Facebook’s ‘LOL’ Outreach to Teens Is a Joke
Everyone born after 2000 is apparently too smart to use Facebook.
The social media company is shuttering “LOL,” a teen-focused meme app before it even launched, Recode reports. It’s the latest closure of a Facebook service aimed at young people. Try as it might, Facebook can’t seem to lure Generation Z to its platform. And ill-conceived apps like “LOL” suggest the company doesn’t know what young people want.
LOL was a joke from the start. Screenshots of the in-development app showed a category titled “Piping Hot Memes” and a recommended video captioned “that confident dab though,” which is the Silicon Valley version of Hillary Clinton advising voters to “Pokemon Go to the polls,” or an eighth-grade math teacher sitting backwards in a chair to explain that “homework is lit, fam.” It’s a clench-jawed attempt to speak the easy-going language of youth culture.