Millennial obsolescence
The evolving memescape, dating bots, Instagram vibe shifts, Wattpad, podcasts and moral panics
The monopolization of memes
A million people follow the Twitter nostalgia dump @OldMemeArchive. Over its almost two-year existence, the account has surfaced a couple thousand memes from older, simpler (better?) internet times.
Many originated on 4chan or Meme Generator. Some date back to the heydays of DeviantArt and Tumblr. That these memes now live on Twitter is fitting, in a way, because other platforms have all but fallen off the the meme-making radar.
Since 2010, per a new report by Know Your Meme, the online market for memes has essentially consolidated: Fewer platforms account for a larger share of all new memetic content. Small sites have less influence on viral content than at any point in the past 12 years. The platforms that generate the most memes, meanwhile, now generate more than ever.
The chart below, for example, shows where memes in KYM’s massive database originated in 2012: Roughly 56% came from the three largest meme-generating platforms of the time (YouTube, 4chan and Reddit), while about one in 10 came from very small sites, like Meme Generator, DeviantArt or a fledgling Twitch.
Ten years later, however, more than 84% of KYM’s recorded memes started on the three largest meme-generating platforms (now TikTok, Twitter and YouTube), and less than 3% (!) come from more niche platforms.
Why is this happening? (No really: Why?? I’d appreciate your theories.) I theorize that there’s some noise inherent in these data due to the Sisyphean impossibility of cataloging every platform’s every meme.
Putting that aside, though, I’m also tempted to see some parallels between this trend and the wider, thornier question of tech platform monopolies. It’s not that the the largest platforms also generate the most memes; if that were the case, Twitter wouldn’t rank. But some of the same forces that helped Facebook and Google swell to such incredible, competition-crushing sizes — network effects, rival acquisitions, ever-growing troves of users’ personal data — surely also helped a handful of social platforms come to dominate the memescape.
“The largest difference between the memescape then and the memescape now is in the importance of smaller websites,” wrote KYM’s Aidan Walker.
But those small sites often surfaced the weirdest stuff, so … bit of a bummer!
If you read anything this weekend
“Growing Old Online,” by Helena Fitzgerald in Wired. Millennials were arguably the first generation to grow up on social media; now, to my distress, we’re also growing old there. To wit: The very name of this newsletter references a messaging platform that today’s internet cool kids are too young to remember … *and* I’m over here mourning the memes of my youth like some grizzled elder.
“Where Online Hate Speech Can Bring the Police to Your Door,” by Adam Satariano and Christopher F. Schuetze in The New York Times. In the U.S., it’s virtually impossible to hold people accountable for promoting even dangerous or extreme ideologies online. But Germany offers a fascinating (alarming? instructive?) alternative model. There, people are increasingly prosecuted, fined and even jailed for posting hateful content.
“The GIF Is On Its Deathbed,” by Kaitlyn Tiffany in The Atlantic. Back to the theme of millennial obsolescence! Our one-time lingua franca is now apparently “cringe.” Worse, the technology is more or less obsolete. RIP my friend.
“The Great Food Instagram Vibe Shift,” by Bettina Makalintal in Eater. You guys love *nothing* so much as a vibe shift, I know, and this is a pretty good one: from preciously styled, soft-focus food photos (think: your kitchen on Kinfolk) to something a bit less … aspirational. “The whole platform is moving away from perfection into the weird, the unusual.”
“Are You a Line-Wife or a Bucket Bunny?,” by Claire Lampen in The Cut. Truly, truly this is TikTok at its best. I cannot get enough.
👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from the last newsletter was this little gem on the weird girl aesthetic.
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Postscripts
Wiki speedruns. ‘90s cursors. Wordle, but for home prices. How Bella Hadid’s spray-on dress was made and how AI uses your images. Sexual predators prowl Wattpad. Bots have flooded Hinge. “No modern internet service … can have the rules that Tumblr did in 2007.”
How amazing is this chess scandal? I’m breaking out popcorn. Death by Google Translate. Internet time. Behind the scenes of “The Follower.” The life cycle of an online moral panic. Why new podcasts are never breakout hits. Last but not least, now at stake: “The very future of … the internet.”
That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards.
— Caitlin