Weekly Internet Roundup: Baby Gronk is the Rizz King, New York Gets Smoked, and Apple Reinvents VR

Welcome back to another roundup of the past week's internet! The unique mixture of insanity and a deep-seated feeling of doom is something that the worlds behind our screens are unparalleled at serving up, and this period of time has been no exception. Read on for a peek into everything from the climate crisis to Gen Z word salad.

Baby Gronk Rizz King, Livvy Just Rizzed Him Up

Great news! Nonsensical, algorithm-baiting gossip content is a mainstream meme now. TikToker @h00pify made a video about child football star Baby Gronk meeting up with LSU gymnast and influencer Livvy Dunne. Uttering the now immortal words of this subheading, he suggested that the two demonstrated a high level of ‘rizz’/charisma towards each other in a way that sure to have age gap discourse lovers foaming at the mouth. Oh, and this interaction may also make him the new Drip King, a more age appropriate fellow influencer previously praised for his rizz towards Livvy.

If you are lost as to what this all means and why you should care, you're not doing anything wrong. This intense combination of cringe, confusion, and apathy has been the jumping off point for this meme, whose sole purpose seems to be making its viewers feel unsettled and out of touch.

In an interview about the phenomenon, @h00pify insisted that the whole thing was ‘satire’ about soulless view chasing videos about nothing, but it seems a lot like it just is a soulless, view chasing video about nothing. That's how participants in the trend are interpreting it, anyway.

Memeable Tech Company Announcement of the Week

Apple had their Worldwide Development Conference recently. With it, they proposed their own version of something that tech conglomerates have been trying and failing to capture the public imagination with for the past decade.

They announced that they are serving up their version of virtual reality, in the form of the Apple Vision Pro. This pricey headset doesn't seem to promise all that much more than the much-maligned offerings of the Metaverse, and is perhaps even less ambitious in its scope. Who wants to wear goggles to read the New York Times?. Still, this brave new offering gave plenty of material for the jokesters of the internet to react to.

They Gave New York the Mexico Filter

If you are an NYC resident, or have paid attention to any major news outlet this week, you have probably been bombarded with the alarming image of new York turned orange thanks to unseasonal Canadian wildfires. On a very real level, this is a terrifying reminder of the extreme conditions we are only going to see more of as the climate crisis deepens. As far as internet culture is concerned, though, it is a heaven sent gift for a load of roasty memes. Environmental disaster never looked so aesthetic.

Bad Luck Brian Meets Doge

With every single cursed thing that blows up on social media these days, it is necessary to have a salve for it all now and then. Enter the meeting of Bad Luck Brian (real name Kyle Craven) and Doge (AKA Kabosu), two iconic memes from yesteryear who have brightened up the present with their surprise meeting in Japan. The pair got together as part of filming for an upcoming documentary about the Doge meme, and the resulting photo has now become the highest upvoted post of the month on Reddit. We can't deny that they deserve it.

That's everything that we're going to look at for now. It's time to take a minute to reflect, before we approach whatever fresh hell awaits us next time. Have a nice weekend!