This week on the internet: Vaccine memes and the end of Yahoo Answers
Welcome to the Friday edition of Internet Insider, where we dissect the week online. Today:
- Memes imagine our post-vaccine lives
- RIP Yahoo Answers, which gave us some great questions
- Khloé Kardashian’s team is trying to scrub a photo from the internet
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BREAK THE INTERNET
Preparing for our post-vaccine lives
This weekend, I get my second shot of a COVID-19 vaccine. Like a lot of people, I’m thinking about all the activities I can do once I’m in the clear. By the middle of the month, all adults in the U.S. will be eligible to get the vaccine. It took over a year to get here, but there’s finally light at the end of the tunnel. And, naturally, new memes about our post-COVID plans. This “being vaccinated does NOT mean” meme takes the plots of movies and books to inform everyone what to not do this summer. For example, no one should be trying to recreate the plot of Midsommar just because they are vaccinated.
There’s also lots of talk about how we actually make vaccine appointments. Many of us have relied on tips and guidance shared on social media. Huge Ma, the creator of the website TurboVax, got a write-up in the Cut recently for helping New Yorkers find available vaccine appointments. There are online groups now for probably every major U.S. city to help people with COVID-19 vaccine appointments. Getting an appointment was easier over the last couple of months if you were extremely online. That shouldn’t have been the case, but hopefully, the process will get easier. Then we can finally focus on all the fun, dumb things we want to do this summer—like leave our homes.
—Tiffany Kelly, culture editor
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NOSTALGIA
RIP, Yahoo Answers
If you have any pressing questions you need answered, think quick: Yahoo Answers is shutting on May 4. A letter sent to Yahoo Answers community members states: “While Yahoo Answers was once a key part of Yahoo’s products and services, it has become less popular over the years as the needs of our members have changed.”
This truly is the end of an era. Yahoo Answers, which debuted in 2005, gave us one of the most enduring memes: “How is babby formed?” And we can’t forget the follow-up question on that 2006 post: “How girl get pragnent?” This was the nature of Yahoo Answers—cringeworthy, often misspelled questions, and answers, that weren’t always accurate or factually correct. And now they are part of internet culture history.
—Audra Schroeder, senior writer
CELEBRITIES
Khloé Kardashian’s bikini photo saga
Khloé Kardashian’s team is threatening legal action to remove a photo of Kardashian posted online, a move that’s cofounding parts of the internet. The photo features Kardashian in a bikini standing near a pool while holding her phone. To an untrained eye, the photo does not appear to be Photoshopped or manipulated. Also: She looks good in it!
But as the photo was shared online, it started meeting pushback. People who tried tweeting the photo of Kardashian were met with DMCA takedown notices or had their Twitter accounts locked for copyright infringement. This incident highlights the insecurity that impossible beauty standards can have on someone like Kardashian, who has made an effort to get a photo that might not have been meticulously edited or wholly approved by her and her team offline. (Which, due to the Streisand Effect, probably won’t happen anytime soon.)
—Michelle Jaworski, staff writer
In this week's episode of Behind the Seams, we explain why the MCU's costumes are secretly kind of... boring?
MEME OF THE WEEK
Twitter is fan-casting their parents for the eventual biopic.
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