A Guide to Children’s Culture for Out-of-Touch Adults: the Wizard of the Tiny Green Mall
Welcome to the first annual Memey Awards, where the memes of the summer compete for the coveted title of “Meme of the Summer.”
I went through every meme posted on the internet in the last year and weeded out the 8 billion people who wanted to be in the top 3! But there can only be one winner of this prestigious award, which I came up with a few minutes ago.
And the winner is:
Meme #1 of the summer: The Wizard of Tiny Green Mall
A Polish TikToker named Crawly captured the world’s imagination this month and earned the title of “meme of the summer” by dressing up as a tiny green gnome and delighting/terrorizing people in shopping malls . This is an entirely visual joke, so you need to click on one of the videos to watch it .
Crowley’s videos became popular enough to inspire others to try and get in on the action, and reports emerged of “knights” vowing to catch the little green guy. The same goes for the division between knights and dwarves . As is usually the case, stories about knights are neither funny nor interesting, and the story about knights against dwarves is painfully boring. It’s only a matter of time before a fast food company or energy drink does a stupid thing involving leprechauns and the joke is completely played out.
But until then you must appreciate Crowley’s work. I looked through his feed and found that he has really honed his craft over the last couple of years. His earlier videos have a ” running around the mall and acting weird ” part, and some of them have gotten a lot of traffic, but they lean more toward disturbing or disturbing than funny . But eventually the dwarf reached a level of whimsy that allowed it to go international.
Runner-up meme of the summer: “90s sitcom when”
This little subgenre of TikTok videos started when @darealtaah posted a video with the caption “90’s Sitcom: The Main Antagonist Was Under the Table the Whole Time and Heard Your Whole Plan” in which he acts out the sequence. But the genius part is using the perfect musical edge. In this case from “Family Matters” to emphasize the point. This has led to imitations/homages like this one, edgier variations like ” 90s sitcoms when a friend overhears them talking about him in the toilet ” and ” on the toilet “. ’90s sitcom sleepover and your friends try cigarettes for the first time and you have to sneak out to call your dad .”
Summer Bronze Medal Meme: Mike Epps Dancing
A brief clip of Mike Epps dancing in a blue suit first appeared in Kendrick Lamar’s 2013 video “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe.” It has been marinating for over ten years and is now gaining momentum. There are videos with captions like ” Man at a wedding, knowing there are two men left behind us ” as well as videos of people imitating Epps’ moves .
Thank you for participating in the first annual Memeys event. There will be no glamorous party.
Do you have a “cousin face”? Also: What is Cousin Face?
TikToker Evey Barenberg recently identified her face type: cousin face. As the name suggests, a person has a “cousin face” if they look like someone’s cousin. As Evie says, “Last night I was introduced to a friend of a friend and I said, ‘Have we met before?’ Because you look familiar. She said: “It’s because I have my cousin’s face… everyone is always like, ‘You look like my cousin’ or ‘You look like my cousin’s cousin.’ Twist of the story: Evie herself has the face of her cousin. She really looks like my cousin. According to a commenter on Evie’s post, Cousin’s face eventually becomes a “typical actress face” around age 40, so you can count on random people to stop you and tell you that you look like different actresses.
Pancakes: innovation or abomination?
People on the internet are weird about their food. Some people come up with weird ways to change foods that are good and then smugly claim they’ve found the right way to cook something. Then other people get weirdly angry about it and leave angry comments. Somehow this results in the assholes in Palo Alto making money.
Anyway, let’s talk about “omelets.”
Here’s how you make scrambled eggs: Instead of pouring pancake mixture into a pan and letting it form into a pancake like a normal person, you pour it in and stir it like scrambled eggs and end up with pancake cakes.
The chef from the archive started the argument by demonstrating her recipe. It might not have made people so angry if they hadn’t said that everyone else was “doing pancakes wrong.” to delve into this far enough before angrily commenting on things like “that’s a crime” and “who hurt you?” While others said things like: “This is really good.”
Viral Video of the Week: AI is Destroying the Internet
YouTuber Drew Gooden constantly posts entertaining comedies about popular culture, funny videos like ” I Watched the Endings of 10 Horrible Christmas Movies ” and ” I Took a Ninja Masterclass and It Ruined My Life .” This week’s viral video is funny, but it also makes some interesting observations about how artificial intelligence is eating its own tail and sucking the Internet into a hole it may never climb out of. AI art “trains” on other AI art, strengthening weird arms, extra limbs, and that glossy AI style that is both completely tacky and deeply unsettling. Bots use social media to respond to content created by other bots, who use this feedback to create content that is even more attractive to bots. The only people involved in this process are the people who fall for the “get rich with AI” schemes and flood the zone with crap that no one will ever buy, while drowning out the people who actually create the art that teaches AI. Either way, it’s a good watch, especially the conclusion, in which Gooden proves his point by asking an AI to write a funny ending to his YouTube video. Spoiler: It’s not funny at all.