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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

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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

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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

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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”

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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

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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

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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”

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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?”

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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”

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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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joshuajacksonlyblog · 5 years

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Binance US Reaches 10% of Coinbase Trading Volume in First Month In Crypto Market

Binance exploded onto the scene in late 2017 and quickly captured the lion’s share of the overall crypto market, even despite dominance from platforms like Coinbase. But a recent change in the regulatory climate forced Binance to move US investors off its flagship platform and onto a new US-based exchange.

And just like the original Binance, the new US-based platform is already growing rapidly and has reached 10% of the trading volume Coinbase currently sees in a single day.

Binance US Gains on Coinbase, Captures 10% of Daily Trading Volume

Back in June, Binance revealed that it would soon be shuttering US investors from using its regular trading platform, known for its exotic list of altcoins, and onto a new US-based platform sans many of the altcoins that put the crypto poster child on the map.

Related Reading | Can Coinbase Capitalize On Binance Becoming Less Attractive To US Crypto Investors?

The following panic in investors led to a mass exodus of altcoins, causing them to bleed out to new lows, while Bitcoin stole whatever interest was left in the crypto market.

But since Binance US opened in late September, the platform is already off to a great start, regularly adding new assets and already capturing 10% of the trading volume that rival Coinbase does.

Binance US trading volumes have grown to over $15 million on any given day, while Coinbase reaches roughly $150 million in the same timeframe.

.@BinanceAmerica has increased its daily volumes to over $15 million. Still, that is a far cry from rival @Coinbase, which trades approximately $150 million in an average day. https://t.co/3W2gHNorDr

— Mike Dudas (@mdudas) November 1, 2019

Increased Competition Can Be Good For Crypto Investors

In the United States, Coinbase has long enjoyed the leadership role and became a household name during the crypto hype bubble when it topped Apple’s app store list of top finance apps. But Binance gave the platform a real run for their crypto crown, and even surpassed Coinbase to become the market leader.

But the recent move to usher US investors to a new platform put Binance at risk of losing market share to Coinbase, especially in Coinbase’s homeland of the United States. However, Coinbase nearly squandered whatever advantage they may have had by raising fees for traders with the smallest amount of trading activity.

The crypto community was furious and began clamoring for a Coinbase killer. Now that Binance US is picking up steam, its quickly becoming the market’s best chance for such a thing.

Related Reading | Coinbase, Cash App, Remain Top Rated Places To Easily Buy Bitcoin

But rather than kill Coinbase, the best-case scenario is for the two platforms to continue on harmoniously, competing with one another in such a way that causes both to regularly be upping the ante when it comes to new features and new assets, which will only benefit the greater crypto community of investor and traders that use each exchange.

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guylty · 7 years

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Hello, weekend readers. I took the liberty of scheduling the weekly round-up a day late. Not necessarily because I only got back from London on Friday afternoon, but really because I wanted to ride out the unusual level of attention I was getting since late Friday evening when I posted my Observations on the SD with David Tennant. Here are my observations on the posting of my observations: The David Tennant fandom (what are they called btw? The Tennantettes? The Tennanters? The Tens?) certainly have some impressive reach. My post was quickly picked up by a fan on Twitter, and my “stats are booming” ever since as WP calls it. As always, my pictures are gifts to whichever fandom, so I don’t mind them being reworked and reposted, but I have to commend the original re-poster for crediting me via @ mention. That’s proper netiquette. Thank you!

Via @GuyltyPleasure Photos & interesting write up about #DavidTennant at the stage door after Don Juan In Sohohttps://t.co/2Hn5teISGU pic.twitter.com/lAh6cpoyNg

— David Tennant (@David_Tennant) June 2, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

There’s a definite spike in my traffic due to those frankly not very good pictures I took of DT… Not complaining. I just find it interesting, and it puts our own jokes about “the mighty reach of the Armitage Army” in perspective, particularly when you compare the usual traffic on my blog with the days since posting the “Observations”. Why, check the screenshot of my stats from last night – I racked up almost twice as many views yesterday (the orange column) than on the best post in May (the blue box)

Anyway, sorry for rambling on about that. Let’s move on to *our* man instead. Here’s a compilation of noteworthy posts from Tumblr this week:

Sooo, Castlevania. Judging by maryjanezigzag’s picture of the game DVD, the Trevor part *always* had RA written on it…

An amusing little story, written by life itself, recounted by hannibatchsmuse… I guess that could only happen in the US 😉

*coughs* that scene with *that* line really made me laugh the first time I saw it. I remember thinking that Fuller fudged the line by putting an unnecessary “with” in there *coughs*. Giffed by riepu10

A still from Pilgrimage, edited by ausschweifendemotte. We’ve seen it before. But I put it in here because I noticed something. Check the teeth! That’s the hair/costume dept at its best. Certainly not the pearly whites we usually see. I actually like the fact that they have thought of adjusting the dentistry to the middle ages because it always annoys me to see medieval films with 21st century perfect dentures…

Ok, I really, really dislike the word ‘dork’. (I just think Richard is about 20 years too old for that adage.) But I really really *don’t* dislike this gif set by tinkertailor1212. A mood enhancer on a dark day!

Mh, nice edit posted by guest2x2. I hope you retain control, too

Muhahaha, yeah, I bet, Guy. Another naughty What a Guy Wants by nfcomics

Tinkertailor1212 subtitled this “pure”. Pure fun? Certainly makes me smile

Ghisborne turns Sir Guy into a modern!AU. Convinced!

Riepu10 finishes the filmography with part 5

This one was put out there by thewolfsbaneofmylife. Discuss!

Let’s remember one of the *essential* scenes in BS. Thank you to ulmoides for bringing this back to our attention. I’ll definitely be watching for *that* plot in season 2…

Hope you enjoyed that. (I deliberately ended on that aprés-shower scene… maybe *you* need one now? 🛀)

So, I am back home in Ireland after four days of summer (SUMMER!) in London. And yes, I am mentioning that *deliberately* because whatever happened there last night, we can’t let terrorism keep us from enjoying London, life and any place we love. Gosh, it was gorgeous over there. I had a launch event to attend and a few business meetings, and one of my pair of “the best bosses of all” put me up in my favourite hotel. Pop!Thorin was appreciative. He hopped under the covers as soon as he saw the bed (see right). Of course, he couldn’t stay on his side of the double bed. Noooo, he had to sleep right in the middle. Likewise, he also tucked right into the scrumptious breakfast, served – as always – in bed (see below).

Cheeky bugger.

As always he was a great companion, though, cheering me up and watching over me, even at work.

Lording it over my laptop, so to speak (see below right):

Mind you, that may be the last time he is lording it over Little Miss Bling. Because the *other* best boss of all is insisting on replacing Little Miss Bling after I mentioned some problems with the Macbook due to the latest forced-upon-me MacOS update. Annoyingly, the laptop keeps running out of battery power – even when it is plugged into the mains. (Do other Mac users have similar problems? It has doesn’t connect to iCloud anymore, the keychain doesn’t work, and the CPU appears to be overworked.) In short – it’s a pain in the ass. Boss-man immediately said “let’s get you a new one” 😂. I’ve heard that before. I’ll actually try having it repaired by an Apple expert first, but it’s good to know that there is the option of getting it replaced…

Anyway, I’ll leave you now with two architectural gems from London. I have increasingly begun to ignore the tube in London and explore on foot instead. Florin Court is Hercule Poirot’s magnificent Art Deco residence in the David Suchet ITV series. Located on Charterhouse Square is very close to my hotel and office in Smithfield. The opposite direction is Charles Dickens’ House in Doughty Street, Camden, is about 15 minutes by foot from the London office. I just love the mix of architecture in London… And I will not stop going there because extremists are using violence to get their way. It’s got to stop. Let’s not allow them to bully us into submission.

Florin Court

48 Doughty Street

Guylty ❤️

2017 Armitage Weekly Round-up #21 Hello, weekend readers. I took the liberty of scheduling the weekly round-up a day late. Not necessarily because I only got back from London on Friday afternoon, but really because I wanted to ride out the unusual level of attention I was getting since late Friday evening when I posted my…

#Daniel Miller #Francis Dolarhyde #Guy of Gisborne #Richard Armitage #Weekly tumblr Round-up

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sexierthanaheartburn-blog · 7 years

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Evolution of Disney Princesses theory

Guess who’s back with another theory? Me! How did you know? Anyways, I’m going to be taking a break with my Harry Potter theories and venture out to one my childhood's fondest memories. Yes, Disney. More specifically, Disney Princesses.

Like every single living organism on this planet, everyone (even your beloved film characters and TV series) goes through a form of evolution. In this theory, I am going to be talking about the “Evolution of Disney Princesses” and how they adapt to our ideas of what a Disney Princess should be.

But before we get into all of that, we need to answer: how does one become a Disney Princess?

Simple, really. (sarcasm).

Each Official Disney Princess must meet the following requirements: A) has a primary role in a Disney animated feature film, B) is human or mostly human-like (e.g. Ariel), and C) does not appear primarily in a sequel. The actual title of Princess (or equivalent) is not necessary but certainly, helps.

Then, if they pass the requirements above: there’s more! Whereas the first set of requirements required you to meet all three, in part b) you only have to meet one of these criteria. A) You have to be born royal or B) you must be born royal or C) perform a significant act of heroism.

Then, the final test. The unspoken rule. Box office revenue.

As of 2017, the eleven characters considered part of the franchise are Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel and Merida.

Fun Fact: Tinkerbell was revoked of her Disney Princess membership.

Disney Princesses are a massive thing for every young girl. They are role models for the next generation and as generations and generations pass, the ideas of roles of a Disney Princess becomes different.

Classic Era:

These are your “reactionary” princess who saw a lot of action but didn’t do much about it. They are very dependant of basically everyone else and victimised a lot - feeding into the stereotypical “women”. Granted, this was princesses that represented the era that “girls should be seen and not heard.”

Snow White

Snow White is the first and original Disney Princess. Snow White is a beautiful young princess, described by her evil stepmother's Magic Mirror as having 'hair as black as ebony, lips as red as the rose, skin as white as snow' and also dubbed by the Mirror as the 'Fairest Of Them All'. Then, somewhere along the movie, she seeks refuge in the Seven Dwarfs, eats an apple from an insecure witch and is saved with a true love’s kiss. Disney regards Snow White as kind, sweet and respectful, encouraging children to, "be a friend to all," in the same way she is depicted in the film.

Cinderella Cinderella is the second Disney Princess. She is often considered the "Leader of the Disney Princesses". Forced into servitude by her evil stepmother, Lady Tremaine, and her two cruel stepsisters, Drizella and Anastasia, after her father's death, her only source of happiness was her animal friends, which consists of birds and mice. While scrubbing the floors of her late father's mansion, an invitation to the Prince's ball is delivered, inviting all of the eligible women to attend so that he can find a wife. And, you know the story. There’s a godmother, a clock, about a dozen of songs and a glass slipper thrown into there.

Aurora Aurora is the third Disney Princess. She first appeared in Disney's 16th animated feature film Sleeping Beauty (1959). To be perfectly honest, I actually forgot what this movie was about. Blah blah, blah, a princess was born. Blah, blah, blah, the Holy Trinity appears in a fairy form. Blah, blah, blah, she gets cursed how she’s going to prick her finger on her 18th birthday. Ouch. Blah, blah, blah - she does. Blah, blah, blah, prince charming comes with a true love's kiss. Oh, what an excellent plot convenience.

Renaissance era:

Then, Disney introduced these princesses that had more independence, more complexity and depth in their character - challenging social norms (well done for being bold Disney.) Sure, they still had their critics but not as much as the classic eras.

Arial:

Mermaid. Sees the human world. Trades for voice to an octopus in order to experience the human world. There’s a prince in there sure but still, we see a more feisty and independent woman who wants to take charge of her own fate. You go, Arial!

Belle:

Everyone knows her. Her story can be best summed up by this mantra - “don’t judge a book by its cover.” Pretty sure there’s a handsome beast in there (who she helps saves), talking objects and Emma Watson thrown in there. But really, Belle is an independent, intelligent, headstrong and courageous princess - again challenging society and social norms.

Jasmine:

There’s a genie. Three wishes. A castle. The songs are amazing. Jasmine, despite she’s so independent and headstrong still has red flash marks as she “seduced” the villain or something and still depends on a man. Though on the positive side, she does challenge authority. Actually, her dad. Actually, that might not be a good message to parents after all. Oh well, still a great fairy-tale from Disney.

Pocahontas:

If you ever want to see an inaccurate, loved-up, innocent version of racial domination, you got it in Pocahontas! But seriously, her independence and bravery need to be commended.

Mulan:

She also does not fit in with the expectations of a young Chinese girl of the time; despite her natural beauty, she is clumsy, outspoken, and independent rather than graceful, silent and demure. After her meeting with the matchmaker ended in chaos, the matchmaker claimed that even though she had the looks of a bride, she would never find a match. However, her courage, intelligence, and determination helped her through her adventures, in which she disguises herself as a male soldier in order to fight in the Chinese army in place of her wounded father.

Modern Era:

Get ready to see a storm of feisty and confident princesses who actually kick-ass!

Tiana:

Tiana offers a new perspective as simply a hard-working woman who bears no reliance on a man. She gets turned into a frog. Then becomes a human again. She then fulfills her dream to open a restaurant. She also does marry a prince but that’s not her intention in this movie - marrying a prince for her was just a “bonus.”

Rapunzel:

A princess. Long, blonde hair. Teams up with a thief called Flynn and go on a magical journey to see the lanterns and to escape the tower that her stepmother forces her to be in. We learn freedom.

Every girl’s dream. :)

Merida:

First Disney Princess to not have a love interest nor to sing in Brave. A huge achievement on its own from Disney. The best way of putting it: she is basically like Katniss Everdeen without actually competing in the Hunger Games and instead tries to reverse the spell that landed of her mother into a bear.

If you want to learn more about the history of Disney Princesses: I strongly recommend you to check this site :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Princess in which I got a lot of this information from.

As society progresses, our ideals for a Disney Princess changes. Who knows? Maybe we will have a LGBT+ Disney Princess, a plus-sized Disney Princess or even just an ordinary person - you don’t have to be royal to be a princess. (or something corny like that.)

Additionally, from the complaints Disney got about their line-up of Disney princesses, they teamed up with Kate Moss and created a poster called “The Princess Principles.”

It’s actually quite a clever advertisement endorsement. Checkmate, Disney. But you can’t deny, the poster DOES look pretty.

It actually sorts of makes sense. I would prefer to be blunt and say “thy shall not kill” but you know, each to their own.

Edit #1 - 26/06/2017: So, I was walking and I saw this awesome display board at my college. It was basically pictures of Disney Princesses with motivational quotes such as, “off to work we go!”, “you got to dig a little deeper”, “i am not a prize to be won” to show that Disney Princesses are role-models despite their heavy criticism (as we discussed the Classic Era). I feel like the need for this display board was mainly due to geographical factors. I live in a poverty-deprived area where a small number of people go to higher education and universities and such, and so, this display board was made just to inspire us - seeing that I attend an all-girls-school. I still have multiple theories in my mind about who was responsible for this display, none of which I confirmed. Either way, I sort of love this display board and the idea behind this was pretty damn cool.

MY FRIEND: What are you doing?

ME: Can you move?

MY FRIEND: Why?

ME: I’m trying to take a picture of a Tumblr post.

MY FRIEND: What’s Tumblr?

Me: *sighs*

Avoir un lieu magique et une journée incroyable!

-sexierthanaheartburn

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makemoneyonlineprofit-blog · 6 years

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The 8 Biggest Graphic Design Trends That Will Dominate 2019 [Infographic]

https://120profit.com/?p=2266&utm_source=SocialAutoPoster&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Tumblr Last year was all about taking risks in graphic design. But most of the graphic design trends I predicted last year have become mainstream. With brands like Apple, Google and other tech giants embracing bold and unique designs trends. So you’re going to need to take it up an extra notch, or three, to be seen and heard in 2019. That means more vivid colors palettes, bold fonts, and futuristic patterns. Luckily, this guide will help you stay ahead of the curve. Without further ado, here are the biggest graphic design trends for 2019: CREATE THIS TEMPLATE Click here to jump back to the biggest graphic design trends in 2018 Or click here to jump back to the biggest graphic design trends in 2017 1. Pops of Vivid Colors You may have noticed the world of design feels a little more colorful lately. You would be right. Splashes of electric yellows, bright corals and vivid blues are replacing the reserved colors of the past. More brands and designers are adding vivid colors to their palettes for 2019 and beyond. I love it–more color is always a plus in my books! If you aren’t familiar, vivid colors include lighter hues that are intense or attention-grabbing. Kinda like the blues, pinks, and reds in the example below: Source Or literally any of the colors used in this beautiful annual report: Source I believe that this shift towards more vivid colors is a continuation of the rejection of bland minimalism of the early 2010’s. Also, as brands proceed to fight for our attention, they must take bigger design risks. Last year was dominated by bold colors, this year very vivid and bright will reign supreme. After one of the largest trendsetting companies, Apple, added vivid colors to their designs a few weeks ago, I expect these colors to continue their takeover. As you can see, they used a bunch of vivid color palettes to announce the new iPad Pro…and it was a hit! We have already seen vivid colors start making their way into other Apple graphics as well: But I think this year these vivid colors will become part of their core creative and brand strategy. Plus these colors just look amazing on their, and other brands, ultra HD device screens. And once Apple does something, many brands will follow. Spotify is another big brand that is usually ahead of the most popular trends, and this year is no different. Bright, vivid colors have made their way into their marketing material: And on their wildly popular app: We saw Spotify embrace gradients, bold colors, and flat design before it was fashionable, and I see bright colors taking the same path. I do think it’s important to note that you don’t have to only use vivid colors. In fact, mixing those color with stronger or flatter colors will help you stand as well. Check out how well the colors come together in the presentation template below: CREATE THIS TEMPLATE It’s like the two trendy color palettes of the past few years teamed up to create something very unique. 2. Strong Typographic Focal Points Over the past few years, we have seen bold fonts and typefaces become the norm. From Adidas using it across all of their marketing: Source To Samsung, which illustrates nicely the move to more vivid colors this year as well: Source This bold font makes it easy to read the text on social media feeds and on mobile devices. As well as instantly projecting strength, innovation, and individuality. However, as you can see in all of these examples, the bold font is often the supporting partner to the other design elements. But this year the bold font will become the main focal point in a lot of graphics. Especially if your graphic only has a few seconds to grab the reader’s attention. Like with a poster, social media graphic or flyer. In these poster examples from the CTA18 conference you can see how powerful a bold font can be: Each of the font-heavy posters stands out like a beacon, compared to the other futuristic-looking posters. Even if you knew nothing about the conference or company it would pique your interest. This bold font was used throughout the rest of their conference material and it helps project a daring and confident message. All of this was achieved with a single bold font, and no supporting images. Another great example of using bold font comes from Nike at the Public School New York Streetball Classic: Source This bold font just screams strength. It’s extremely fitting for an athletic display. Plus those posters will definitely stand out on the busy streets of NYC. If you’re looking for something a little more colorful, check out the bold font used on this design project from CalArts: Source It dominates the graphics but fits extremely well with the vivid color palette. Could you imagine a minimalistic font having the same effect? I think not! This example is begging you to read more. It could even catch your eye from across a crowded room. I do think it’s important to point out that I’m not advocating only using text-heavy graphics. There should be some other interesting elements included, like in this gradient-filled festival flyer: Source This modern sales poster: CREATE THIS TEMPLATE Or this brilliant flamingo adorned hiring poster example: Source The main header and font of each example definitely grab your attention, but the other elements could be what catch your eye first. So don’t forget to include some of these interesting elements, even if you want the text to be your central focal point! The harmony between all of those elements could really make or break your designs in 2019. 3. Futuristic Influences Are Mainstream I guess since we are technically living in the future that so many 80’s films predicted, it’s time for our designs to reflect that. This means a lot of futuristic patterns, colors and ideas are about to dominate the design world for the next few years. We do have most of the futuristic devices they predicted in our pocket each day. So you might as well take advantage of that tech with your design work! I believe that this approach will help brands create unique content that will stand above the noise on social media. The visual rebrand of BBCTWO this year is a solid example of a large brand embracing this idea: Source They could have taken the boring route that so many brands take and just refresh their typeface or logo. But they have let the futuristic patterns, textures, and colors define their branding across all of their content. Additionally, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the rise of vivid colors matches up almost perfectly with the explosion of futuristic influences. They both have been used recently to stand out from the noise created by other brands. When futuristic designs and vivid colors are used together, they can create something really cool. For example, these album covers from the europe.collective project looks like they were ripped from a futuristic record store: Source Honestly, these are works of art and are likely to stick in someone’s mind a lot longer than some of the other album covers I have seen. Plus these futuristic examples will look amazing on your iPhone, Android or Mac screen. Or on the side of a building, like with this innovative event poster example: Source With futuristic designs, you can take a lot of risks and let your creativity run wild. Let’s break down some of the common elements of these futuristic designs: Bright color palettes: CREATE THIS TEMPLATE Gradients and other color transitions: Source Abstract patterns: Source “Glitches”: Source Holographic and reflective elements: Source Geometric influences: Source …and more! But since we don’t know what the future holds, there’s no right way to do it! So get out there and create something that looks like it was ripped straight out of your favorite science fiction movie. 4. Light and Dark Color Schemes You may have noticed that some of the largest companies are adding light and dark modes to their apps. Or embracing light and dark color schemes across different devices and avenues. This includes Apple recently adding Dark Mode for all of their Macs: Facebook just added a dark mode to its Messanger platform: But they are about a year behind Twitter, who integrated that feature all the way back in 2017: You may be asking why I’m highlighting these companies now. I do like talking about tech companies but that’s not the reason. Instead, I wanted to point out that the biggest brands in the world of tech are embracing this dual colored design trend. So it’s pretty easy to see the graphic design world wholeheartedly adopting it this year. These apps use different modes to make the apps more useful for the user depending on the situation. You can use this same flexible technique in your design work to instantly adapt to many mediums or screens. In fact, one of my favorite flyer examples uses a light and dark color scheme. Each fits the subject matter and event extremely well: Source Like I said above this dual color scheme makes the poster a lot more flexible. If you need to hang it up on a dark wall, the white colored poster is perfect. But it also won’t stand out if you need to place a poster on a blank office wall, which is where the black color scheme saves the day. In these beautiful poster examples, the designer used a duotone blue and white as the main color influences. But it has the same effect as the flyers above. Source With this kind of technique, you’re not putting all your eggs into one basket. Saving you from a ton of wasted time and effort. The light one could catch the eye of some people, but the dark one could do the same thing for another group. The change between light and dark graphics can be quite subtle. For example, in these graphics they only really change the borders from light to darker colors: Source It may seem like a lot of work to create multiple versions of your design but with the Venngage Brand Kit, you can switch between color palettes with a single click. You can also import your brand colors, fonts and logos into your Brand Kit. Then you can automatically apply them directly to your designs or templates. Like so: DESIGN SOMETHING You already have a battle-tested palette of colors that your audience recognizes. So why not use them! 5. Complex Gradients and Duotones Gradients are one of my favorite things to add to any design project to give it a little more depth. Plus, like some of the other rising graphic design trends, they look incredible on mobile devices. Last year I predicted that gradients would begin to take over the world. Especially after seeing large companies embrace it, like Microsoft: And the payment giant, Stripe: Even the designers over at Apple Music: With their vivid colors and futuristic patterns, they feel right at home with some of the other graphic design trends of 2019. However, I think this is the year the gradient grows up and is used in more ways than just a simple background. Just like any new trend, people are going to find unique ways to use it as time progresses. For example, take a look at how Fast Company uses gradients as color filters across their content: Source This simple overlay can instantly upgrade even the blandest stock photo. Also, this visual strategy can become part of their brand, making it easier for readers to spot their content. Overall it’s a simple way to differentiate from the competition that even the most novice designers can emulate. After seeing the rise of gradients last year, we added the gradient backgrounds to Venngage. Apply them to your designs in a single click: DESIGN SOMETHING If you’re looking for something a little more complex, check out these examples from the Adobe 99U Conference: Source In these examples, the gradients are the main focal point and dominate the graphics. In the past, they would have of being pushed to the background and only played a secondary role to another element. This approach takes a little more skill to master, but definitely will stand out: And if gradients were used to advertise, say, a conference on the future of design, I think it’s safe to say they are here to stay. If you want to blow readers out of the water, take note of these slides from the Ringling College Motion Design conference: Source These slides are literally called “Future Proof” and feel like they were pulled straight from an episode of Star Trek or Blade Runner. I could honestly look at them all day, or make them the background of my laptop. Actually, maybe I will! Duotones are another design tactic that fits extremely well with the other design trends. Most graphics that use duotones feel very futuristic and colorful, almost by definition. In the simplest terms, duotones are images that replace the whites and blacks in a photo with two colors. Like how the graphics designers at TQ used a blue for the dark parts, and a pink for the lighter ones: Source I like duotones because you can make almost any image match your company branding. And as you probably know, keeping things consistent is extremely important in the design world. Duotones aren’t as popular as they once were a few years ago. But they still can be used to create some interesting graphics, like these blog headers from The Health Diaries: Source Additionally, like gradients, they really pop when used on a white background, social media or a mobile phone. 6. New “Colorful Minimalism” I think it’s pretty common misconception that minimalist design only used black text and white backgrounds. Or another combination of the two. But minimalism is actually about paring down design to only the necessary components. It’s seen as the rejection of complicated and cluttered ideas. Many people have interpreted that as using only muted and neutral color palettes. Especially after the main tech giants used it for about a decade in their marketing. Source A lot of the graphic design trends I have witnessed over the past few years have been a reaction to that kind of minimalism. From the explosion of hand-drawn graphics, bold color schemes, and abstract patterns. Each of those trends is the opposite of what minimalism is at its core. Despite that, this year, some of those more complex graphic design trends are going to mix with traditional minimalism to create a new type of minimalism. One that is dominated by color and creativity, instead of blandness and conformity. For example, take a look at this product poster series from Nike: Source Each poster is traditionally minimalist, with not a lot of flair or unneeded elements. And without the vibrant gradients, it’s just another boring poster. But this simple color addition makes it very eye-catching, without abandoning the main tenets of minimalism. It masterfully walks the fine line between too dull and too complex. You can also take some of the ideas we have outlined in this article and integrate them into your minimalist projects. Things like a bold font, futuristic elements or a simple gradient can really upgrade your simple designs: Source Just be sure that they don’t dominate the graphic, and instead are used in a supporting role to other elements. These logo examples from Aula Visual are a perfect illustration of that idea: Source In each of the graphics, both a futuristic pattern and color are used to up add a little something extra to the brand mark. Without those elements, I think this would just be another boring logo. The same thing can be said about these graphics for Black[Foundry]: Source It honestly looks like they were able to combine almost all of the graphic design trends we have talked about so far with the minimalist ideals. We’ve got a bold font dominating a few graphics, a gradient peeking through and even a futuristic pattern making an appearance. Now if you don’t want to go the color gradient route, you can still inject some color into your designs. In this presentation template example, they use only three colors to build an interesting visual: CREATE THIS TEMPLATE The slides use exactly the same layout throughout the whole presentation, only swapping the colors on each. This minimalist approach keeps the presentation cohesive and eye-catching, all without being too complex. The designer used exactly what they needed to get their points across, no more and no less. And at its core, that’s what minimalism is all about. 7. Dynamic and Complicated Hand-Drawn Illustrations Custom or hand-drawn illustrations are an excellent way to make your visual content stand out. And stand above all the other brands that take the easy way out. That’s because no other brand is going to be able to exactly replicate these visuals. Competitors can copy your color scheme, your social media strategy and the stock photos you use. Plus, in the quest for a strong brand, unique content such as this is extremely valuable. That’s why I believe that hand-drawn graphics and illustration will continue to be a graphic design trend this year. However, like some of the other graphic design trends we saw roll over to this year, things are about to get a bit more complicated. Last year you could get away with using simple flat doodles, like the examples from MailChimp below: Source This year that’s not going to cut it! Because everyone else picked up on the simple sketch trend, it’s not unique anymore. Like I said above, you’re going to have to take it to the next level with your hand-drawn illustrations and visuals. Mailchimp, among others, has risen to this challenge and blown the doors off of it with their custom illustrations. Source These illustrations were added to literally every page of their website, and all social media accounts. And I kinda love it. Additionally, they used these custom illustrations to help inspire their customers to be themselves and embrace simplicity…as well as reject the overly polished company image that they see online every day. Their designers have always been known to take big risks, and this one seems to have paid off. It was talked about by every designer and marketer for weeks after the rebrand was unveiled. The project management masters over at Asana took a similar approach this year. Last year used the simple doodles and sketches throughout their marketing graphics. But this year they invested in some more dynamic illustrations across their social media accounts: Source I like that these illustrations look like they were all created by the same designer, which is very difficult sometimes. Especially when they have a whole team of designers working on one project. This method makes each share or email from them look like it came from a single voice, that their readers can easily recognize. In this noisy world that we all live in, that can be a huge benefit. Also, it’s nice to see them using some very vivid colors in their designs! At Venngage we got the memo as well when we created this fun Halloween infographic: VIEW THE FULL INFOGRAPHIC One of our designers created each of the illustrations from scratch, and it makes me smile each time. There are a ton of similar Halloween infographics in the world, but ours is incredibly remarkable because of the custom illustrations. To conclude, if you’re looking for a little more inspiration to create your own illustrated masterpieces, I would check out these examples from The New Yorker: Source And the perennial innovators over at Slack: Source They actually were one of the first companies that I noticed creating these works of art. And they have been creating amazing illustrations for their content ever since! 8. Authentic and Genuine Stock Photos As you have probably noticed many brands are creating some very creative designs to seem more genuine. Or to make them feel more authentic, instead of a faceless corporation. This push into the more real and genuine will be seen in the type of stock photos they use this year as well. I feel that a lot of stock photos have become too professional, polished and vague. In their quest to reach as many people as possible, these photographers choose a safe subject. Overly edited photos are also out this year, readers really want more genuine and authentic looking photos of people. The viewer should be able to see themselves reflected in the photo. These new stock photos look like they were taken with someone’s personal camera or phone. Kinda like the examples of people below: Source These examples honestly look like they were taken by a bunch of friends hanging out, not by a professional. The same thing can be said about these photos as well! In each of these free stock photos, the colors look real and not like it was overly edited: Almost like something you would see in your Instagram feed from your cousin that travels too much. And I was able to find those examples relatively easy, so it baffles me when brands all use the same generic photo. Those ultra-generic pictures that might relate to the content should be avoided this year. Like this example, which has been used by almost every tech company at least once: As a reader, this photo tells me nothing about your content because it’s so general! Instead, shoot for photos that help you tell a visual story and add to the narrative. Instead of just filling an open space on your blog or social media feed! For instance, compared to the example above, these photos would work much better in a tech-focused blog article: Like I said previously, these photos depict a real scene that you could put yourself into. And they feel like they were snapped in the moment. Not meticulously planned like some of the examples below: Ugh, that fist bump photo makes me cringe a little bit. Now in my experience, the laziest content creators love the generic and overtly planned stock photos. Ones that took them a few seconds to find, and have already been used by millions of people. I hate those kinds of stock photos. I mean, if you can’t take the time to create or find a better stock image, why should I take my time to read it? I think many of you will agree with that statement. So in 2019 don’t be one of those creators, instead strive to be more weird, unique and genuine with your visuals! And best of all, you can find these great examples and millions of more stock photos for FREE on Venngage now: DESIGN SOMETHING NOW Want to learn how you can incorporate stock photos seamlessly into your designs? Read our step-by-step design guide. Now that you have seen what will dominate graphic design trends in 2019, why don’t you take a look at the trends that were popular in 2018! The biggest graphic design trends for 2018: GET THIS INFOGRAPHIC TEMPLATE 1. Multiple brand color schemes Traditionally, companies have a few colors that they use across all of their branding and design work. This helps people recognize them out in the world, on social media and other places online. But I think this design “tradition” is going to be completely upended as brands look for more ways to stand out in 2018 and beyond. In fact, companies rebranding with a plethora of colors schemes is one of the first graphic design trends that I see really taking off. Spotify started doing this a few years ago in all facets of their design but they were one of only a few. Now they have such a strong visual brand that I know something came from Spotify almost instantly. Dropbox also decided to completely ditch their old color palette in 2017 to help update their brand and reach. Usually, a rebranding effort updates the font or graphic of a company logo, but this one was completely different. Instead of changing their logo design, which everyone already knew, they added a ton of new official brand colors to use with it. They built this new branding to show that great things can happen when diverse minds work together. And I hate to say it because some people were not big fans, but I kinda love the rebrand. They already had a logo that everyone knew, but now they have a ton of new ways to use it. When you are a massive company like Dropbox that needs to appeal to almost every industry, this kind of flexibility is ideal. I also think that this change really reflects their growth as a company from a free place to store your school paper, to something that connects the creatives of the world. Just take a look at how they evolved their social media presence from last year: To this year with the rebrand: It’s almost like night and day. Who would have thought that breaking design conventions would have allowed for so much creative freedom? However, I do think that this kind of rebrand can only work with a company that is as big and recognizable as Dropbox. Or eBay, which actually rebranded a few months before Dropbox. In their rebrand, eBay also decided to add a ton of new colors, while keeping their recognizable logo: If we want to compare the two rebrands, I think that eBay would win. That isn’t because I was not impressed by Dropbox’s efforts, I just think that it fits eBay’s core business and products better. Plus, they are using the rebrand across all parts of their platform. It’s a good idea to consider multiple brand color schemes if you want to create a perfect E-commerce website. The designers at eBay have used the color upgrade to unify millions of products across their site. Take a look at the examples below: They may not all share the same colors, but they have the same feel. Even though it’s a mix of pastels and bold colors, the site still looks incredibly clean. Additionally, they have found a way to inject color into a place that is usually boring and bland: the background. This subtle boost of color makes almost everything they share on social media stand out from the rest. Are you seriously going to be able to scroll past this pastel mixer? I think not. If you need help picking your picking new colors, read out in-depth guide to picking color schemes. 2. Color gradients are making a comeback Whenever I think of color transitions and gradients, I can’t help but remember the bad word art from Microsoft Word over the past 20ish years. As kids, we thought this was the best way to make your report on dinosaurs look professional. And I think that we were on to something back then. Because in 2018 color gradients will be literally everywhere, from websites to Twitter headers, and even presentations. Instagram, always ahead of the curve, has used it in their branding and logos for the past few years, actually: Now the rest of the world is starting to catch up. One of the best examples I have seen of gradients being used comes from Mixpanel, an analytics company. As you can see below, they have adopted a gradient as the main background of their site: This is a common way for sites to keep a simple background, and add a few flourishes. Otherwise, you’re stuck with a pretty boring single-colored background. What I haven’t seen much of is gradients being used in every piece of visual content, like Mixpanel did: This wholehearted adoption of color gradients gives the company a lot of creative freedom, without straying too far from their brand. Because in this case, multiple color gradients is their branding. The graphs and charts are by far my favorite use of color gradients. It adds that little something extra and helps them stand out from the noise. These principles are similar to website design must-haves. A few other large tech brands are bringing gradients back into their designs. Like Stripe: Polaroid, with a more subtle gradient: And even Skype: But my favorite way to use a gradient is by overlaying it on an image or creating a duotone. Kinda like what The Next Web did below: It adds so much extra power to the image. All this with a simple gradient, a design trick the internet loves to hate. But as we’ve seen in these examples, they are a great way to add a little bit of eye-catching color to your design. Plus, they can help improve any image or stock photo. 3. Better branded social media images Last year I talked a little bit about using more authentic photos in all parts of your design and marketing strategies. This year, I really want you to focus on extending that trend to your social shares as well. Readers and consumers use social media to distract themselves from what is happening in their life. They don’t want to see a tenuously relevant stock photo that you picked in two seconds for the sake of having an image. That shows readers that the person who produced the content didn’t care enough about their work to find an impactful image. If the person who created the content doesn’t care, why should you? For example, if you were scrolling through your Twitter feed, would you click on the tweet that used this image? Or this one from Cubeit? Now, technically either would work for the same tweet, but the one from Cubeit is the clear winner. By a mile. How do I know this? Because that image made me stop in my furious scrolling tracks and want to read the article. I must sound like a broken record by now because of how often I talk about not using bad stock images in your design work. But I also believe that this is one of the easiest ways for your brand to stand out on social media. The image will be the first thing the readers are going to see on social media, and maybe then they’ll read the text. Your content could be great but it will never get the chance because you picked a bad featured image. Even something as simple as what Quuu did below looks a hundred times better than a stock image of a computer: One of my favorite examples of this trend comes from Moz: They attach a face to almost all of their tweets. Instead of a generic stock photo, you see a friendly and luminizing face, from the person who wrote the article, shining back at you. They also use Rand Fishkin, in as many images as they can. This is not only a great branding play, it also humanizes the company as a whole. When I think of Moz now, I don’t think of a faceless company–I think of an innovative person. 4. Unconventional colors everywhere As we have seen so far, 2018 is the year of taking risks in your design. One of the best places to start taking risks is in the colors that you use. That doesn’t mean that you need completely rethink your brand’s color palettes, like some of the brands I’ve mentioned already. Instead, be ready to inject some more risky colors in your design projects this year. Bold colors are the most common driving force that we have seen behind each of the design trends this year. I wouldn’t call any of the following colors traditional in any sense of the word: Sticking to the traditional corporate blue palette isn’t going to cut it this year. Also, if you noticed, minimalism and neutral color schemes are on its way out. Instead, I recommend going a little off the rails with the colors you pick–within reason. Find a few colors that you can call your “unofficial brand colors” and use them across all your projects. This way, you can do something new and exciting but still stay close to your core values in other places. A great example of using bold color comes from the sports world, in Bleacher Report. They are in an extremely competitive space, fighting with thousands of sports writers for your eyeballs. But they consistently use bold, bright colors in their designs to differentiate their content from those others. Because they do it so well, you can quickly spot a Bleacher Report article or Tweet out in the world. Another example is Fast Company, who have taken to using more non-traditional colors in their magazine cover designs to entice readers. Like Bleacher Report, they’re also using bright and bold colors to stand out in a very competitive space: print journalism. With each issue, they are fighting with thousands of competitors to get the attention readers. And that isn’t an easy task. Even online they’re using color to add something extra to their design work. With the simple addition an interesting color–or five–they made each graphic much more captivating. Now, I hate to bring Spotify up again, but they have effectively been disrupting the space for the past few years. You can definitely see this in their color usage lately as well: I have talked a few times before about being to spot something from Spotify just from their non traditional color usage. Especially in their most recent Wrapped experience, which shows your listening habits for the past year: For a few weeks after they launched this promotion, I was even able to spot other people’s lists, just based on the colors they used. If that isn’t an effective use of color, I don’t know what is. 5. Bold & handwritten fonts dominate What makes you a good graphic designer? Another way to add some eye-catching features to your designs is to use some bold or handwritten fonts. This is another trend that seems to come from the design world, moving away from boring minimalism as a whole. Bold and handwritten fonts are going to stand out against the simple or overused fonts that your competitors are using. And they will help your content jump off the screen on social media–whether it’s infographics for your blog, Facebook ads, or motivational quotes on your social media. Kinda like my alma mater, the University of Arkansas, does below: They are definitely fans of bold fonts, however what they are not fans of is winning apparently. Now, instead of looking at more examples who only use bold or handwritten fonts, I thought it would be interesting to find ones that effortlessly use both. A great example comes from the shoe giant, Adidas. They may actually be my new favorite company in 2018. I mean have you seen those NMDs and Ultraboosts?! Across their site, they use bold fonts in their graphics or text, which looks great: And when you jump over on social media, bold handwritten fonts take over: But neither feels out of the ordinary for a brand like Adidas. Everything they create and share feels natural because they have created such a strong visual brand over the past few years. I believe that this adoption of ultra bold and handwritten fonts coincided with their plan to become a more fashion-forward brand. That choice has helped really sell the mystique of these new type of shoes they are creating. Another incredible example of using both bold and handwritten fonts together comes from Adobe: With this Digital Marketing Report, they are able to seamlessly blend together both bold and handwritten fonts, in addition to using some awesome gradients, GIFs and unique colors. In fact, Adobe seems to be embodying all of the graphic design trends I’ve mentioned so far. If the leader in design is using them, I think they’re a safe bet. 6. More custom illustrations Over the past year or so I have seen designers move away from cookie-cutter graphics to more custom icons and illustrations. And I could not be happier. This movement started to take form last year with the rise of hand-drawn illustrations and icons. But these illustrations and icons will become even more unique in 2018, as brands look to differentiate themselves even more. I mean, look at how Strikingly has used the illustrations to make their blog headers look amazing: No one else is going to be able to replicate that, especially with a stock image. So instead of using a boring photo, I would recommend creating some custom graphics. Like Discord has done below: As a tech company that caters to gamers and techies, those icons fit them perfectly. I mean just take a look at their homepage: That is a well thought out brand! Also, I believe that this trend is another rejection of the overly clean and somewhat boring design “rules” that dominated the past decade. Now, instead of following those rules, designers are making their own. If you need help there are also many free online graphic design courses available. There’s also Microawesome, a design service aimed towards providing short-term design work at low costs. You can clearly see this with the rise of custom illustrations and icons being used across the spectrum. From the simple hand-drawn icons that MailChimp uses: To the one-of-a-kind illustrated images in InVision blog posts: And all the places in between, like in this year-end report from First Round Capital: If you are looking for something that looks a little more like art, I would check out the examples from Slack below: These are incredibly interesting designs to look at, and they will stand out from the riff-raff of social media. This also fits their almost laid back “making work better” vibe that they use in all of their marketing and product materials. Additionally, when someone takes this much time and effort to create a featured image, you know the content is going to be good. They are able to use the image to make a first impression with their audience almost instantly. That’s why I’m pushing for more graphics like this in 2018 and beyond! People are looking for more authenticity in all parts of their digital life and this is a great way to appeal to that. Instead of using a bad stock image, use an awesome illustration or icon. 7. Better GIFs, less reactions One of my favorite things to come out of the internet–maybe ever–are GIFs. I use them on a daily basis to communicate with my friends and coworkers. They are perfect little ways to show how you are feeling. For me, it’s usually this one: They are also used by your favorite hip brand to show they are still cool. Using reaction GIFs and such are great to send on Slack or Tweet to your friends. But in 2018 your GIF usage as a brand or company needs to be taken to the next level. Most people would also recognize a GIF as the reaction ones we are all so fond of. But they can be used for so much more. Like as infographics that actually add to your share or article in a meaningful way. One of the best examples of using GIFs in this manner comes from the sports world, actually. My hometown Kansas City Chiefs are big users of GIFs on game days and it truly adds to the experience. Now, I usually don’t have time to watch a whole game, but I love that I can quickly scroll through my Twitter feed and get an update. Those updates stick out more than a simple text update would. They may not be the most breathtaking GIFs but they help people keep track of what is going on. It helps foster a conversation with their audience and that should be one of your goals when using GIFs this year. Don’t just slap a reaction GIF on a share or article, because someone will laugh and move on with their day. Another way to use GIFs this year is to replace your featured images and blog headers. Like in this one from Axios about nuclear tax credits: That will definitely grab someone’s attention, no matter the platform. But just because I’m recommending that you upgrade your GIFs, doesn’t mean they all have to be bland or serious. They can still have that element of silliness that GIFs are known for. To see what I’m talking about, check out this GIF from Muz.li: And here is another similar one from UX Planet: It’s simple, well designed and relatable. Plus, it will stand out from all the other static images in someone’s feed. If you can create and share GIFs that marry those three ideas together nicely, you will be set in 2018. 8. Cinemagraphs are gaining more traction After talking about GIFs, it’s time to talk about their more refined cousins: cinemagraphs. Cinemagraphs are basically GIFs or videos that have been completely frozen, except for a tiny area of subtle movement. Here is one of my favorite examples: I’m guessing you have more experience with GIFs. But cinemagraphs are going to continue to gain ground in 2018. Especially with more design and tech-focused companies in the world. Like my friend’s podcast, the Pitch, which has a large audience of tech and startup aficionados: The subtle changes in the stars may not seem like much, but they definitely add a little something that people will stop and take a look at. Cinemagraphs are less obtuse than a GIF or a video, and can still be used in all parts of your marketing or design work. Because of that somewhat subtle movement, I believe that they are more eye-catching than a video or static image. Plus they can be little works of art that bring customers to your post or share. Design that fights back The driving force behind this year’s graphic design trends is the rebellion of designers against the plain, white color schemes and sparse aesthetics that the titans in the tech industry have pushed for the past few years. Now we will see designer take a whole new approach. It will be intense, innovative and beautiful. I mean, look at this year’s explosion of colors! As we have seen in previous years, most of the innovating will be done by the top tech companies. They are the ones that have the bandwidth, money and talent to test a bunch of ideas to see what works best. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t implement some of these in your design. Remember, 2018 is all about taking risks! I hope these tips will guide you in taking on some new design challenges and getting ahead of your competitors. Check out last year’s graphic design trends below. The biggest graphic design trends of 2017 GET THIS INFOGRAPHIC TEMPLATE 1. Louder and brighter colors Over the past few years, many tech leaders used muted, safe and easy to digest colors. This was in an attempt to create a very clean and controlled design scheme. It was almost an attempt to show people that the sleek, functional future they have seen in science fiction movies was already here. But now that everyone and their mom have seen this design style work for Apple, the copycats have killed the power it once held. Now, in 2017, there will be a shift away from neutral colors like whites, grays and black, to bolder and brighter colors. Some companies are already doing it and have been for a while, like the music wizards over at Spotify. In fact, they are already leading the pack, using bold colors mixed with professionally edited photos to create in-your-face designs. This kind of color usage has become part of their brand, which means that their images are instantly recognizable. And when you are fighting for real estate on social feeds, powerful branding like this will help you win 2017. Just because many companies will be ditching their boring color schemes in 2017 doesn’t mean there needs to be a color revolution in your company. Some companies will be adding just a bit of color, and it will make all the difference. Using bold color accents will also help many brands cling to their minimalist roots. By infusing bright colors with traditional neutral backgrounds, companies can give their branding a fresh new look without straying too far from what made them great. For example, we already saw this type of redesign from Instagram a few months ago. This simple redesign helped bring them into a whole new era and unified all of the different apps under one color. And just like with Spotify, this type of bold color usage is recognizable across the web. A large driving force behind the trend of bold and bright color usage in design comes from Google’s Material Design. Their design language focuses on flat, organized, and intuitive design. They use “unexpected and vibrant” colors, as well as fonts and images that are as functional as they are pleasing to the eye. Actually, a lot of the things that will be trending in 2017 are influenced by the adoption of the Material Design principles. We took their advice when designing this graphic to promote a new ebook. It has been an insanely popular featured image! If you need some great examples of color palettes that fit this bold scheme, check out this article that helps you choose the best colors for your designs. Don’t be afraid to use colors that contrast starkly against one another. GET MY INFOGRAPHIC TEMPLATE 2. Bold typography In 2017, bold typography will also fight against the ever-dwindling attention spans of readers, and the saturation of content. Big and daring fonts will be used to grab the eye. One of my favorite examples of this would have to be Wired. They use a mix of fonts to emphasize individual titles and establish a hierarchy of information on the page. Just take a look at some of the examples from their homepage below: A great example of using in-your-face fonts to grab the reader’s attention on social media comes from HubSpot. They make sure the text is front and center, with the graphic used as support: HubSpot know that the time we allocate to digest a tweet is nearing zero each year. They combine concise, punchy copy with bold fonts to capture your attention. Additionally, the shift to mobile and extremely high definition screens will also increase the need for bold fonts. Obviously, more and more people will be using their phones to get content, and the way that content is presented will need to keep up. Buffer uses strong headers in the body of their articles, not just at the beginning, to give them a backbone and make it easier to read across different devices. I would recommend using this approach to help people navigate long reads, no matter the screen size. We also took a similar approach, when creating this infographic template. Mixing bold font choices with interesting colors to create an eye-catching graphic: GET MY TEMPLATE 3. Google Fonts I have been using Google Fonts for a while now because they are so versatile. If I need to design one thing online and then add it to my slide deck, I am confident the fonts will work together. And they play nice with about every website you build. Oh, and did I mention most of these 810 different fonts are free to use? Yeah, people like free. And they like things that are insanely easy to use. Like this example that uses a mix of a few popular Google Fonts: GET MY INFOGRAPHIC TEMPLATE Some of our most popular fonts on Venngage are bold Google Fonts, like Roboto from above or Open Sans. 4. Authentic photos As the amount of content created each year continues to increase, the need for quality images has increased as well. And to maximize the shelf life of some of these images, the creators have had to make them as generic as possible. The only problem is that the best generic images get overused by everyone. If you have been active in tech or marketing scene lately I am guessing you have seen the following image: It has been used in landing pages on, blog headers, and even some Instagram posts. To be fair, I even used it for one of the sites I was building a few years ago. But because of the popularity of this image and other stock images like it, the authenticity has plummeted. The need for clean and perfect images in everything has only exasperated the problem as well. As reader seeing this image for the hundredth time, I would think that the writer or creator does not care about making their work original. So why should I read it? That is why you need to start using authentic images that represent your brand. Stop using the most popular images and start making some of your own. I am guessing everyone on your team has a camera phone in their pocket. Why aren’t you using them? Snap a few photos of your product, office or some fun pictures of your logo and use those instead. Or if someone on your team is a budding photographer, give them a day or two to shoot some images that you can use for a year! For example, we took a picture of some of our employees for our new website and could not be happier. By doing this, we added the human element back to our images, that so many of these stock photos are missing. 5. Hand-drawn graphics and icons The need for more authentic images will also influence icons and graphics. Recently we have seen brands embrace this wholeheartedly as they look to differentiate themselves from the pack. This will also add a personal or fun element back into your design or content work. And this can’t be done with off-the-shelf icons or graphics. Many may see this trend as childish or unprofessional, but it will definitely help you stand out online. Like many of the graphic design trends in 2017, this is a push back on the clean and almost clinical nature of design in recent years. For example, Dropbox has adopted the use of hand-drawn illustrations in everything they do. It has become part of their brand now and is easily recognizable. Plus, it puts the user at ease, appeals to the child in all of us, and makes the product seem more accessible. This is especially helpful if you are a large tech company like Dropbox. Another great example of hand-drawn icon comes from Casper, a mattress company. They use illustrations on almost all of their landing pages Like this interesting one below: MailChimp also got into the spirit and used hand-drawn illustrations in their 2016 annual report! And finally, for one more GREAT example, we look to Moz. They use illustrations in their blog headers, like this one: We also have introduced more hand-drawn illustrations in Venngage as well. I am particularly a fan of some of the ones below: GET MY ICONS And our love for hand-drawn icons sometimes makes its way into other projects as well: 6. Minimalism that goes back to its roots If you were to describe what minimalism was to a stranger, you would probably talk about a lack adornment in design, with a focus on functionality. You would probably also think of a neutral color palette of blacks, grays, and whites. It seems that the true spirit of minimalism–pared down, functional design elements–has been lost and, instead, replaced with boring black and white color schemes. I suspect this was done to make up for the lack of processing power and screen size on mobile devices. In 2017, that will all change. This is the year that minimalism, hopefully, gets its groove back. And that involves using a lot more color. Mobile devices are now just as powerful as computers and some even have better screens. One of my favorite minimalist-influenced designs would have to be Medium’s logo. They were able to include a bunch of different colors but still create a very minimalist logo. Another logo redesign that influenced minimalism with color happened a few years ago with Google, who happens to be a catalyst for many of these new graphic design trends. They shaved a little bit off their typeface but also debuted a whole new “G” logo, which I am still a fan of. Everything about that screamed minimalist but there was not one mention of it in the press because true minimalism has been lost to the general public. Because it did not look like it was created before color was invented and only used one shape, it was not a minimalist logo. Instead, it was more colorful and popped off the page–but it was still a minimalist logo. And following that redesign, like so many things before, people followed Google’s lead. We have even started emulating a more minimalist style with our featured images for blogs. The simple design clearly communicates the message of the graphic. 7. Useful GIFs Everyone (well, almost everyone) loves GIFs. They are the perfect little conversation helper that expresses emotion when text won’t do the trick. Plus, they do not require any special software to run, usually have a small file size, and can be embedded just about anywhere. So they are better than videos and images, in most cases when loading time or data usage needs to be minimized. And I think that versatility is what will make them even better and more useful in 2017. One of my favorite ways to use GIFs is as featured images for your blog posts or article. Instead of using boring stock images, invest a few minutes of your time in creating a GIF like the one below: It does not have to be a work of art, but it definitely will draw attention to your post when shared on social media. One of the best examples of using a GIF as a blog header is this post on The Next Web 8. Duotones Duotones are simply the combining of two colors on an image, usually using very bright or contrasting colors. They require a bit of design work but it is most definitely worth it. Only a skilled designer can really create an amazing duotone. It is honestly past my skill level but that does not mean you should not include it in your 2017 design plans! Spotify was one of the first to really push this type of design into all parts of their branding, and many other brands have followed their lead since. Like below: They have been able to use this approach to color to stand out in not only the streaming space but music in general. And you can use it in the same way for your industry! This bold use of contrasting color will also bring some originality into your design. And hopefully make it pop on the white backgrounds of the many social media sites. If you need some help getting your graphic design skills up to par, I recommend these articles: The Ultimate Guide to Designing Epic Social Media Graphics How to Make an Infographic in 5 Steps (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.0"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); 120profit.com - https://120profit.com/?p=2266&utm_source=SocialAutoPoster&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Tumblr

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most-palone · 6 years

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Get to know me tag

Tbh i’m just bored as hell on this friday night and don’t feel like looking for jobs lol so here we go. I legit looked for tags to fill out so I snagged this from @our-dazed-sims

Name: Elisabeth

Nicknames: Liz/Lis, Liza, E-beth to a very select few

Gender: female

Star sign: taurus

Height: 5′7 1/2″ but tbh I just round up to 5′8″

Sexuality: straight

Hogwarts house: Hufflepuff bebe

Dream trip: Australia & New Zealand

Why I made a tumblr: I realized that I went through a period of only reblogging stuff related to Post on my personal blog & thought i’d just go ahead and dedicate a whole blog to my boiiii

Dog or cat person: Dog

When I made my blog: April (?) 2017,

5 THINGS YOU’LL FIND IN MY ROOM:

clothes on the floor bc no matter how many times I put my clothes away, I just dump everything on the floor at the end of the day instead of taking 30 seconds to put them in my hamper

a pineapple pinata hanging from the ceiling

A pretty sweet poster of some kittens in a jack-o-lantern

a fake succulent

a necklace rack full of stuff that i never wear bc i’m too lazy to accessorize

Followers: 722 & idek how tbh. Thanks I guess

5 THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY:

Post Malone & his music (obvi), shitty puns, getting sweaty after a workout, salt and vinegar chips, & sunsets

5 THINGS I’M CURRENTLY INTO: (okay aside from Post)

Only wearing sports bras instead of regular bras w/ cups, 5SOS’ new album, cold brew, waking up early-ish, & almond butter

5 THINGS ON MY TO DO LIST:

find a job so I can quit my shitty retail job

buckle down & stop bingeing so I can try & lose weight lol

stop using lol & haha as filler words

buy a cold brew maker so I can stop throwing my money away at Starbucks for a cup with like 60% ice

listen to the new songs I got on Apple Music bc I want to get to know the new music I got but I at the moment, I legit only listen to Beerbongs & Bentelys over and over

I’m supposed to tag 10 followers I want to get to know better so just to throw some names out there, like no pressure or anything. It just feels weird to scoop up a tag that I wasn’t tagged in & not keep it going? Eh, whatever.

#get to know me #why did i waste my time on this

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itswingedcollectoranchorfan · 7 years

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Taylor Swift

About

Taylor Swift is an American singer-songwriter who is known for her best-selling country pop songs and a massive fan following among the tween and teen demographics. On the web, the pop star has been often discussed on celebrity gossip and entertainment news sites, mainly due to her high-profile relationships, while being targeted by trolls and anti-fans seeking to taint her innocent public image.

Online History

In early 2002, Swift’s family launched her official home page on TaylorSwift.com, hosting MP3 files of Swift singing cover songs and information about upcoming performances. By age 12, Swift began writing her own songs and within two years, Swift and her family had moved from their home in Pennsylvania to Nashville, Tennessee so she could pursue a music career. She released her self-titled debut album in 2006 when she was 16, which has since been certified Gold in the UK, Platinum in Australia and Canada and 5x Platinum in the United States. Of the album’s 11 songs, Swift wrote three of them herself, including the third single “Our Song” (shown below), whose music video has been viewed nearly 70.7 million times on YouTube.

In November 2007, a Facebook fan page was created for Swift, gaining more than 49.5 million likes as of October 2013. TaylorFan.org, the first major fan site for her music, was launched in April 2008. Swift’s official VEVO YouTube channel was launched on May 11th, 2009, attracting more than 6.2 million subscribers and 1.7 billion views, averaging nearly 1.1 million views per day as of October 2013. In February 2010, one of the first single topic Tumblr blogs dedicated to sharing photos of the singer daily was created, followed by the launch of a fan-made subreddit that March.

On June 21st, 2015, Swift posted an open letter to Apple on Tumblr about why she would be withholding her album 1989 from their upcoming music streaming service Apple Music. In the letter, Swift criticizes the company for refusing to pay artists for music streamed during the planned free trial period (shown below).

That morning, the Tumblr post reached the front page of the /r/Music subreddit. Several hours later, Apple senior vice president of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue posted a tweet announcing the company had reversed its decision and would pay artists for all music streamed during the free trial (shown below, left). Additionally, Cue tweeted an acknowledgement to Swift’s and indie artist’s concerns (shown below, right).

That day, Swift tweeted that she was “elated and relieved” and thanked fans for their words of support. In response to the reversal, many Twitter users tweeted jokes asking Swift to solve their other problems, including wiping student loan debt and ending racism (shown below).

Also on June 21st, the photography blog Junction10 Photography published an “open response” to Swift, accusing the pop star of hypocrisy for making photographers sign away the rights to their work. In the coming days, many news outlets published articles about open letter, including The Daily What, BBC, The New York Times, CNN, Forbes, The Guardian, Time and Wired.

Feud With Nicki Minaj

After MTV announced the nominations for their annual Video Music Awards in July 2015, which included Swifts video for “Bad Blood” for Music Video of the Year, rapper Nicki Minaj posted a series of tweets criticizing the award ceremony for nominating videos featuring “women with very slim bodies.” The tweets resulting in a short Twitter feud between Minaj and Swift, in which Swift later apologized for misinterpreting Minaj’s intention.

Groping Trial

In June 2013, Disc Jockey David Mueller allegedly physically assaulted Taylor Swift by reaching under her skirt and grabbing her buttocks during a meet-and-greet photo op. Mueller first sued the singer in 2015 on the basis of slander and for getting him fired from his job at KYGO. Swift quickly counter-sued, stating that Mueller had physically assaulted her while they were posing for a photo and also denied her involvement in his firing.

The incident first received public attention when Taylor Swift was dismissed from Jury duty August 2016, after she said she was unable to be an impartial jury member in an aggravated rape, kidnapping and domestic abuse trial due to her own experience with sexual harassment.

The Mueller v. Swift trial began on August 7th, 2017, with testimonies from both Swift and Mueller. Mueller denied groping her and sued for 3 million in damages while Swift counter sued for sexual assault and a symbolic $1 in damages in the civil suit.

The meet and greet photo of Taylor Swift, David Mueller, and his then girlfriend from 2013 leaked on October 2016 and is a key evidential piece in the trial. In the photo, Mueller’s hand appears to be under her skirt where he allegedly groped her.

On August 10th, 2017, Swift testified and said “he was in the process of grabbing my ass, yes.” when asked about the photo in her testimony. Swift continued describing the incident in her testimony saying "He latched onto my bare ass cheek, and I lurched away uncomfortably.” “The first few milliseconds I thought it was a mistake, but his hand would not let go of my ass cheek.” "It was a definite grab. A very long grab.” said the pop star. Swift’s bodyguard and photographer were key witnesses in the trial, saying they saw Mueller touch her inappropriately.

On August 14th, 2017, Swift won her $1 countersuit against David Mueller in the Denver, Colorado federal court. Swift issued the following statement after winning, “I want to thank Judge William J. Martinez and the jury for their careful consideration, my attorneys Doug Baldridge, Danielle Foley, Jay schaudies and Katie Wright for fighting for me and anyone who feels silenced by a sexual assault, and especially anyone who offered their support throughout this four-year ordeal and two-year long trial process.” Swift continued, “I acknowledge the privilege that I benefit from in life, in society and in my ability to shoulder the enormous cost of defending myself in a trial like this. My hope is to help those whose voices should also be heard. Therefore, I will be making donations in the near future to multiple organizations that help sexual assault victims defend themselves."

Swift received overwhelming support on social media with fans praising her for speaking up against sexual assault. Swift hopes the trial “serves as an example to other women who may resist publicly reliving similar outrageous and humiliating acts” On twitter, celebrities including Kesha, Nelly Furtado, and James Corden shared supportive messages to the pop star.

Fandom

Taylor Swift’s Biggest Fan Contest

Taylor Swift’s Biggest Fan Contest was an online voting contest held by Boston radio station Kiss 108 FM in July 2013. Fans were encouraged to submit 137-character essays about why they were Swift’s biggest fan, which would then be voted on by other internet users in order to win a meet-and-greet with the pop star at a local concert. An entry written by 39-year-old Charles Z. was linked to 4chan on July 15th by an anonymous user who asked other posters to spare a vote for him. By July 16th, Charles Z. had taken the lead, however, Kiss 108 cancelled the event on July 19th, stating that it had been “compromised.”

“Aryan Goddess”

In 2013, Pinterest user Emily Pattinson began posting troll quotes that feature images of Swift captioned with various quotes attributed to Adolf Hitler (shown below). On August 30th, BuzzFeed published an article about the Pinterest page, followed by the Internet humor blog Smosh the next month.

On August 20th, 2014, the white supremacist news site The Daily Stormer published an article titled “Aryan Goddess Taylor Swift Accused of Racism for Behaving Like an Ape in a Music Video.” On December 15th, 2015, The Daily Stormer referred to Swift as “an Aryan Supergoddess” in an article titled “Memification: Top Feminist Calls Taylor Swift a Nazi.” On March 12th, 2016, a Facebook page titled “Taylor Swift for Fascist Europe” was launched, gathering more than 20,800 likes in the next three months. On May 11th, Breitbart published an article by technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos, which outlined how Swift gained a significant online following among members of the alt-right. On May 23rd, Vice published an article titled “Can’t Shake it Off: How Taylor Swift Became a Nazi Idol.” The following day, NPR published an article about Swift’s white supremacist fandom titled “Taylor Swift, Aryan Goddess?”

Taylor Swift’s Belly Button

Taylor Swift’s Belly Button is a popular topic of online discussions and obsession among the fans of the singer and her belly button, mainly due to the celebrity’s long-standing reluctance towards wearing clothes that expose her navel. The topic was first brought to mass attention in August 2014 after New York Magazine published an article titled “There’s No Proof Taylor Swift Has a Belly Button."

Kanye Interrupts

Kanye Interrupts, also known as I’mma Let You Finish, refers to the on-air mishap that occurred during Swift’s acceptance speech for Best Female Video during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards when Kanye West stormed on stage, taking the microphone from her to declare Beyonce had “one of the best music videos of all time.” After the incident, viewers began photoshopping images of Kanye interrupting other things, during his speech into a snowclone template to create appropriate captions.

I Knew You Were Trouble

I Knew You Were Trouble is the title of the third single from Swift’s 2012 studio album Red. In February 2013, the high-pitched chorus of the song became a popular subject for audio-spliced mashup songs. On February 3rd, 2013, YouTuber Goosik uploaded the first remix of the song, editing audio from the Yelling Goat video into its dubstep-influenced chorus (shown below). As of October 2013, there are more than 165,000 search results on YouTube for “I Knew You Were Trouble parody.”

Feminist Taylor Swift

Feminist Taylor Swift is a novelty Twitter account that parodies Swift’s song lyrics, turning them into feminist commentary. The account was created by Rhode Island-based blogger Clara Beyer on June 12th, 2013 and began with a tweet parodying lyrics from the 2009 single “You Belong With Me.”Within two days, the account accrued more than 7,100 followers and has broken more than 112,000 followers as of October 2013.

“I Knew You Were Trouble”

“I Knew You Were Trouble” is a 2012 hit pop single by Swift from her fourth studio album Red. In February 2013, the chorus part of the song became a popular subject of audio-spliced mash ups and parodies featuring similarly high-pitched notes sampled from a range of viral videos.

“Shake It Off”

On August 18th, 2014, the TaylorSwiftVEVO YouTube channel released the music video for Swift’s song “Shake It Off,” featuring scenes in which Swift wears costumes while performing a variety of dances, including ballet, break dance, twerking and cheerleading (shown below).

The same day, rapper Earl Sweatshirt from the group Odd Future posted several tweet condemning Swift’s video for “perpetuating black stereotypes” and for being “inherently offensive and ultimately harmful," while admitting he hadn’t watched the video (shown below).

The same day, the women’s interest blog Jezebel published an article criticizing Swift’s video for being a “cringeworthy mess.” Also on August 18th, Tumblr user Orhgasm defended Swift in a post claiming that nothing about the video was racist. In the first 24 hours, the post gained over 1,500 notes. Meanwhile, Mashable published a compilation of Twitter reactions to the music video. In the coming days, several other news sites published articles about the video controversy, including The Daily Dot, Daily Beast, Metro and Billboard.

No, It’s Becky

In April 2012, Tumblr user Yallarebrutalizingme uploaded a black-and-white picture of a young Taylor Swift with a description claiming that the girl depicted in photograph was her friend in high school who supposedly died from overdose after snorting marijuana at a party one night. Soon, Tumblr user bitch-pudding re-blogged the photograph with a comment rebutting that it is a high school photograph of Taylor Swift, to which another Tumblr user dundermilfllin sarcastically responded by saying “no, it’s becky” (shown below). In the following two years, the Tumblr post gained more than 175,000 notes, giving rise to the phrase as a popular in-joke among Taylor Swift’s fans on the site.

Then on September 25th, 2014, about a week after Swift created her first Tumblr account, the singer posted a picture of herself wearing a T-Shirt which reads “no, it’s Becky” to her Tumblr page. Within 24 hours, the post gained over 18,000 notes and the photograph of Swift wearing the t-shirt was covered by many entertainment news and celebrity gossip sites, including MTV News and PopCrush.

Taylor Swift™ No Copyright Infringement Intended

Taylor Swift™ No Copyright Infringement Intended is a phrase used to mock Taylor Swift’s aggressive pursuit defense of the copyright on her lyrics and name, most frequently on Tumblr, where users paste the copyright notice after using a number or phrase that can also be found in a Taylor Swift song or song title.

InfoSec Taylor Swift (@SwiftOnSecurity) is a novelty Twitter account that offers humorous commentaries and advice on information security and cyberwarfare in the voice of Taylor Swift. The account was launched in April 2014 with a helpful tip on how to protect one’s computer from The HeartBleed Bug.

“Bad Blood” Cover Parodies

On May 17th 2015, Taylor Swift released a music video for her single “Bad Blood” during the Billboard Music Awards, but had been releasing promotional images for several weeks prior, as she revealed the many celebrities who were joining the video’s cast. Taylor Swift fans quickly began to parody these images, which were styled in the manner of an action film.

#IDumpedTaylorSwiftBecause

On June 1st, 2016, E! News reported that Swift had broken up with DJ Calvin Harris after dating for nearly a year and a half. On June 3rd, the hashtag #IDumpedTaylorSwiftBecause began trending on Twitter, accompanied by joke tweets containing humorous reasons to break up with the pop star (shown below). That day, the news sites Mic, TeenVogue and Refinery 29 published articles accusing the hashtag of being driven by sexism and misogyny.

Anti-Fandom

The Taylor Swift Anti-Fandom often criticize her insincerity to the public along with her dating life. Swift is criticized for being a serial dater and involving herself in public disputes with other celebrities. The anti-fandom also condemn her image on a political stance claiming she is “feminist’s nightmare.”

Taylor Swift Is Over

“Taylor Swift is Over" is an expression spread online by critics of Taylor Swift, speculating that her career in the music industry has come to an end. The phrase began circulating after her ex-boyfriend and music producer Calvin Harris claimed that Swift had been trying to tarnish his reputation over their collaboration on Harris’ 2016 house song “This is What You Came For.”

Taylor Swift Is a Satanist Clone

Taylor Swift Is a Satanist clone" is a celebrity conspiracy theory which posits that the American singer-songwriter is a clone of Zeena Schreck, a Berlin-based American artist and musician who had served as the High Priestess and the spokesperson of the Church of Satan, mainly due to the perceived resemblance between the two.

Taylor Swift Is a Snake

Taylor Swift Is a Snake is a catchphrase used to smear the American pop singer-songwriter as a deceitful manipulator in the light of her post-breakup dispute with Calvin Harris, Scottish musician and her ex-boyfriend, as well as an unrelated controversy stemming from her reaction to the lyrics of Kanye West’s 2016 rap single “Famous”, both of which became high publicized in July 2016. The phrase is mainly used in the form of emoji and comment spamming on her Instagram account.

Personal Life

Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13th, 1989 in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. At She received her first Grammy nomination in 2008, and the following year, her second album Fearless became the best-selling record of 2009. As of October 2013, she has released four studio albums and has won 179 awards, including twelve Billboard Music Awards, eleven Country Music Awards and seven Grammy Awards. She is known for having many high-profile relationships with other musicians and actors including Joe Jonas, Twilight’s Taylor Lautner and John Mayer. She also maintains active profiles on Twitter and Instagram, where she has more than 35.7 million and 6.7 million followers respectively.

Search Interest

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scontomio · 1 year

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💣 Apple iMac 5k 27 pollici/Intel Core i5 3.4 GHz/RAM 16 GB / 1Tb Fusion Drive / 2017 /Radeon Pro 570 Dedicata 🤑 a soli 999,00€ invece di 1.325,00€ ➡️ https://www.scontomio.com/coupon/apple-imac-5k-27-pollici-intel-core-i5-3-4-ghz-ram-16-gb-1tb-fusion-drive-2017-radeon-pro-570-dedicata/?feed_id=147662&_unique_id=64e111b1ccee6&utm_source=Tumblr&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Poster&utm_term=Apple%20iMac%205k%2027%20pollici%2FIntel%20Core%20i5%203.4%20GHz%2FRAM%2016%20GB%20%2F%201Tb%20Fusion%20Drive%20%2F%202017%20%2FRadeon%20Pro%20570%20Dedicata Il personal computer Apple iMac 5k da 27 pollici offre prestazioni potenti grazie al processore Intel Core i5 da 3,4 GHz e alla RAM da 16 GB. Con un ampio spazio di archiviazione di 1TB Fusion Drive, puoi conservare tutti i tuoi file e programmi senza problemi. La scheda grafica dedicata Radeon Pro 570 garantisce una resa visiva eccezionale. Goditi un'esperienza informatica avanzata con l'iMac 5k di Apple. #coupon #apple #allinone #offerteamazon #scontomio

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thereasonsimbroke · 4 years

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#442 - The Snyder Cut Posters

In #442, Gio and I cover the Snyder Cut movie posters, what’s joining HBO Max for February 2021, the announced Wonder Girl comic, and more! FOLLOW GIO: @b_i_ngio (Twitter) @b_i_ngio (Instagram) As always, we appreciate your constructive Feedback, Suggestions, and Questions. You can also leave us an audio question on SpeakPipe. Thank you for the continued love and support! Enjoy the show. Daniel and Kelli Podcast Awards 2019 || Games & Hobbies (Winner) Podcast Awards 2017 - 2018, 2020 || Games & Hobbies (Nominated) Official Site SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Google Podcasts / Stitcher / iHeartRadio / TuneIn / Overcast FOLLOW US: - Twitter | @ReasonsImBroke, @PalpaKelli, and @TRIBPod - Instagram - Pinterest - Tumblr - Discord Lounge - YouTube Channel SUPPORT THE POD: Getting $1's worth of entertainment and information each month? Support us on Patreon or visit our TeePublic storefront! SPREAD THE WORD: If you're enjoying the show, please head over to iTunes and leave us a rating and a review! Each one helps new Brokettes discover the podcast. Donate to Hero Initiative to help comic creators in need. CREDITS: Opening/Closing Jingles - Alex Scott Show Logo By - Jeff Quigley The Christmas Waltz by Stefan Kartenberg (c) copyright 2017 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/JeffSpeed68/57012 Ft: Lena Orsa

The latest episode of The Reasons I'm Broke Podcast!

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soorasaab · 7 years

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In March this year, Apple launched its Clips app that essentially allows users to create videos easily by combining video clips, photos, and music. While the app has not performed exceptionally well on app charts, the Cupertino-based company has now added some Disneyand Pixar magic to make the app more appealing.

With its latest update, version 1.1, Clips has received dozens of new customizable text banners, overlays, and posters that include characters from both Disney and Pixar. This means that users will be able to add animated overlays with Mickey, Minnie, and other characters from movies Toy Story and Inside Out to their videos with the new update.

"Users can now add classic Disney and Pixar characters to their videos. Clips 1.1 features animated overlays of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Daisy Duck," the company said in its release. Apart from these animated overlays, Disney-designed posters can also be added to the videos as "playful title cards" with the update, Apple says.

Apart from these, with the new update, Clips has now received 10 new Apple-designed overlays and 12 posters with customisable animated text. "From glistening water to slow motion billowing smoke and 3D pop-up art, the new poster designs bring more versatility to iOSvideo creation," the company said in the release.

Further, a new button for editing "Live Titles" has been added to the app to make it easier to change captions and titles. The Cupertino-based company has also mentioned some usability improvements in the release but didn't mention the specific details regarding the same.

Though Apple's Clips app has not been able to perform well until now, let's hope Woody will be able to save the day and bring more users to this video editing tool.

#SooraSaab #Soora #Facebook #News #Gadgets #Technology #sports #Automobile #blog #youtube #smartphones #top #Tumblr

#IFTTT #Blogger

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itsiotrecords-blog · 7 years

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http://ift.tt/2rbzwhk

Whether we mean to or not, we probably all spend way too much time looking at and reading about viral pictures on the internet. We’ll be sitting at our desks and relaxing on our lunch breaks and decide to take out our phones and look at our Facebook and Twitter accounts — “just for a minute,” we all tell ourselves (as we bold-facedly lie to ourselves). Then we see some outrageous picture and cannot manage to rip our eyes from it. “Is that Bigfoot?” “Who is that with Marilyn Monroe?” “THERE IS NO WAY THEY WILL BE ABLE TO CATCH THAT BEAR!” Much to our annoyance (and sometimes displeasure, or relief, or frustration), many of these pictures are fakes. They’re often real pictures that have been doctored in some way, filters or angles making things look more real than they truly were, or digital editing software making us all the butt end of a practical joke. Over the years of phony photos populating our social media accounts, some of us have come to believe that any picture we scroll through — unless it has our close friends in it — is probably a fake. But that’s not fair either because many of the pictures we’re seeing are incredibly real; we’re just too skeptical to believe that an awesome photographer caught the perfect picture at just the right moment. So let’s clear some of the fog and call them out, once and for all. Here are 20 popular viral photos, both the fake and the real:

#1 REAL This picture is very real, and we love that it went viral. It’s a picture of a window washer at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital giving a little fist bump to a kid that certainly needs it, no matter what’s gotten him stuck inside. These photos started going viral a few years ago when a window washer dressed up for Halloween and gave all the kids inside a magical experience. Ever since then, window washers have been teaming up to make lives a little bit brighter for children stuck in hospital rooms. How cool is it to see Spiderman or Captain America or Superman just outside your window? Even if you were mortally ill, you couldn’t help but smile a bit at these ordinary heroes! Here’s to the window washers all over the world who’ve become copycats to the original superhero window washer, making children smile one hospital room window at a time.

#2 FAKE Just as a blanket statement: you aren’t going to be seeing a whole lot of new pictures of Marilyn Monroe. In case you didn’t know, Marilyn’s not really modeling anymore — mostly because she died a long time ago. Most of her work has been out there for years and seen by millions over and over again. So if you’re seeing a new picture of Marilyn Monroe for the very first time, odds are that it’s fake. Same goes for Elvis Presley. So when everyone saw this picture of the two together, chilling on a rooftop, they should have immediately questioned its authenticity. Two photos were mashed together in a good, but not overwhelmingly believable composition, though it would be really cool to think of the two of these crazy kids just savoring the city air and kicking back between living the high life. Just because it’s in black and white doesn’t mean it’s real!

#3 REAL Yes. That is indeed a bear falling from a tree. When the picture was released, everyone immediately thought that it was a fake. To be fair, it did look like someone just photoshopped a picture of a bear into a normal shot of police officers standing around and looking at something. A really lazy photoshopper, too — it looks like there was a picture of a bear standing upright that was shrunken down and tilted diagonally. Well, sadly, this is a real picture! A wild bear had wandered into the suburbs and animal control was called in, shortly followed by police. The bear had retreated into a tree because it was scared, but of course, they couldn’t allow it to stay there. Animal control shot a tranquilizer at the bear and, when he could no longer resist sleep, he fell from the tree onto a giant mat. The bear was taken back into the wilderness and lived on to grumble about us lousy humans.

#4 FAKE Really, guys? Did you not know that this one was a fake? To be fair, the picture itself is real. To the keen eye, it kind of looks like the picture was photoshopped and like the image on the left side of the sign was conveniently pressed up against the image on the right side, just well enough to match the body up at the waist. But the picture is real! However, it was crazy staged! It was taken to commemorate the many criminals who have met this sort of fate. The picture was taken long ago, back in 1939 — way before people were talking about building giant walls and making those we were keeping out pay for it. It was also taken to discuss how problematic the border is between El Paso and Juarez. Imagine how much more problematic that border will be if we have an 18-foot high wall separating the United States from Mexico…

#5 REAL This adorably sad picture is, to our disappointment, real. It’s a picture that a nanny took one sad day when she wanted to take one of her toddlers to the zoo. Back in 2013, we suffered a government shutdown that really gave a scare to almost everyone in the United States. Everything closed, from post offices to museums to zoos. This nanny wasn’t aware of the closures, and this child was so horribly disappointed that he climbed onto the gates of the Smithsonian zoo and hoped that maybe, just maybe, if he looked pitiful enough, someone would come and let him in. No one did, and the picture caught fire and spread around the internet with people asking to “please open the government again.” Funny how people value government so much, but only when it goes away or stops providing their many services.

#6 REAL Teeheehee. It would be a darn shame if this picture weren’t real. It’s just so cute and innocent and ridiculous that it would have been such a grand disappointment if someone had just messed with the child’s face! But NOPE! This picture is of a mega-excited little girl who has just spent so much time blowing bubbles and is overwhelmingly excited to move on to the next thing. The picture caught fire on the internet for no good reason. She’s just so adorably excited, and her little chubby grin is too much to resist. The picture quickly became a target of memes everywhere for all trollers, with captions running across it like “GOTTA GET BREAD AND MILK, IT’S GONNA SNOW,” “IT’S BLACK FRIDAY, I NEED PRINGLES,” “DALLAS COWBOYS BE LIKE RUN, THE EAGLES ARE COMING,” “REALIZING THERE ARE MORE TOASTER STRUDELS,” and our current personal favorite, “BETTER RUN, HERE COMES JOSH DUGGAR!”

#7 FAKE Okay. We need to talk about this one. For a lot of reasons. Alan Rickman, who played Professor Snape in the Harry Potter movie series, passed away not too long ago. He was such a beloved member of the cast and of the series that his death hit all of his fans hard. If you were a fan of either the books or movies, you likely remember these quotes, and you might want to tear up at how sweet and beautiful they are. But don’t. Because Alan never said this. A Tumblr user, mypatronusisyou123437597309, actually posted a variation of the quote in July of 2010, and in 2016, when the supposed Rickman quote went viral, she clarified that she really was the source of the quote. That Rickman said it is a load of crap.

#8 FAKE What did we say about Marilyn Monroe pictures? If you’ve never seen it before, that’s probably because it’s a new picture — and if it’s a new picture, it’s a fake picture. This photo was edited in the exact same way that the last photo featuring Marilyn Monroe with Elvis Presley was, and it, hilariously enough, even used a picture from the same series of those taken of Marilyn that the last fake photo poster used! SHE’S WEARING THE SAME DRESS! This doctor of photography was even lazier than the last, simply pasting a picture of James Dean from East of Eden over Marilyn’s original photo. Cute to think that these young troubled souls were smoking and drinking away their problems atop skyscrapers in The Big Apple together, and maybe they were, but this picture is certainly no evidence of that. You can never trust an unfamiliar Marilyn Monroe picture…

#9 REAL Yes, this absolutely hilarious picture of a dog playing underwater is real! Photographer Seth Casteel is a real dog lover and has already made a living for himself taking pictures of pups and other animals and pets. But he had an extra special creative idea: to wait underwater while dogs jumped into swimming pools, chasing after toys or treats or just excited to take a dip, then to take snapshots of the goobers upon entry to the water. And the reactions he got were priceless! He released a book containing the photo series called Underwater Dogs and has gotten even more money since the series went absolutely viral. There were some adorably hilarious pups that he managed to capture on camera, and for that, we thank him, his underwater camera, and his impeccable timing. But someone get this dog a towel and a big treat for his hard day of work!

#10 FAKE Not so real: this gentleman’s guide to amputation. This viral picture of an 1800s poster was released not too long ago when the craze of gentlemanly behavior (including ridiculous mustaches, odd facial hair, and weird facial hair care products were blowing up the market) was just getting going. The picture depicts a step by step guide on how to amputate a limb, including two calm gentlemen sawing off an arm like it’s just another day at work. After the men finish severing the limb from one man’s body, the two share a glass of brandy in celebration of their accomplishment. Well, of course, the poster is fake. Turns out, it was someone’s school project (what kind of school are they going to?), and someone spread it around as if it were authentically from the civil war era. Though we’re relieved to hear it’s a joke, we also kind of want to hang it in every doctor’s office…

#11 REAL This viral picture went all over the internet shortly after one of the biggest missions of the Obama Administration was completed: the takedown of Osama Bin Laden. Some people guessed that the photo was a fake when they initially saw it because rarely are the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state all in the same room — what if something were to happen that took all three out of commission? Fortunately, nothing of that nature happened, and we all had huge reasons to celebrate that evening. However, before we were parading through the streets with American flags waving and cheers abounding, these White House officials were all crowding around a table, awaiting what would either be a wonderful evening of victory or a tragic failure of the administration. The victory was one of the proudest moments of the Obama administration, alongside the passing of the affordable care act and all of the wonderful advancements made on addressing pollution and global climate change.

#12 FAKE Obama’s administration has been succeeded by the Trump administration — though we’ve got our strong opinions on the matter, we’ll just say that the two administrations are VERY different. When Trump was running for office against Hillary Clinton, America was very divided (edit: America is still divided over the issue to this day). There were rallies in support of candidates and against others, and many times, these rallying groups collided, and things got a little physical. One Trump supporter posted this picture saying that “loving and docile democrats assailed a Trump supporter, causing this damage.” Well, not only was this supporter a liar — he or she was also a lazy and bad liar. This picture is of actress Samara Weaving, who starred in the show Ash vs. Evil Dead and was only taking a picture of herself in makeup for the show. Once the photo was unveiled as a fake, the Trump supporters got harangued for lying, abusing social media, and perpetuating fake news.

#13 REAL This must be one of the funniest pictures of the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations. In fact, it was SO funny that a lot of us didn’t believe that it could be real at first. The photo was released right after President Obama had a meeting with his soon-to-be-successor, Donald Trump. Obviously, Barack was pulling for Hillary Clinton in the election: he loudly supported her campaign and even trash-talked Trump a bit to try to get his point across. Well… things didn’t work out the way he’d liked. At all. And in this picture, where Obama is pretty much forced to shake the hand of a man he doesn’t trust, doesn’t like, and doesn’t have faith in, Barack could not hide just how much he hated everything. But at least his expression is better than Donald’s — it’s not an arm-wrestling contest, Trump.

#14 FAKE So, we’ll admit — this one is a bit of a cheat. This is one of those pictures that borders on meme because the picture itself means very little — the wording on it says a lot, though. Very recently, this picture surfaced and spread around the internet like wildfire. It’s a quote from Thomas Jefferson saying, “The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.” Yeah, okay… except Thomas Jefferson never said that. Actually, Jeffersonian scholars say there’s no record of him ever saying ANYTHING like that and that if this quote were actually from anyone famous, it’s really a loose translation of an Ayn Rand quote!

#15 REAL This is no statue, this is no piece of art, and this is no demonstration — this is a nightmare, a tragedy, and a sadness to anyone with a heart. This is a real live dog from Argentina that was doused in tar by abusive humans. Two young boys found the pitiful pup in this state and took him home, carefully cleaning and scouring the dog until the tar was removed. The dog has indeed been restored to health and is now a proud pet of good owners, but the world shuddered in horror as we saw what sick and horrible people can do to innocent and harmless animals. How could anyone deign to commit such a horrible act to something so kind and small and pure? It was just another example of how cruel this world can be and how people can be cruel in either grand measures or in tiny and seemingly unimportant cases.

#16 FAKE Donald Trump and his supporters are… well, let’s just say that there has never been anyone quite like him. A lot of nasty things have been said at Trump rallies by fans, supporters and the big boss himself. But we have to be honest, and so do you: Trump supporters are humans, too, with consciences and reasons behind their logic and hopes and dreams. Remember when Trump supporters posted that fake picture of a woman getting beaten up by Clinton supporters? Well, this was essentially retaliation from the Clinton side. The third woman from the left was wearing a shirt that said “GREAT,” not “WHITE.” But it was so easy to photoshop the photo that we really are not surprised someone did. Everyone bought the fake picture for a while, but come on — nobody is that cruel, right? Maybe they’re bigots that are thinking that, but no one would get shirts for that…

#17 REAL Could this actually be a picture of two of our all-time heroes talking philosophically, sharing their wisdom and experiences? Or is it just two pictures of these amazing men doctored and brought together like the many pictures of Marilyn Monroe with Elvis Presley and James Dean were? Most people thought that the latter was the more believable response in this case, but this picture is actually real! Leonardo is very passionate about the effects and impacts of climate change, which was one of Barack Obama’s greatest concerns while in office. After Leonardo made an address on the lawn of the White House, the two had long conversations about what had to be done, what could be done, and how soon we could do it. They spent a long time talking about these topics, proving just how amazing both of these guys are.

#18 FAKE Last year (actually, almost exactly a year ago — how crazy is that?), this picture was posted by a man as he was road-tripping through Canada. He was a United States citizen, and even though the U.S. is getting a lot better about cutting down on homophobia, we have a long way to go before LGBTQ+ issues are commonly accepted and not constantly labeled and harassed and attacked. So, as this fellow was driving through the gorgeous Canadian countryside, he paused when he saw a baby moose on the side of the road. Adorable! But also a great photoshop opportunity… he easily pasted a LGBTQ+ Pride flag in the photo, and everyone lost their minds over this adorable baby moose that was concerned about topical social issues. Almost everyone could spot that it was a fake pretty early on, since it was such a simple editing job… but darn it all; it was so dang cute.

#19 REAL What are we even looking at here? A weird statue of a man? Why is his face like that? Is this an ice sculpture in a lake? Forget it, we’re bored and confused. Scroll away, scroll away… Actually, this picture is real, and it’s one of the most gorgeous feats we’ve ever seen. The picture was taken by a photographer named Francois-Xavier Marit, who was waiting underwater as Olympic athletes in Rio were taking their dives into the water. He perfectly caught Britain’s Thomas Daley as he entered the water and began to push the water away from him before reemerging to the surface. Look: his feet haven’t even entered the water yet! Thomas is still probably worried about and focused on his form, not on any photographers that are chilling underwater! This was immaculately timed, and we hope that the artistry encourages more swimmers to consider the art of diving in the future.

Source: TheRichest

#IoTRecords

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