Weekly Internet Roundup: A Stan Icon Speaks, Dogs Vs. Kids, and Wild AI Picture Stories

Hello! As always, many things have happened on social media this week and as always, we're going on a whistle-stop tour on some of the more notable or amusing events. Prepare yourself, things get goofy pretty quickly. Let's get into it.

Make it More

The internet has once again been taking an interest in the meme-making capabilities of AI art. Recalling the wild flights of fancy that happened when everyone was crazy about DALL-E Mini, a new and chaotic format has emerged with a helping hand from ChatGPT. People have been coming up with harmless concepts for AI to draw, and then repeatedly insisted that the technology ‘make it more’ until the picture it produces is truly unhinged.

While the artwork might be the star of the show, it's the creative prompts that really set everything up, as with this innocent request to create a man who really, really loves Guinness. It's a little worrying how well artificial intelligence is able to capture pure mania.

🚨Twitter Discourse Alert🚨

It feels like it's been a while since we've had a true Twitter Main Character that hasn't just been a crude import from TikTok. This was probably part of the reason that one of the biggest social media dramas of the past few days came in this classic format. 

Earlier this week, a woman tweeted about a standoffish interaction between herself, her service dog, a random toddler, and the toddler's parents. She complained that she had been forced to block the child from trying to touch her dog. While some people were sympathetic, many more took issue with the tone she had used in the interaction. Things escalated wildly from there, with more than a few accusations of her hating kids. 

Did the dog lady have a valid point? Sure! Did she put it across in a way that was unnecessarily rude? Quite possibly! Did people go too far in their criticism of her tweets? Of course! Did she continue to drag out the drama for days on end when the heat of the discourse had long cooled down? Oh boy, did she! In short, it was the perfect, pointless storm for the most argumentative social media platform. The moral of the story is that you should never work with children or animals. 

Is He… You Know… A Berkeley Resident?

These days we haven't truly begun the festive season until half of our friends' Instagram stories consist of humble brags about their favorite songs and how they're so afraid of their own thoughts that they listen to music for over 100,000 minutes. Yep, Spotify Wrapped dropped this week.

Ever since the streaming service began their tradition of telling users about their year in music, they've added quirky new features that appear to be tailor-made for the memers of the world. This time, the big story has been “Sound Town”, where Spotify shows you where in the world your listening habits are most similar to. The majority of music fans on social media seemed to have an allegiance to either Berkeley CA, Burlington VT, or Cambridge MA. You might not know what that means, but the memes certainly had plenty of theories (many being related to sexuality). 

He Was the Baddest, She Was the Realist

I do love a meme with a backstory. I know that this is technically the case for most memes, but so many of them remain a mystery, with the people or characters they involve forever crystallized as a silly reaction image, or something that everybody couldn't stop posting about in 2016. 

Speaking of the late 2010s, meme lovers and Stan Twitter acolytes were given a blast of nostalgia from this time recently as a meme legend spoke up about her very particular fame. Influencer @arii delighted certain parts of the internet when she shared the story behind her infamous sassy photoshoot that eventually became the Fangirl meme. Nothing but respect for the people who take their memeification in their stride, à la Rebecca Black's Friday remix. 

That's everything for this week. Rest assured that it will only be a matter of time before we all forget these ridiculous happenings, and a new set take their place. In the meantime, let's enjoy what we have. Bye!