There's an opinion becoming dominant in the world of "trends" that the Internet is generating too many trends too quickly for anyone to keep up with, that the word itself is becoming meaningless as a result. I think this perspective is the antidote.
The NFL's altering of Alicia Keys's Super Bowl performance and Warner Bros. cancellation of Coyote vs. Acme call to mind one of my favorite corners of the internet, Lost Media.
It’s 2006. You open YouTube in Firefox and see the Flash-based video player showing low-resolution footage of kids dancing to a song called Chicken Noodle Soup. It feels like that day’s bit of Internet fun. You have no idea that those few videos represent Black culture preparing to forever shift how the internet and music industry would co-exist. At least, I had no idea. Today we...
The rise of billionfluencers marks a shift as billionaires are now seen as objects of fandom, wielding great influence through social media, directing discourse and attention.
In today's landscape, the popularity of a song is often less about a song speaking to you and more about a song speaking for you.
As the things that traditionally bound us together have receded in our social lives and the internet is increasingly that social glue, have we allowed fandoms to replace institutions in our lives?
A decades-old media theory has me wondering whether trending discourse is becoming an antidote to viral media.
An explanation of meta-irony and why it's a standard mode of discourse for the digitally native Gen Z.
A modern media phenomenon is a reminder of the purgatory of the pandemic.