Hallomeme Bonus: Slender Man
When two 12 year-old girls attacked their friend in the woods of Waukesha, Wisconsin in May of 2014, they claimed to have done it to please Slender Man -- a fictional monster created by Eric Knudsen, ...
29 Okt 202125min
MEMES, Pt. 6: Call me... The Punisher
The Punisher has always been a complicated Marvel antihero: a man whose creator imagined him as a reaction to the failures of government at home and in the Vietnam War. So why is the Punisher’s tradem...
28 Okt 202140min
MEMES, Pt. 5: The President of Kekistan
He is known by several names, but Gordon Hurd is the one this man-turned-meme adopted when he fled Cameroon for the UK more than two decades ago. Gordon eventually found the app Fiverr and started mak...
21 Okt 202143min
MEMES, Bonus: Zoë Didn't Start the Fire
Most of us hate the photos our parents take of us. But what happens when one goes viral? Zoë Roth was 4 years old when her dad took a photo of her smiling mischievously in front of a burning house. ...
18 Okt 202121min
MEMES, Pt. 4: Woman Yelling at a Cat
Humor is a key ingredient of any unit of culture that morphs and spreads over time. But humor isn’t always there at the beginning. For “Real Housewife” Taylor Armstrong, the meme that made her even mo...
14 Okt 202141min
MEMES, Bonus: A Billion Ricks
Last week, we explored the origin of the “Rick Roll,” a meme that evolved from Rick Astley’s 1987 hit song, “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Since the music video resurfaced as the meme in 2007, the interne...
12 Okt 202119min
MEMES, Pt. 3: Gotta Make You Understand
Who gets credit for starting a meme? Usually... nobody -- they're made too quickly and organically. In the case of one of the most famous bait-and-switch memes of all time, the "Rick Roll," we may be ...
8 Okt 202142min
MEMES, Pt. 2: Scumbag Steve
If there is an OG meme in which a human is the star, Scumbag Steve is it. He spread across the internet like wildfire in 2011 as a universal representation of dudes who are the worst. And, like any pe...
30 Sep 202140min
