Memes
Want to weave various Stability AI–generated video clips into a movie? Now there’s a tool for that. Morph Studio, which has its own text-to-video model, just introduced an AI filmmaking…
Featured Article
Reddit IPO could usher in the next big meme stock, users speculate
Jeremiah Johnson says he has “an embarrassing amount” of Reddit karma. So, as a longtime moderator of subreddits like r/economics, he was part of a select group of power users who were granted first dibs to buy stock in Reddit’s IPO as the company prepares to go public. “You would…
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign has finally set up shop on TikTok. Despite controversy in Congress over the app, TikTok is an indispensable tool for presidential candidates to reach young…
Welcome to Gag City, the pink metropolis inhabited by stans and brands alike. In the days leading up to the release of “Pink Friday 2,” Nicki Minaj’s fifth studio album…
Featured Article
Mulch and the enduring appeal of internet absurdism
I am haunted by mulch posts. The most recent mulch video came to me in the middle of the night, when I was hours into scrolling through a particularly nasty bout of insomnia. The video was an edit of a tiny dog surrounded by a frame of glittering hearts, with…
Memes can happen in the blink of an eye, like a Jeopardy! contestant who accidentally makes a sexual innuendo under the pressure of stage lights, or a kid who randomly…
Antimatter is an edtech company that operates under a simple, enticing premise: If a student really understands a topic, then they’ll be able to make a meme about it. “To…
Last fall, Tumblr users raved about Martin Scorsese’s 1973 film “Goncharov,” starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. They hailed the lesser-known Scorsese classic as the greatest mafia movie ever…
TikTok goes a little overboard when it comes to categorizing every last aesthetic into its own microtrend. You notice it when Spotify Wrapped calls your music taste goblincore, or when…
“To be able to shitpost, you have to understand the subject matter really well,” Antimatter founder Jonathan Libov deadpans. “In a sense, shitposting is the highest form of consciousness.” Silly…
Like it or not, memes are part of how we communicate now — we even reference memes in our headlines. But iterating upon existing memes can be a needlessly clunky…
Featured Article
The red flag meme is a red flag for accessibility
If you’ve been on Twitter lately, you’ve probably seen the red flag meme that’s going around — you quote a phrase that would be a “red flag” for someone to say to you, then add a bunch of red flag emojis. Twitter itself joined in on the fun, as well…
Featured Article
Under quarantine, media is actually social
The flood of status symbol content into Instagram Stories has run dry. No one is going out and doing anything cool right now, and if they are, they should be shamed for it. Beyond sharing video chat happy hour screenshots and quarantine dinner concoctions, our piece-by-piece biographies have ground to…
Instagram is changing its advertising rules to require political campaigns’ sponsored posts from influencers to use its Branded Content Ads tool that adds a disclosure label of “Paid Partnership with.”…
Ten years after its debut, 300-million-monthly-user Imgur is one of the last massively popular yet unpersonalized home pages on the internet. Because everyone sees the same upvoted posts when they…
Kapwing is a laymen’s Adobe Creative Suite built for what people actually do on the internet: make memes and remix media. Need to resize a video? Add text or subtitles…
TikTok adds Giphy integration to import Stickers and export TikTok memes to the rest of the world
TikTok is the breakout hit in social media apps at the moment — it’s currently ranked first in entertainment, and 12th overall in terms of download popularity on iOS, and…
Meme creators have never gotten their fair share. Remixed and reshared across the web, their jokes prop up social networks like Instagram and Twitter that pay back none of their…
If you haven’t been paying attention to TikTok, you haven’t been paying attention. The short-form video app hailing from Beijing’s ByteDance just had its biggest month ever with the addition…
How do you do, fellow kids? After Facebook Watch, Lasso and IGTV failed to become hits with teens, the company has been quietly developing another youthful video product. Multiple sources…
Need to resize a video for IGTV? Add subtitles for Twitter? Throw in sound effects for YouTube? Or collage it with other clips for the Instagram feed? Kapwing lets you…
YouTube appears to be trying to get ahead of any wider societal outcry over (yet more) algorithmically accelerated idiocy on its platform — and is removing Tide Pod Challenge videos.
I find it truly sad the way Facebook has led us to reduce wishing friends a happy birthday to a meaningless, generic chore. It’s not Facebook’s fault. It gives us…
Ever get stuck for that perfect gag-line on a photo of your friends? You want to turn even an ordinary photo into an internet meme, but maybe you just can’t…
You’re sitting down to a nice meal and your aunt, always one step ahead, mentions she wants to start investing in Bitcoin. You freeze, a drip of gravy plopping off…
Either you’re one of 250 million monthly Imgurians, or you probably have no idea what Imgur is. But those who are part of the addictive image-sharing community know there’s been…
Pepe’s creator teams with the Anti-Defamation League to reclaim his chilled-out frog
It’s been a weird few years for Pepe the Frog. A wild ride that ought to be reserved for the likes of Mr. Toad – or maybe if anyone tries to…
Today, GIFs have become a popular way communicate sentiment online and in mobile messaging, where written text doesn’t always do the job. More expressive than an emoji, these looping images let…
Social media has been playing an increasingly critical role in political elections. The 2008 presidential election, dubbed the “Facebook Election,” was the first time voters could view and share debates,…
Richard Dawkins likened memes to genes, but a new study by Facebook shows just how accurate that analogy is. Memes adapt to their surroundings in order to survive, just like organisms.…
