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Viral Meme Culture at the International Center of Photography
Devon Powers, Dena Yago, and Jillian Steinhauer at Optics: Brand as Visual Culture x Visual Culture as Brand at the ICP Museum (© Jacque Donaldson) Tonight, the International Center of Photography...
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How Social Media Profiles Act as Bizarre Digital Gravestones
Journalist Lyra McKee’s Twitter account, locked in the wake of her death in April 2019 (screenshot by Hyperallergic) At 10:56 pm on April 18, 2019, investigative journalist Lyra McKee tweeted a picture...
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A Nonjudgmental Look at Our Impulse to Share Images
snap+share: transmitting photographs from mail art to social networks, 2019, installation view, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (photo © Matthew Millman Photography) SAN FRANCISCO — In Corinne...
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When Tragedy Strikes, Social Media Posts Can Become Invaluable Artifacts
The Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris engulfed in flames on April 15 (via Wikimedia Commons) A painful byproduct of the livestream age is the drastic expansion of helpless witnesses. This past April,...
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How One Meme Reveals the Difference in How Humans and AI “See”
Anna Ridler’s “Myriad (Tulips),” producing impossible tulips via AI generation (ⓒ 2019 Anna Ridler) Hidden among the hundreds of items you scroll past, swipe aside, or click through each day is a new...
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In the Hands of Meme-Makers, One Image Has Many Lives
A GoT-ified Surprised Pikachu, made to mock narrative inconsistencies in the series in a cute way. After the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones, “The Bells,” left the show’s fans divided, the...
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A Film Made to Be Watched on Instagram Exposes the Tricks of Influencer Culture
From #followme (courtesy VPRO) Instagram is simultaneously a glossy photo gallery, an art market space, a platform for brands, and seemingly a way for the average person to become famous and amass a...
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On Instagram, a Nice Smile Only Takes You So Far
From Jawline (courtesy Hulu) When asked about the protagonist of his debut feature Eighth Grade, Bo Burnham explained that he wrote Kayla Day instead of a male character because, when researching...
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The Journalism Collective Fighting Back Against “Post-Truth”
From Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World (all images courtesy the film’s website) Defining “post-truth” is paradoxical, given that doing so defies the term’s significance. Noting the uptick in its...
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Instagram Held a Private Meeting With Artists About Its Nudity Policies
Digital collage by Micol Hebron (all photos courtesy of Micol Hebron) A modest group of roughly 20 artists, curators, and activists convened on Monday afternoon at Facebook and Instagram’s New York...
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The Cop-Attacking Chilean Dog Who Became a Worldwide Symbol of Protest
Negro Matapacos in 2012 (photo by Mario Téllez) The streets of Santiago are once again alive with the spirit of revolution. For weeks now, working-class Chileans have occupied national monuments,...
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In Bolivia, Protesters Rally Around an Embattled Indigenous Symbol
The Wiphala flag, center (courtesy Wikimedia Commons) Following the resignation of former Bolivian President Evo Morales, opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho entered the deserted presidential...
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Feminist Video and Performance Art Thrives on TikTok
From Tenley Earles’s post In between the looping clips of cute animals and glammed-out glow-ups which fill TikTok, Bella Dorlando’s video stood out. It’s a single shot of herself dancing to a tearful...
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The Queens Muralist Who’s Become a Reddit Favorite
Greeting from Queens at 61 188th Street (all images courtesy Rob Anderson) Last week, I came across this beautiful mural in Fresh Meadows, Queens at 188th and Horace. To my surprise, when I returned...
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What Is a Documentary These Days?
From Hale County This Morning, This Evening (courtesy IDIOM Film) Last year, when I was mulling over my favorite documentaries I had seen for various critics polls, I kept coming back to one thought:...
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Documentary Filmmakers Challenge the Trump Administration Over Visa Requirements
Filmmaker Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi in an interview from 2016 (screenshot by Dan Schindel/Hyperallergic via YouTube) On December 5, the Knight First Amendment Institute, the Brennan Center for Justice, and...
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The Many Strange Lives of Mister Rogers Online
From Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (courtesy Cinetic Media) Over the past two years, there’s been an enormous drive to anoint Fred Rogers as something close to a prophet or saint in American pop culture....
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The Viral Artwork Emerging From Hong Kong’s Protests
“Be Water” by OnTungC, commemorating the July 21 Yuen Long attack In Hong Kong, the ongoing protest movement immortalizes its political action in real time through art. On boarded-up buildings and in...
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India and US Top List of Data Requests from TikTok, According to New...
TikTok on iPhone (photo by Jasmine Weber/Hyperallergic) Under pressure for its alleged ties to the Chinese government and other security concerns, the developers behind TikTok published the company’s...
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Russian Artist Faces Six Years in Jail for Pro-LGBTQ Social Media Posts
An LGBT flag map of Russia (via Wikimedia Commons) Like many people around the world, Yulia Tsvetkova found community on social media. From the Russian Far East, the artist shared feminist and...
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The War Over Images in Chile
Protest march in Santiago in October 2019 (photo by Felipe and Jairo Castilla, courtesy Wikimedia Commons) Better and more qualified people can make a political analysis of what’s happening in the...
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In the War of Memes, Iran Is Trouncing the United States
Grave of Qasem Soleimani (photo by Mohammad Ali Marizad for Far News Agency) Watching the internet react to US-Iran relations has been quite the trip. With each new development comes a refreshed sense...
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The Artists Illustrating New York’s Growing Protest Culture
(courtesy Colleen Tighe) New York art workers are no strangers to class warfare. In an industry of elite cliques and hierarchies, few can truly advocate for radical change from within. Many of the...
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This Self-Described “Chinese Peasant” Has Become the Twitter God of Drinking
From this tweet Streaming video can provide a unique perspective on under-seen aspects of ordinary life. One of the finest creators of such videos today is Liu Shichao, aka “Pangzai,” a self-dubbed...
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As Local Media Dies, Community Meme Pages Keep the Spirits of Cities Alive
From Manhatta (1921) (screen capture by the author for Hyperallergic) In 1921, photographers Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler shot one of the first city symphony films in the US. Manhatta, an 11-minute...
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The Strange Reign of Raccoons Online
Screen capture from “Toronto raccoon caught in the act, Attempt #2“ A very interesting book could be written about the Raccoon and, with its industrious energy and resourcefulness, it deserves to be...
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The ‘Dancing Pallbearers’ Meme Is a Danse Macabre for the Time of COVID
Hans Holbein’s “The Lady,” part of his “Danse Macabre” series, c. 1526 In the wake of the Black Death, the Danse Macabre became a popular genre in Europe during the Late Middle Ages. Countless artists...
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Black Squares Don’t Save Black Lives
A sample of #BlackoutTuesday Instagram posts (screenshot by Hyperallergic) Even as protests rage worldwide, the performance and narcissistic half-hearted self-flagellation of white liberals and...
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The Bulldozing Effect of the Black Square
A timely Get Out meme tweeted by Monkeypaw Productions (original tweet here) I woke up on Tuesday feeling bitter about the black squares dominating social media. Jamila Thomas and Brianna Agyemang, two...
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Major Actors and Directors Join Campaign to “Arrest the Cops Who Killed...
Street art commemorates Breonna Taylor, who was murdered by police (via Dana L. Brown/Flickr) Twelve days before George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, Louisville EMT Breonna Taylor was...
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What Actually Happened When Trump Staged a Bible Photo Op
From “The crackdown before Trump’s photo op” (screenshot by the author for Hyperallergic) On June 1, peaceful protesters were violently dispersed from Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. so that...
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For Turkish Women Artists and Advocates, #challengeaccepted Is About More...
Pınar Gültekin The oddly phrased message popped into my inbox on a Sunday afternoon in late July. It read more like a chain mail text than a note from my friend in Istanbul with whom I usually chat...
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A Brief Guide on How to Get Your Creative Work Seen, Funded, and Supported
There are two major aspects of being any type of creative person, in my experience: the challenge of creating the thing and the challenge of getting it seen. If you’re ready to dedicate more time to...
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The Strange World of TikTok “Reality Shifters”
It’s hard for a social media platform to truly break into the public eye unless it has something genuinely new, and people aren’t going to jump ship for a site their friends aren’t on. This makes the...
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Meme Artist Raised Over $1M for Planned Parenthood, Donated Ironically in...
Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh in a meme posted on the Instagram account @quentin.quarantino. (all images courtesy of Tommy Marcus) When devotedly conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh —...
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How to Tell a Scary Story on TikTok
Recently, my sister held out her phone to show me a live video on TikTok. In grainy night vision, two men in creepy masks sit in the corner of the frame. We watch for a bit as they get up and...
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The Universal Allure of New York’s Bodega Cats
Who doesn’t like bodega cats? The feline sheriffs, tasked with warding off rodents and pests in New York’s convenience stores and delis, have long signified a unique and beloved local phenomenon....
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Why We Should Not be Trading Human Bones on Instagram
When you scroll Instagram, you expect to see pictures of beautiful things: people on the beach, breathtaking vistas, funny moments with people’s pets. You don’t expect to see a human skull, boiling in...
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An Exhibition That Helps Us Rethink Our Relationship to Facebook
The main aim of the show is to offer a creative, clever perspective on the reasons behind the alienated and addicted relationship we sustain with social media platforms.
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Do You Dare Take the ‘World’s Fair Challenge’?
Jane Schoenbrun talks to Hyperallergic about We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and making the internet cinematic.
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New Twitter Policy Bans Posting Photos of People Without Consent
The guidelines are specifically meant to combat a form of online harassment known as doxing.
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The Contrast Between Institutional and Personal Remembrances of Martin Luther...
When we honor King publicly, as many in the art circle did on Monday, we use these moments to do more than just remember and pay tribute.
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What the ‘Karen’ Meme Shows About Declining US Exceptionalism
While there's room for debate about who is and is not a Karen, one critical component is the stench of entitlement and a pressing need to appeal to authority.
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Finally, a New Way to Detect Fake Profile Pictures
Surely we are not better training the robots to know exactly who the humans are and where to aim their lasers? (Nervous laughter.)
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Circle Jerk Takes the Absurdity of Modern Existence to the Extreme
Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, the hybrid film/theatrical production is a dense and irreverent look at the performance of queerness.
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BeReal App Gets Real Roasted With Memes
The popular BeReal app, which prompts users to post within a two-minute window at a random time every day, has become prime fodder for memes.
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Foliage-Loving Influencers Turn Life in Vermont Town Into Hell
The town of Pomfret is restricting access to a popular photo spot after complaints of excessive traffic, trespassing, and noise.
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Can We Free Ourselves From Algorithms?
In Filterworld, Kyle Chayka proposes that the algorithmically driven, primarily digital nature of how we consume culture has rendered culture homogenous.
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Meta’s New “Political Content” Limits Sow Concern Among Artists
The default feature comes ahead of the 2024 Presidential election and amid mounting international political crises.
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