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Google's new domains can really put a price on a .meme
Nyan Cat and Grumpy Cat already have dedicated websites.
Something Awful founder Richard Kyanka dies at 45
The creator of the influential website Something Awful, Richard 'Lowtax' Kyanka, has died at 45.
YouTubers have been rickrolled over a billion times
Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' video finally cracked 1 billion YouTube views, marking a milestone for rickrolls.
Hitting the Books: How memes spread through society like a 'mind virus'
In The Ascent of Information, award winning New York Times author Caleb Scharf explores humanity's unique penchant for maintaining stores of information outside of ourselves and the steps we'll soon have to take if we want to hang on to the 20 quintillion bits of data we produce every day.
Remastered 'nyan cat' art sells for the equivalent of $605k
Someone paid the equivalent of more than $600k to own a high-quality recreation of the 'Nyan Cat' art.
Put Bernie Sanders almost anywhere with this Google Street View app
It seems the senator is a well-traveled man.
Facebook quietly released a meme creation app called Whale
The internet is built on glorious, glorious memes. It's no surprise, therefore, that Facebook wants to own the creation of these wonderful jokes alongside messaging, photo-sharing and everything else that's currently part of the Zuckerberg empire. As The Information reports, the company's internal NPE team has quietly released a meme-making app called Whale in the Canadian App Store. You can upload your own photos or choose from the company's stock library before adding a hopefully-viral combination of text, emojis and filters. Whale also comes with various grid layouts and, if you're feeling really creative, a freeform drawing tool.
Recommended Reading: How memes became political weapons
How memes got weaponized: A short history Joan Donovan, MIT Technology Review Memes are entertaining, but they've also become key weapons in politics and the spread of misinformation. This piece starts with just one of many insane stories: "In October 2016, a friend of mine learned that one of his wedding photos had made its way into a post on a right-wing message board," Donovan writes. "The picture had been doctored to look like an ad for Hillary Clinton's campaign, and appeared to endorse the idea of drafting women into the military."
'Storm Area 51' event creator is working on an alien festival
Facebook may have shut down the "Storm Area 51" event that racked up more than two million followers, but the spirit of the meme is going to live on in the form of a festival. Matty Roberts, the creator of the original event, announced that he teamed up with event producer The Hidden Sound to create Alienstock, a three-day festival that will be hosted in Rachel, Nevada. The event, which promises a bunch of headlining music acts who have yet to be announced, will start September 20th.
Grumpy Cat dies at the age of seven
Grumpy Cat, the adorably grouchy-looking meme machine kitty, has passed away. The family of the dearly departed cat said she suffered complications from a urinary tract infection. She died on Tuesday at the age of seven.
PewDiePie asks for end to 'subscribe' meme after synagogue shooting
PewDiePie (aka Felix Kjellberg) has largely left himself out of commentary on the effects of the "subscribe to PewDiePie" meme that has been circulating for months, but he's now weighing in. The YouTube star has posted a video calling on viewers to end the meme roughly a day after a shooter at a California synagogue referenced it in his screed. While he had already used Twitter to condemn the Christchurch, New Zealand mass shooter's reference in March, he realized the meme "should have ended then" and that more was necessary.
Sweden's ad regulator says 'Distracted Boyfriend' meme is sexist
One of the most popular memes of recent times is sexist, according to Sweden's advertising watchdog. A Swedish Internet company named Banhof jumped on the bandwagon by sharing the viral "distracted boyfriend" meme online to advertise job vacancies, only to be chastised by the regulator. The image -- which shows a man gawking at a woman in a red dress while his girlfriend looks on in shock -- is discriminatory to both men and women, ruled Sweden's Reklamombudsmannen.
Facebook is fact-checking photos and videos to fight fake news
It's no secret that Facebook has been struggling to stop fake news from spreading on its site, though it has indeed made progress since the 2016 US presidential election. Now, as part of its ongoing efforts to fight misinformation, Facebook has announced that its 27 fact-checking partners across the world now have access to a new tool that will analyze pictures and videos. According to Facebook, this feature is powered by machine learning and is designed to help reviewers identify and take action against false content faster.
'Bingeable,' 'biohacking' and 'fintech' are now officially words
To say that the internet has played a massive role in the shaping of global society is a bit of an understatement, really, but one area that often gets overlooked is its influence on language. Thanks to teh interwebz (bear with me), we're all exposed to words, phrases and spellings from languages and subcultures we might never have access to otherwise, and this has opened up a whole world of linguistic joy (and loathing). Today, Merriam-Webster has added more than 840 new entries to its dictionary, a step in the continuous process of recording our ever-expanding language.
Drake is the king of memes
Drake has done it again. And no, we're not talking about him repeatedly smashing Apple Music and Spotify streaming records. We're talking about one of his tracks being turned into meme gold. This time it's the track "In My Feelings" from his new record, Scorpion. The internet has taken the lyrics and turned them into a dance that's about to conquer social media. What seems to resonate with his fans the most is the chorus, in which Drake asks, "Kiki, do you love me? Are you riding? Say you'll never ever leave from beside me. 'Cause I want ya and I need ya." Anyone who listens to Drake regularly knows he's always been an unapologetic emotional dude, and people love to turn his brooding and confessionals into viral fodder.
EU narrowly passes copyright law requiring internet filtering
Today, the EU parliament's legal affairs committee voted in favor of controversial legislation that requires tech companies to install filters into their software to prevent users from uploading copyrighted content. The law is intended to protect content creators and copyright holders, but its numerous opponents claim it will stifle creativity and harm the free internet.
Man goes to prison for attempting to hijack web domain at gunpoint
Internet domains are becoming increasingly desirable, especially as the web becomes crowded and it becomes harder to find memorable addresses. However, one man unfortunately took this to a violent extreme. Iowa resident Sherman Hopkins Jr. has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for attempting to steal control of doitforstate.com (which doesn't currently point anywhere) in an armed robbery.
Instagram is testing a text-based 'Type' feature for Stories
Instagram keeps updating its Stories feature lately with new additions to keep things interesting. The company recently added polls, a way to surface past Stories and has been experimenting with cross-posts to WhatsApp. Now, according to a report at The Next Web, the latest Stories addition is something called Type, which gives you a number of new fonts to type your message across a background or photo as part of your Story.
Junk technology: A ridiculous history of fast-food PR stunts
Who doesn't love a good, over-the-top marketing stunt? Recently we've seen a lot of those, including Pizza Hut's Pizza Parka, a coat made out of the same insulating materials as its delivery pouches. Because why not? That ridiculous product from Pizza Hut shouldn't come as a surprise. After all, this is the same company that made shoes that can order a pie for you. But Pizza Hut isn't the only one trying to get creative using technology to promote its brand.
Find 'Rick and Morty' rants with a quote search engine
Rick and Morty is chock-full of quotable moments, so it would only make sense that someone would eventually find a way search every single word, wouldn't it? Sure enough, it's here. The creators of the Simpsons and Futurama search tools (Paul Kehrer, Sean Schulte and Allie Young) have trotted out Master of All Science, a web engine that lets you find any Rick and Morty line and create a meme or animated GIF to match. If you want to share the existential despair of a butter robot or understand why the entire series revolves around Mulan, you just have to punch in the right keywords.
