MEMES, Part 8: The Scream
If you typed “inauguration” into your web browser anytime between 2017 and 2020, you likely saw, near the top of your search results, an image of a person in a neon green jacket, black winter hat and ...
10 Nov 202134min
MEMES, Part 7: Dead Giveaway
In 2013, four white musicians turned a local TV news clip featuring a Black man named Charles Ramsey into a song and uploaded it to YouTube. The auto-tuned meme, titled "Dead Giveaway," gained tens of...
4 Nov 202138min
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
