still exists, but there’s also an app that doesn’t require attending IRL meetings.
Weight Watchers costs about $3 per week to join as a digital member; $7 for a “studio” membership, which includes in-person meetings; and about $13 for “digital plus personal coaching” membership, which includes things like personalized sessions on behavior management and food planning. (Disclosure: I’ve been a paying digital member of Weight Watchers on and off for several years.)
Weight Watchers has always been, at its core, a company that requires members to log food intake. Through the years, it has employed different methods of applying value to food, beyond just calories. It assigns points values to food, then assigns each person a points total they are allowed to consume every day.
This proprietary points system changes pretty drastically every few years. The most recent iteration, called Freestyle, allows users the fewest number of daily points it ever has, but it also made a whole slew of foods that used to be “expensive” worth zero points. For example, beans and bananas used to have relatively hefty points values because they’re high in calories. But they are also healthy foods, so they now can ostensibly be eaten with abandon at no “cost” to the Weight Watcher.
Some members didn’t like this new version. Someone even started a Change.org petition to bring back the previous version of points; it gathered 3,600 signatures. They argued that it was actually more restrictive because members lost a significant amount of their daily point allowance and the new zero-point foods were very protein-heavy (like eggs and chicken), making the diet more Atkins-like.
The fact that the points system changes so often partly reflects new understanding of diet science, at least according to Weight Watchers, but mostly reflects societal attitude toward diets and the needs of Weight Watchers shareholders. As is becoming clearer, diets don’t work. Weight Watchers has been slowly changing its policies to focus more on a journey than a destination, something that is less rigidly prescribed.
Earlier this year, Weight Watchers announced that it would no longer use the time-tested advertising method of showing before-and-after photos in its ads, in a nod to the body positivity movement. But at the same time it announced this initiative, it got itself into trouble by also proclaiming that it would offer free memberships to teens. There was backlash, with opponents arguing that it would be bad for teens’ body image and indoctrinate them early into dieting culture. “The name is Weight Watchers, not Health Enhancers. The second the focus turns to weight, the potential for mind and body damage begins,” wrote Rebecca Scritchfield in the Washington Post. Now, of course, the company is saying it does want to be about enhancing health.
One of the ways it aims to do this is via its robust community of users. In addition to logging food, the other pillar of the Weight Watchers lexicon is community. The weekly in-person meetings and weigh-ins used to be a requirement. These still exist, but they’ll now be called Wellness Workshops. While there are 31,000 in-person weekly meetings, according to Fortune, a lot of the community has moved online.
Connect, the company’s social media platform, is an integral and often uplifting part of the experience; it’s an unsullied online space where earnest posters provide support to one another. It’s most analogous to Twitter, in that it features an ever-updating global timeline, though you can comment on posts in a way that is pretty Facebook-like. You can choose to follow members and see their posts in a separate timeline. WW will be adding focused areas within Connect, where people with similar interests, like being gluten-free or vegan, for example, can “gather.”
To keep people using and paying for services longer, new incentive programs called “WellnessWins” are launching, awarding people products and experiences for meeting certain goals. Fortune notes this is a bid to get men to join, who presumably like prizes and being competitive. Currently, 10 percent of Weight Watchers’ members are men. DJ Khaled and filmmaker Kevin Smith signed on as spokespeople this year.
DJ Khaled in Miami May 2018 at a Weight Watchers event. Thaddaeus McAdams/Getty/WireImage
Finally, Weight Watchers also sells tangible products beyond just a promise of weight loss, like food, food storage containers and food preparation utensils, and cookbooks. Its foods and snacks will be reformulated to no longer contain artificial sweeteners, flavors, colors, or preservatives. Ingredient scrutiny is a big part of wellness consumerism, and if you’re selling stuff that isn’t perceived as “natural,” it’s a problem for a brand.
The body positivity movement is slowly gaining steam. Consumers have put pressure on clothing brands to offer extended sizing, and a mantra of self-acceptance has begun to permeate the internet, even if it’s still far from universal (not to mention that brands have co-opted the concept in order to sell products). All of this means that diets are not necessarily perceived as cool or acceptable anymore. But it’s really just semantics.
“People were now fasting and eating clean and cleansing and making lifestyle changes, which, by all available evidence, is exactly like dieting,” writes Taffy Brodesser-Akner in an August 2017 New York Times article about Weight Watchers. “Healthy is the new skinny,” Weight Watchers CEO Mindy Grossman told Fortune.
WW actually still is, not surprisingly, primarily focused on weight loss. Much like the beauty industry wanting to move away from selling you anti-aging products while never mentioning the word “aging,” WW still wants to help users lose weight. Upon navigating to its website (still at weightwatchers.com), you are greeted with a large blue banner and an explanation of the name change. “We will always be the global leader in weight loss, but now WW welcomes anyone who wants to build healthy habits — whether that means eating better, moving more, developing a positive mindset, focusing on weight … or all of the above!”
A quick browse through Connect today shows that, as is usually the case when Weight Watchers changes something, users are having mixed emotions about it.
“I think it’s a terrible idea. By all means, focus on healthy habits but people join because they want to lose weight. Concentrate on your core audience,” wrote one.
“So excited about this change! I was hoping for something like this when they came out with Freestyle. … Focusing on health is so much more sustainable than just cutting calories and only focusing on weight loss,” wrote another.
The blue logo featuring the two letters stacked on top of each is by now a familiar one to users of the company’s app. But “double-you double-you” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Will the company try to shorten that into something like “Two Dubs” or “Double Dub”? Wait a few more financial quarters to find out.
Or, as one member wrote in Connect: “To me this is like when Kentucky Fried Chicken changed the name to KFC. It will still be the old name to most of us forever.”
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Original Source -> As “dieting” becomes more taboo, Weight Watchers is changing its name
via The Conservative Brief
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Mental Yoga Sunday / 5 Favorite Long Form Reads This Week / Issue No. 20
"See, I was nine years old when I saw Elvis on 'Ed Sullivan', and I had to get a guitar the next day. I stood in front of my mirror with that guitar on...and I knew then that's what has been missing." -- Bruce Sprinsteen
I like the world but I hate the noise of it all, and sometimes clarity comes in the form of a quiet day and words on a page. This Sunday's edition we're doing a little Mental Yoga stretching our thoughts around things like Bruce on Broadway, Germany's definition of success and happiness, the originator of the hot chicken craze, Puerto Rico's dire straits and its fight for statehood and the great Kate McKinnon really not wanting to discuss her personal life. Embrace the muzzling of all the chatter.
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Bruce Springsteen on Broadway:
The Boss on His ‘First Real Job’ (The New York Times)
"It started at the White House. On Jan. 12, in the last weeks of the Obama administration, Mr. Springsteen played an acoustic concert in the East Room as the Obama family’s parting gift for about 250 staffers. For Mr. Springsteen, who takes every performance seriously, it was a moment of reckoning. He carefully assembled a set list spanning his career; he illuminated the songs with spoken stories and memories echoing “Born to Run,” the autobiography he published in 2016.
“There was a lot of storytelling, which goes back to our early days at the Bottom Line when you were in front of a couple of hundred people,” Mr. Springsteen said in an interview at his home studio in Colts Neck, N.J., recalling the Greenwich Village club where his shows in summer 1975became a sensation. “It worked in a very, very intimate setting.”
Heading home from Washington, Mr. Springsteen and his wife, Patti Scialfa, and his manager, Jon Landau, thought more people should experience a performance like that. “The way he combines the spoken words with the songs he’s chosen to do sounds like a very simple thing,” Mr. Landau said. “But it’s a real piece of performance art.”" - Read Full Story
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The secret to Germany’s happiness and success: Its values are the opposite of Silicon Valley’s (Quartz)
"If Silicon Valley ever formed a political party, it might look a lot like the current iteration of Germany’s Free Democrats, or FDP. In the 2017 election cycle, the FDP offered a platform that reads like what Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg would come up with if they decided to disrupt Rand Paul. Its primary aspirations include creating a startup-friendly economy, digitizing Germany’s monolithic reams of bureaucratic paperwork (no small feat), and, yes, radically reduce income taxes, which currently top off at 45% for the highest earners.
The platform has propelled the party back from the dead. Having been kicked out of the Germany’s parliament, or Bundestag, in 2013, the FDP came roaring back with 10% of the vote in Sunday’s election.
To some, this might suggest that a cultural shift is afoot in Germany. After all, the FDP’s leader, a magnetic 38-year-old named Christian Lindner, has openly expressed a desire to shake things up. In an August interview with the Economist, in which he called Germany’s economy “a prosperity hallucination,” Lindner also explained that in his country, “entrepreneurship has long been undervalued … and societies that are prepared to be more daring and have efficient capital markets have overtaken us on this.” Germans could be “world leaders” in the new economy, he said, “but we have to want it.
But that’s the thing: The vast majority of Germans don’t want it. For progressive and even centrist Germans, the startup-style definition of Erfolg (or “success”) is utterly incompatible with their values—which do not center on individual wealth, recognition, or even careers. Though the FDP’s showing was meteoric compared with recent years, Germany’s cultural mores—which include a vehement defense of the country’s robust social safety net, largely credited for the relatively quick recovery from last decade’s recession—mean it is largely inoculated from the bootstrap fever that has long gripped the US." - Read Full Story
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After Irma, Puerto Rico's Case For Statehood Gains Newfound Urgency (Pacific Standard)
"The deepening humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico reveals a disaster response that is categorically different from the actions taken in the wake of hurricanes that struck the continental U.S. recently. While Fuentes praised the efforts of the president, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, he outlined several needs that may not be in the offing.
"Short term—like, tomorrow—Puerto Rico needs a waiver on the Jones Act, so we can start bringing stuff in without the imposition of the Jones Act," Fuentes said on Tuesday, before the Department of Homeland Security delivered a no verdict. "Hospitals are running with generators. Frozen-food warehouses are running on generators. They need to get diesel if we want to keep that food."
Next, Congress will take up the issue of a hurricane relief package for Puerto Rico. Or maybe not: Politico reports that a formal funding request is still weeks away, as the devastation in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands is so widespread that an assessment cannot be made. Still, Congress passed a major hurricane relief package just six days after Hurricane Harvey struck Texas. And the government relaxed the Jones Act to deal with the Exxon Valdez oil spill—an ecological tragedy, but far from a humanitarian catastrophe.
Puerto Rico will have no real say in whatever decision Congress makes. The stakes could not be higher: One estimate pegs hurricane damages at more than $72 billion. Maria came just a month after Puerto Rico declared a soft bankruptcy in May—following a debt crisis that Fuentes and other critics say was spurred in large part by Puerto Rico's inequitable standing vis-à-vis the rest of the country. It's possible that the damages wrought by Maria could even exceed the debt that ruined the island financially." - Read Full Story
4
The Kate McKinnon Report (Vanity Fair)
"Kate arrives on time to the minute. I’m early, so I have a chance to observe her as she enters. She’s dressed down. Movie stars are typically dressed down for these occasions. (Another reason they’re deceptive: people come costumed as though it’s playtime, not work.) But Kate isn’t dressed movie-star down, i.e., the kind of down that’s flattering to the figure and still involves the application of a not inconsiderable amount of makeup, i.e., a stylist-approved, camera-ready kind of down. Kate’s dressed real-person down, i.e., badly: oversize T-shirt and pants that aren’t quite sweat but close enough; sneakered feet; face cosmetics-free; hair in a ponytail, or, rather, what would be a ponytail if she hadn’t failed to tug the hair all the way through the elastic, leaving it in a sort of ponytail-bun limbo.
As quickly as I’m struck by how un-vain she is, I’m struck by how much she has to be vain about. She’s very pretty: small-bodied and full-lipped with cat eyes—pale blue and almond-shaped and slanting—tawny skin and hair, dimples she can twitch into existence without even smiling. She’s 33 but appears younger, a few years out of college. I’d watched hours of footage of her in preparation for this encounter yet had somehow missed her great good looks. Not that she photographs poorly. It’s just that in most scenes she’s impersonating a woman far, far older than she (Debette Goldry, legend of the silver screen, a fictional creation) or a woman far older (the all-too-real Betsy DeVos) or a man (Robert Durst) or a boy-man (Justin Bieber). And her face is rarely in repose. She’s often stretching it in some crazy, rubbery way, thrusting out her jaw, baring her teeth." - Read Full Story
5
Burned Out (Eater.com)
"The first time I went to Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, I was 12 years old, and I didn’t even eat the chicken. My dad, though, ordered his “hot” — one of six heat levels spicy enough to force beads of sweat from one’s brow onto the table, one soft drop at a time. While he ate, he remarked that the heat radiating from the plate didn’t just linger in the air or settle on your lips, it sat with you for days afterward. As the old ceiling fans helicoptered above, I sat silently in the pew-like booth, flirting with some fries that had absorbed a whisper of heat from sharing the same cast-iron skillet as the chicken, but never mustering the courage to take a bite.
My dad, undeterred, took me and my sister back again and again over the years. Eventually, we learned to sweat together, and I saw that the world was much bigger than home: Prince’s was a visit to “the other side of the tracks,” 30 minutes from the mostly white suburb where I grew up. My hometown, just north of Nashville, was the kind of place where the most thrilling food was a cheese-smothered appetizer at O’Charley’s and where, when I’d try to explain hot chicken to friends at school, they would ask with a bewildered look if I meant buffalo chicken. Looking back, I realize now that Prince’s was one of the few places we’d go and see people who looked like us." - Read Full Story
#Long Form Reading#Longreads#The New York Times#Bruce Springsteen#Vanity Fair#Kate McKinnon#Quartz#German Happiness#Pacific Standard#Puerto Rico#Eater.com#Burned Out
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