One of the most awaited festivals of the country is Diwali. Apart from worshipping the Hindu gods, the festival of lights is also an occasion to get together with family and friends. Relatives and friends give each other sweets but one sweet that is quite popular during the festival is soan papdi.
The yellow coloured dry sweet has a flaky texture and is not heavy on the stomach, unlike many other Indian desserts. However, soan papdi is gifted so commonly and excessively that most people have to pass it on to others. On Diwali 2020, here are some soan papdi memes for you!
This video meme featuring Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah’s Jethalal is hilarious. The soan papdi box goes from one house to another and there are times when it lands back to your house. Jethalal’s reaction is literally all of us if we get the same gift back which we gave to someone else.
Still from Bobby Deol’s MX Player show Aashram has also been turned into a soan papdi meme of the time when you give your friend a box of soan papdi and it comes back to you from another friend.
Superstar Rajinikanth also features in a soan papdi meme where the comment “this is beyond science” from the movie 2.0 is used to explain the phenomena of your own box of soan papdi coming back to you.
India’s map on Diwali looks funny as the entire country is full of soan papdi on the festival.
Another hilarious meme portrays soan papdi saying that people have forgotten loyalty when some people gifted the sweet kaju katli instead of the customary soan papdi.
This meme with Zomato delivery boy’s smiling face will also tickle your funny bones.
There is also a meme if you decide to give your friends a chocolate box this festival. Soan papdi becomes the popular ‘angry man’ meme if it is ignored for chocolate.
So, instead of sharing the dull and boring soan papdi this Diwali, share these memes with your friends. You might regret that box of soan papdi finding you again however, you will not regret it if these rib-tickling memes come back to you.
Friday the 13th has Twitter users worried as the unlucky day occurs for the second time in an unlucky year. On the first Friday the 13 in 2020 in March, the U.S. declared a national emergency concerning COVID-19, and in a year full of unprecedented events, the second Friday the 13th has some wondering what could happen next.
But why is Friday the 13th deemed to be so unlucky?
While there are vaguely biblical roots surrounding the origins of why Friday falling on the 13th of the month has become a bad omen, an important moment in the modern history of this superstition was the publication of the novel Friday, the Thirteenth written by Thomas William Lawson in 1907, which tells the story of a New York City stockbroker who plays on superstitions to create chaos on Wall Street.
But in more recent history, the day became a legend in popular culture with the 1980 horror movie Friday the 13th, which introduced the world to the legend of the hockey-mask wearing serial killer Jason.
Jason grabs cop in a scene from the film 'Friday The 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan', 1989. Today is the second Friday the 13th of a very unlucky 2020.Stringer/Getty
Now, in an unlucky year that has seen the world face a pandemic, wildfires, and tumultuous politics, just to name a few, what do social media users think is in store this Friday the 13th?
Twitter user AuxGod said "Friday the 13th in 2020" and shared a viral TikTok of a man wearing a Jason mask from the Friday the 13th movie series running out of the woods, tripping in the road, and hitting a truck face first. The original video has been viewed 24.5 million times on TikTok, with the creator saying it was their friend dressed up for a hayride.
Twitter user @LinkedHD has felt that the past four years have been unlucky and said: "It has been Friday the 13th since 2016."
Twitter user Samantha pointed out how a national emergency was declared on the day in March said: "Last time we had a Friday the 13th in 2020 they declared a global pandemic so anyway good luck tomorrow, you guys"
Last time we had a Friday the 13th in 2020 they declared a global pandemic so anyway good luck tomorrow, you guys
Dr. John Biggan has a potentially not so far-fetched idea about what today could bring, given how 2020 has gone so far and said: "Tomorrow is Friday the 13th...in 2020. Don't be surprised if murder hornets team up with COVID to start wildfires.
"This year cannot be over soon enough."
Tomorrow is Friday the 13th...in 2020. Don’t be surprised if murder hornets team up with COVID to start wild fires.
Nathan on Twitter said: "Tomorrow is Friday the 13th, but all year has been a horror movie...." with a photo of somebody drinking at a bar.
Dewayne Perkins expressed how another unlucky day is not what this year needs and said: "Not tomorrow being Friday the 13th, in 2020, in a pandemic, during election season. Girl, read the room lol."
Not tomorrow being Friday the 13th, in 2020, in a pandemic, during election season. Girl, read the room lol.
One Twitter user was optimistic about what the day could bring, saying: "the last friday the 13th was in march so maybe we're ending a cycle," with a photo of Ariana Grande and the caption "manifesting..."
Melanie pointed out the spookiness of Friday the 13 occurring in Scorpio season and said: "Tomorrow morning the moon moves into Scorpio, during Scorpio season, on Friday the 13th."
Another Twitter user highlighted how the day could be even unluckier in 2020 and said: "FRIDAY THE 13TH DOESN'T SCARE ME BUT KNOWING THAT IT IS FRIDAY THE 13TH OF '2020' IS A DIFF THING"
Finally, another Twitter user pointed out how this entire year has been unlucky and said: "ME REALIZING TOMORROW IS FRIDAY THE 13TH AND ALMOST EVERYDAY IN 2020 HAS BEEN/FEELS LIKE FRIDAY THE 13TH,,STAYSAFE Y'ALL"
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No longer just for internet trolls, the art of meme-making will receive its own biennial.
Once strictly an internet satire tool, memes have evolved into a powerful method of communication in modern life. Michael Bloombergspent over $1 millionon meme influencers during his recent presidential run. In August, Bud Light Seltzer put out a job posting for aChief Meme Officer. Now, the phenomenon has earned itsown biennial.Memennial 2020: a Biennial 4 Memeswill debut in three cities—Seattle, Dallas, and Sydney—simultaneously next month. Conceived by the Dallas artist Anam Bahlam, the show will be curated by Soomi Han, who Bahlam contacted after seeing her “Me² Meme Art Exhibition” at SMU. The press release makes it clear the exhibition is intended to be more than a joke. “Memes move elections / Memes move revolutions / Memes move consciousness / Memes move laughter out of our dark cavernous guts.” If it sounds over-the-top, just look at what Ryan Scavnicky has been able to achieve. Through his account@sssscavvvv, the practicing architectural designer and critic has accomplished the impossible: hemade architecture funny.
John Waters donates his entire personal collection to the Baltimore Museum of Art.
The filmmaker John Waters will donate372 worksby 125 artists from his personal collection to the Baltimore Museum of Art—his hometown institution—after his death. The elegant lineup is pleasantly unexpected from a collector known as the Pope of Trash, a nickname he earned after filming a scene in the 1972 cult classicPink Flamingos, in which a performer called Devine feasts on dog droppings. The assembly of works is nuanced, with pieces by the likes of Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin, Christian Marclay, Catherine Opie, Gary Simmons, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and Christopher Wool, among others. “I’ve always said you have to know good taste to have good bad taste,” Waters tells theNew York Times.
After the institution’s recent attempts to deaccession works by Warhol, Brice Marden, and Clyfford Still to create funding for the acquisition of works by Black artists, Waters’ gift stipulates that the museum cannot part with his collection. Not completely unexpected of the patron was his tongue-in-cheek request that the rotunda named after him, must also include two bathrooms. “That was my first demand,” says Waters. “They thought I was kidding.”
House of Soviets in Kaliningrad, Russia…
A brutalist gem likened to a robot’s head in Kaliningrad will be demolished next year.
A never-occupied building referred to as the“buried robot”by locals in the Russian city of Kaliningrad will be demolished next year. The Brutalist edifice garnered its nickname after locals likened its protruding terraces to two eyes and a mouth. The 21-story House of Soviets, a concrete structure, was left unbuilt when funding dried up in 1985 during economic hard times for the Soviet Union. Though structurally unsound, the building has become an icon of the city, notably when the fans of the2018 World Cuptook over in a vast square nearby. Luckily, though, those interested may possibly keep a piece of the robot forever. The regional governor, Anton Alikhanov, has said that he and other officials were discussing the possibility of making fragments available as souvenirs.
An apocalyptic beach performance from the 2019 Venice Biennale pops up outside Berlin.
One of the major highlights from the2019 Venice Biennalecame from Lithuania’s pavilion, which featured an indoor beach filled with carefree day-trippers performing arias that portended ecological doom brought about by climate change. While it may sound slightly overwrought,Sun & Sea (Marina)captivated curators, critics, and collectors alike and received the coveted Golden Lion prize. If you missed last year’s Biennale, fear not—the performance will pop up again next May at an abandoned Bauhaus swimming pool next to E-Werk Luckenwalde, a former coal power station outside Berlin that was recently repurposed into an environmentally friendly contemporary arts center.
“The Luckenwalde presentation will essentially be the same work as Venice, except for the qualities that the venue brings to the piece when experiencing it,” Lucia Pietroiusti, who curated the Venice installation, tells The Art Newspaper. “An empty swimming pool comes with a whole different kind of underlying catastrophe, at least for me.” And in the age of the coronavirus, the installation takes on an entirely new significance: “This idea of the ‘outside’ being manifested ‘inside’ and all the emotional experiences of that after many months of lockdown.” A crowdfunding campaign to support the performance will launch early next year.
Coming Soon's new store in Manhattan…
The design store Coming Soon relocates to a bigger space on New York’s Lower East Side.
Like most stores in Manhattan, Coming Soon boarded up their Lower East Side storefront at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in the spring. Fortunately, the cult design store didn’t close permanently—they simplyrelocatedto a larger space down the block. The co-owners Fabiana Faria and Helena Barquet decided to expand over the summer, a risky move considering the challenges faced by bricks-and-mortar retail today. To that end, online sales had remained strong thanks to nearly everyone’s sudden urge to redecorate their home during quarantine. The new space also required minimal buildout, making the move much more financially feasible.
Inside, artful vignettes of the brand’s offerings, which include colorful Dusen Dusen hand towels, Cold Picnic soap dishes, andAnna Karlindecanters, forge feelings of home—it’s almost like a group hang of everyone’s favorite independent designers. Perhaps the standout is a cash-wrap counter designed by Chen Chen and Kai Williams (who recently created a stunning installation forHem’s new showroomaround the corner in SoHo) that features various stones and marbles fashioned together with aluminum mesh.
Vases by Sachi Tungare…
Today’s attractive distractions:
A former ballerina with Alzheimer’srecreatesherSwan Lakechoreography.
This coffee table book documentsgrounded planesduring the pandemic.
Sachi Tungare is transforming littered cigarettes intootherworldly vases.
A supermarket that celebratesGTA: San Andreasopens in the Ukraine.
President-elect Joe Biden has won Arizona, winning an additional 11 Electoral College votes for a total of 290, and the internet is reacting with glee at Biden's win and President Donald Trump's loss.
Politicians and celebrities are reacting to the news by posting memes and GIFs celebrating Biden's win, as it firmly pushes him past the 270 electoral votes needed, amid Trump's threat of litigation.
They have also been thanking the late John McCain, who served as the Senator for Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018, suggesting Biden's win gives him the last laugh in a long-running feud with Trump.
In 2015, Trump came under fire for criticizing McCain and calling him a "loser" for losing the 2008 presidential election to Barack Obama, and for saying he's "not a war hero."
McCain was a Navy pilot and spent around five-and-half years in a notorious North Vietnamese prison known as the "Hanoi Hilton." There, he was repeatedly tortured and spent two years in solitary confinement.
Now, McCain's state has been called for Biden, and his supporters have taken to Twitter to express their joy, with McCain's daughter Meghan McCain even sharing a meme of her own.
The Lincoln Project's Fred Wellman said: "This dips*** lost Arizona," with a clip of Trump's comments in 2015 about McCain. In the clip, Trump said: "He's a war hero who was captured. I like people that weren't captured."
Meghan McCain responded to Trump's 2015 comments and said: "In light of tonight's news... sorry I had to, the meme is too funny," and shared a photo of her late father, John McCain, with a caption that said: "I like people who don't lose Arizona."
Cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz said: "Thanks for playing, @realDonaldTrump! BIDEN wins ARIZONA," with his cartoon of a "Welcome to Arizona" poster featuring Cacti appearing to give the middle finger to Trump.
Writer Bob Schooley said: "Whoever called Arizona at Fox News on election night" with a GIF of Dwight Schrute from The Office celebrating. Fox News' Arnon Mishkin called Arizona for Biden on election night, before any other media outlet had, angering the president.
Cindy McCain, the wife of John McCain, also celebrated the win and said in a tweet: "Congrats to Joe Biden for carrying my home state of Arizona. I am so proud of Arizonans for showing up in record numbers to make their voices heard.
"Thank you to the election workers who ensured a fair and honest process. Let's get to work!"
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden gives a tribute during memorial service at North Phoenix Baptist Church for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. on August 30, 2018, in Phoenix, Arizona. Biden's Arizona win in the 2020 election has inspired memes as social media users thank McCain.PoolThe Link Lonk
November 13, 2020 at 07:22PM
https://ift.tt/32KnnoC
Joe Biden's Arizona Win Inspires Memes as Social Media Users Thank John McCain - Newsweek
Microsoft’s latest next-gen console, the Xbox Series X (along with its smaller cousin, the Xbox Series S), has arrived. And with it comes a whole bunch of internet con artists trying to meme people into believing the new console is plagued by terrible issues.
You might, for example, have seen clips passed around the internet that showcased the Xbox Series X literally smoking. The posts would have you believe the blazing graphics of the Series X are so demanding they can cause an Xbox to catch fire, but the reality is much simpler than Xbox consoles spontaneously bursting into flame. What actually appears to be happening is that people are piping vape smoke into their new $500 consoles to give off the appearance of a fire to troll fans on social media.
(Please note that it probably isn’t a great idea to intentionally fill your brand-new console with water vapor, either, for what I’d hope are obvious reasons.)
The hoax is vaguely plausible. Microsoft did have to deal with the “Red Ring of Death” issue back in the Xbox 360 days over a decade and a half ago, and the idea of gadgets catching fire isn’t completely unheard of. For example, Ring just recalled some of its video doorbells today, and there’s the infamous Samsung Galaxy Note 7 debacle that saw the entire product get recalled and removed from the market due to concerns over it catching fire. But gadgets that tend to ignite are typically battery-powered, with the fire risk usually coming from the onboard battery — not something that you’d have to worry about with an Xbox Series X.
Similarly, another viral post has been going around claiming the fan on the Xbox Series X is so powerful that the drafts it produces can suspend a ping-pong ball in midair over the console, like some sort of kinetic sculpture.
Here, too, there’s some actual science that makes the possibility plausible. You might have even seen a similar demo in a middle school science class, where a hair dryer is used to levitate a ping-pong ball (thanks to some physics — specifically, Bernoulli’s principle, which describes the relationship between speed and pressure of a fluid flow).
Given how new the Xbox Series X is, it’s possible there might be some issues that crop up, just like any other new piece of hardware. There appear to be some isolated incidents of disc drive issues, for example. But as with any other viral hoax on the internet, it’s always good to take reports of problems with a healthy grain of salt, no matter how compelling they sound.
Update, 6:38 PM ET:Added Microsoft’s own tweet on the matter.
While some states are known for their food or architecture, Florida is known for the “Florida man.”
From the man who called 911 for a ride to Hooters to the man who tried to get an alligator drunk, the Sunshine State is home to a special breed of guy.
Here are some of the weirdest and wildest headlines that fueled the now-notorious “Florida man” meme.
June 11, 2012: Florida man arrested for calling 911 after kitten denied entry into strip club
Everett Lages was arrested outside of Emerald City strip club in Murdock for repeatedly calling the emergency line to report that the club owner had refused to let his kitty into the jiggle joint, deputies said.
June 27, 2012: Florida man chews off another man’s face
In what became known as the case of the “Miami Cannibal,” Rudy Eugene gnawed off half of a homeless man’s face while high. The 31-year-old was shot and killed by police after they found him naked and chowing down on human flesh.
Oct. 23, 2014: Florida man once arrested for fighting drag queen with tiki torch runs for mayor
Boyd Corbin was reportedly dressed in an “ironic” KKK costume at a Halloween party in 2012 when he allegedly got into a brawl with a man in drag — leading to his bust for aggravated assault. But that didn’t stop him from running for mayor of the small city of Wilton Manors two years later.
Jan. 1, 2015: Florida man trapped in unlocked closet for two days
John Arwood, 31, and Amber Campbell, 25, thought they were stuck in a janitor’s closet at Daytona State College for two days — before realizing they could just open the door and walk out.
Dec. 7, 2015: Florida man killed by alligator while hiding from cops
Matthew Riggins, 22, was fatally chomped by an 11-foot gator after allegedly breaking into a home then hiding from cops in Barefoot Bay lake. When police found him, the 22-year-old was missing part of his arm.
June 8, 2017: Florida man desperate for ride to Hooters calls 911
Jonathan Hinkle allegedly told 911 dispatchers he needed a ride to the provocative eatery to help his grandmother, who had fallen ill. Cops later learned the 28-year-old Merritt Island man’s granny was perfectly fine and Hinkle was arrested on charges of misusing 911.
Mac McCann had taken a beating in traditional media. At 25 years old, he had already worked in three different offices — first interning at the Dallas Morning News, before being laid off from Complex, and eventually quitting an increasingly strenuous and poorly compensated job at the Chive — and was growing fatigued by the systemic depreciation of the blogging life. McCann knew he was a capable writer, but the career opportunities in the press were increasingly sparse. That didn’t leave him many places to turn. Thankfully, there was absolution to be found — in the form of chicken wings.
In college, McCann frequently patronized the Austin-based wings-and-beer joint Pluckers Wing Bar. The restaurant had a promotion called the “Tweet of the Day,” which rewarded the pithiest comment in its @-tab with a $10 gift card. McCann was adept at generating his own bite-sized internet jokes, so he feasted on those gift cards throughout his studies. Years later, as an adult burnt out by the austerity measures carving through the press, McCann sensed an opportunity to return to his roots. In 2018, he secured a position as Pluckers’ social media strategist.
The job description is simple: make a bunch of chicken wing memes, and blast them out to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. In practice, that means McCann links to a video of a frustrated LeBron James after the fifth game of the NBA Finals, and captions it: “When your man doesn’t get your wings.” He posts a clip of a jaunty horse walking on its hind legs over a squelching dubstep loop: “Me going to get my wings.” He blocks the notorious YouTube charlatan Jake Paul and tweets out the screenshot, drawing nearly 375,000 “likes” and an additional 100,000 retweets. McCann is happier, better compensated, and feels more appreciated than he ever felt working in the media.
“I was ready for a better salary and less stress. You don’t have to be on top of everything,” he says. “It’s like, ‘What are we doing today? Oh, we’re making memes about chicken wings like we’ve done for the last two years.’”
It’s unclear how many Americans share McCann’s job. “Chief executive memer” is not yet a formalized role in the marketing industry; few people are hired to make Galaxy Brains and nothing else. But it is indisputable that brands are valuing memes as a crucial part of their marketing portfolio. So many major companies are attempting to create virality through shitposting — a catch-all term that refers to the unpolished, chaotic sense of humor that dominates the average teenager’s social feeds. Popeye’s, Chick-fil-A, and Boston Market kicked off a shade-laden Twitter war over chicken sandwiches in 2019. Hims, a male-focused self-care startup, is advertising its anti-hair-loss products through the power of Austin Powers stills on Instagram. Slim Jim photoshopped its namesake beef stick into the black robes of death: “You have been visited by the Slim Reaper, ignore to relive 2020.”
It’s a tactic so popular and a “cool job” so sought after by the youth that, in a social media ouroboros, the very idea of a meme maker offered one brand an avenue for internet clout. In August, Anheuser-Busch posted a splashy job listing looking to bring on three creatives to make “fire” Bud Lite Seltzer-themed image macros. But, the offer wasn’t full-time, and only consisted of a three-month, $15,000 contract. As food writer Dave Infante points out in his newsletter, it’s difficult to call that position a “job,” considering that it includes no health care coverage and asks hirees to forfeit any IP ownership of their work.
Instead, the most successful agents in the business are the proprietors of highly trafficked Instagram meme pages, like FuckJerry or GrapeJuiceBoys, who routinely take brand deals to create what can only be described as “sponsored memes.” This was best illustrated during the 2020 primary when the Mike Bloomberg campaign canvassed prominent social media junctions with ersatz, pro-Mike material (for example, Bloomberg quoting a 2004 song by The Game). But outside of the hired guns and social media talent brought in-house by big brands (Netflix has a dedicated team culled from online stars), many professional memers are young people who earned a run-of-the-mill job in social media management and slowly convinced their bosses that there is a bounty of influence for any company willing to turn their digital presence over to the forces of chaos.
In McCann’s case, that meant grinding away at the institutions until he had the credit to do whatever he wanted. When he walked into Pluckers headquarters for the first time, he found a wings restaurant toying with a web humor that hadn’t yet internalized the style guide of modern Twitter anarchy. “It took me a while to convince them to embrace shitposting,” he says. McCann has since spangled Pluckers social feeds with the same aesthetic he uses on his personal account; no punctuation, all lowercase letters, equipped with a hair-trigger ability to react to every microtrend on the timeline. (For instance, he’s already offered the Pluckers’ interpretation of the “How It Started/How It’s Going” format.)
McCann isn’t trying to sell wings, he’s trying to convert Pluckers into a fixture of the ambient internet — one of those accounts that’s intermittently retweeted into American life, even if the nearest location is three states away. According to McCann, Pluckers has doubled, and even tripled, each of the restaurant’s various social media follower counts since he took the reins.
“We’re not competing against Wingstop and Buffalo Wild Wings. We have to get your attention from whatever political stuff is going on, from whatever funny dog video is going around: Barstool, BuzzFeed, the Onion, whatever it is that’s getting your attention,” he says. “We have to do what we can to get three seconds of your time.”
Most professional memers cut their teeth in the vicious fields of civilian shitposting, where every tweet — if deployed correctly — can open the doors to internet superiority. According to McCann and others we spoke to, they carry that same instinct to their day jobs; they exist in a constant state of performance, and become paranoid, depressed, and insecure when it has been too long since they’ve blown up the timeline with a perfectly salient tweet. McCann tells me he’s in the middle of a virality slump — it’s been a minute before one of his Pluckers tweets went truly nuclear — and as far as he’s concerned, there is no longer a palpable difference between his personal brand and his chicken wing jokes.
“When people tell me I made a bad joke on my personal Twitter, it’s like, ‘Yeah I know, I’m chilling.’ But when someone tells me I made a bad Pluckers meme, it’s like, you’re attacking my money there. I take it more personally,” he says. “If I blow up on my own, it’s cool, but my life doesn’t change at all. There’s no monetary benefit. But if I go viral on Pluckers, I can go to my boss and say, ‘Hey, we did good numbers.’”
Marketing is traditionally understood to be an indeterminate field — it’s impossible to know for sure how much car insurance the Geico cavemen sold — and the guesswork only gets more unwieldy when we’re talking about a relatively new medium like internet memes. But Joe Gagliese, the co-founder of the influencer agency Viral Nation, is a believer. His company represents hundreds of different meme pages and has organized countless deals between companies and image macro savants. (Some of Viral Nation’s past clients include the video game PUBG Mobile and the dating app Hinge.)
Gagliese tells me that meme-based advertising opens up a whole new dimension of awareness for any brand willing to put up the money, because — ironically — shitpost marketing has a far more detectable impact than billboards or TV spots. “If you give a brand a million impressions [on a meme], those are individual people that you know saw the content,” says Gagliese. “We can track sales through swipe-ups on Instagram Stories or Facebook meme pages. We can track the clickthrough conversion on those channels.”
One national brand currently trying to capture the thunder is Dunkin’, which unleashed a smattering of Instagram meme page ads in September to celebrate “National Dunkin’ Day.” Like McCann’s work with Pluckers, the company has adopted the language tics of the Logged On Generation whole cloth. “Who would win? Chilly boy? Steamy boy?” posted GrapeJuiceBoys underneath images of an iced and a hot cup of Dunkin’ coffee. According to Joslin Higgins, senior media manager at Dunkin’, it’s a priority to allow their collaborators to meme “in their own voice.” They believed that “chilly boys” would resonate with their customers with “authenticity and relevance.” It’s occasionally whiplash-inducing to see wholesome branded shitposting stacked up against the darker, stranger, more turbid inclinations of the average meme page — there is a clinical depression joke two entries above the Dunkin’ post on GrapeJuiceBoys’ grid — but that also seems to be the point.
“Memes offer a valuable experience to consumers,” says Higgins. “A sense of being understood, some comedic relief.”
One of the pages that made a sponsored Dunkin’ post was Sonny5ideUp, which is run by an anonymous, legendary artist who goes by Sonny. They’ve taken sponsored deals since 2015 and are responsible for a daily deluge of handcrafted, deeply nihilistic memes. (Their Dunkin’ post reads, “Not to get political but, hot or iced?”) I was curious to know if Sonny bleeds for his corporate memes in the same way that someone like McCann does. Do they take it hard when a promotional shitpost flops? Does memeing for Dunkin’ ever make them feel like a fraud? Not at all. If anything, Sonny is perfectly content with his mercenary status. “I’m a sellout, and that’s fine with me at this point,” they tell me. In the absurd, gleefully derisive world of pro meming, accepting a check for a shitpost is just an extension of the joke.
“Sometimes they ask me to give them an estimate of how much engagement the meme will get and I just say I can’t guarantee anything,” continues Sonny. “I do want what’s best for the brand, but I see it as work and it doesn’t bother me if an ad post doesn’t perform, especially when they didn’t approve the much better memes I made. If you’re coming to me for memes, I don’t see the point of filtering them down.”
Still, everyone I interviewed for this story believes that their small corner of the marketing industry will continue to propagate in the years to come. The upside is too difficult to pass up. In 2020, it’s impossible to participate in the global salon if you’re not shitposting. That’s true for our elected officials, our football teams, and our fast food restaurants. The public has little use for a brand’s Twitter account if it’s unwilling to get down and dirty with the masses. We used to log on for coupons and patient customer service; now we log on to see the person running the Kum & Go feed photoshop the 12-foot-tall skeleton towering over one of their suburban locations. “It’s so fundamental to the way we communicate on the internet,” says Ariel Rubin, the man behind that post. “Having a really successful meme person, or meme chief, or meme specialist, whatever you want to call it, is brilliant.”
“I think every company in the next six to 18 months will start doing it,” he finishes. “Because it’s how you connect.”
Today, Leonardo DiCaprio turns 46, or in simplified math, two Leonardo DiCaprio girlfriends. The prolific actor spent his birthday week hanging out in Malibu, shirtless on the beach with his friend Emile Hirsch—a timeless November activity. Naturally, when DiCaprio was spotted in the wild with family and friends, media outlets flocked to the story because a sporadic DiCaprio sighting is rare. An actor’s actor, DiCaprio leads a private life that has always piqued the interest of the paparazzi. Similarly, it’s also caught the attention of the internet as a whole, because no one—on screen or in public—has lent themselves to being as meme-able as DiCaprio.
It’s a funny coincidence because DiCaprio seems like a thoughtful, serious guy when it comes to his activism and intense movie roles, but in the same breath, how specifically relatable is that image of DiCaprio, discreetly puffing on a bulky vape at Coachella? Or that other image of DiCaprio swallowing himself inside a puffer jacket because he doesn’t want to talk to you? And don’t get us started on the freedom personified in that water gun shot taken a few years ago. What a blessing to be wild and free like that.
He represents idealism as well: an encapsulation of what we’ll never be. Whether he’s raising a glass as Jay Gatsby on New Year’s Day, losing his shit on an executive in The Wolf of Wall Street or just breathing in the rare air that graces the exterior of a tinted window black SUV, DiCaprio represents the perfect balance of relatability and ambition.
So for DiCaprio’s birthday, let us celebrate him in meme form. Slick that hair back, sneak a vape hit, and paint this damn day like one of your French girls.
Snobby Django Unchained Leo
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It's so niche and yet so universal. I mean, look at this reach. Look at the range.
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The "Who, ME?" and Abject Despair
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The Age Jokes
DiCaprio’s aversion to dating women close to his own age has long been a subject of public fascination—and public ridicule. Mash it up with electoral politics and you’ve got yourself a pitch-perfect meme.
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Jay Gatsby
The king of memes, Jay Gatsby, toasts you.
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The Covert
DiCaprio is the king of hiding in plain sight. He’s been known to keep pesky paparazzi at bay with disguises incorporating everything from giant puffer jackets to rubberized face masks (dude was wearing face masks WAY before it was cool!). Just call him Inspector Clouseau.
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The Coachella Shot
Leo, do you even go here? DiCaprio’s hoodie and specs weren’t quite enough to disguise him from eagle-eyed Coachella fans, who spotted him in the wild. A perfect disguise.
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The Perennial Oscar Nominee
For decades, until he finally took home Oscar gold for The Revenant, DiCaprio was always the bridesmaid, never the bride at the Academy Awards. The Internet loved to clown on his quest to conquer his white whale, but as evidenced by this video of DiCaprio chatting up the woman who engraves winners’ names on their Oscar statues, no one loved to clown on DiCaprio as much as DiCaprio himself.
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The Winner's Account
Twitter user @LeoAndHisOscar spent two years reporting almost daily on DiCaprio’s award status. Then, in 2016, he finally won. Thousands of fans were eager to celebrate with the account that spent every day hanging on DiCaprio’s every move.
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The Gaga Pass
Is DiCaprio scared of Lady Gaga? Making fun of her exuberance? Or is he just frightened out of his skin by any woman over the ripe old age twenty-five? You be the judge.
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The Pointing
When the thing happens in the movie that is exactly what the movie's title is, Leo's Rick Dalton is there to make sure you're aware.
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The Relatable Athlete
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When Monday comes in hot, it’s easy to feel like you’ve been smacked in the face with a volleyball. This shot of DiCaprio is all of us in gym class (and when a nasty email slides into your inbox first thing on a workday).
In short, we agree. Thanks for the meme-ories.
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Esquire
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Justin KirklandJustin Kirkland is a writer for Esquire, where he focuses on entertainment, television, and pop culture.
Adrienne WestenfeldAssistant EditorAdrienne Westenfeld is a writer and editor at Esquire, where she covers books and culture.
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