Hawk Tuah Girl, explained by straight dudes

Now that internet culture is mainstream culture, virtually anyone can create a trend, but vanishingly few make a career from or even briefly monetize it.

“There’s a particular kind of fame that’s very normal now,” Allison told me. “But no one was prepared in that era. They used to call it micro fame, and it’s this experience of blowing up when you don’t expect to. You’re not blowing up the way Taylor Swift blew up. Instead, you get a lot of attention and become a big celebrity—but only in a select n

... See more

The internet was where you could just go be a dork with other dorks, whether you were an anime fan or a libertarian gun nut or a lonely Christian 40-something or a gay kid who was still in the closet. Community was the escape hatch.

outside of superhero movies, there are few major cultural sensations anymore.

Memes and trends are a record of how users experiment with the affordances of platforms, developing the vibe and brand of online spaces, steering and criticizing the direction of progress. When newspapers put stories about the internet in “tech” and “business” verticals rather than “politics” and “culture” verticals, it’s a symptom of how we’ve fai

... See more