#social-media-virality

#social-media-virality

The viral trend - where people share Chinese lifestyle hacks, from wearing red for luck during Lunar New Year to banning outdoor shoes indoors - felt like watching the world embrace the culture I grew up with. Around the same time, another phrase was everywhere: "You met me at a very Chinese time in my life." The line went viral after Hong Kong-born stand-up comedian Jimmy O Yang posted a video of himself singing the well-known Chinese song "Yi Jian Mei" on Instagram in November, with those words splashed across the screen.

You can't miss it, the giant Crossbar flanked by two stylised crosses in black on the whitewashed outside walls glares down the street, a stone's throw from Brighton's Churchill Square. Outside is the narrow shelf that the co-owner Lucy Tallant, the DIY enthusiast of the pair, attached to the wall for those wanting to hang around outside. As she worked on that shelf, two girls walked past and one proclaimed: Yeah, they're opening a lesbian club.

On the last week of December, my group chats were full of reminders to set an alarm for 1:11 on January 1. The plan sounded simple. Write a wish on a bay leaf, sit quietly for a minute, and burn the leaf at exactly 1:11 to "lock in" the year's energy. I saw the same message on TikTok ripples and YouTube shorts. It was everywhere.

"Even if there is a 20% chance of this happening, people deserve to know and have time to prepare." The people in tech who previously warned about AI's impact were mostly speaking to others in the industry, he said. Shumer said he wanted something that spoke to his dad, a lawyer who is just a few years from retirement and is hopeful he can run out the clock on the potential massive change on the horizon.

There's something different about the "Heated Rivalry" online fandom from what I typically see - something strange brewing in the feeds, something I haven't seen in a long time, or maybe ever. It's easy for a topic to suddenly take over my Instagram Reels or TikTok feeds - those algorithms seem so sensitive that interacting with just a handful of posts on a topic can instantly send you down a rabbit hole.

Brands love to insert themselves into cultural conversations or piggyback on buzzy current events, a strategy sometimes called newsjacking. But it can happen without seeking, or even wanting, the attention. The borderline absurd virality of a Nike tracksuit evidently worn by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as he was taken into the custody of American captors is the most high-profile recent example-but it definitely won't be the last.

You've probably heard it while scrolling: Yo chef, can I get a wagyu chopped cheese? The line has become a familiar hook in videos filmed inside Prospect Park Deli, a neighborhood staple that, over the past year, has turned into one of Brooklyn's most recognizable deli backdrops online. It's literally this month, makes it a year, Yazen says of when the deli first started creating content.

After living in the U.S. for seven years, Hung recently took the streets of New York by storm with an informal, intriguing business. The idea started three years ago when thousands of his fellow Venezuelans came to the Big Apple, but it only materialized a few weeks ago when he began selling portions of Venezuelan-style fried rice (a tropicalized version of the famous chow fan rice, which includes beef, chicken, shrimp, diced ham, vegetables, and wheat germ) in Brooklyn.

On Friday, members of Cienega High School's math department wore matching, bloodied white T-shirts with the words "Problem Solved" written in black lettering across the front. A picture of the group was posted on the Vail School District Facebook page. The district's superintendent, John Carruth, said in a statement that no student or parent complained about the costumes during the school day.

Even though he only took his first bow on the West End during a preview performance on Saturday, November 1, the lifelike titular bear from Paddington: The Musical already has thousands of worshippers around the world ready to die on his behalf (myself included). What's not to love? The stage version of the beloved children's character blinks eyes that are full of whimsy and optimism. He's cute, he's cuddly, and he's got a British accent - of course the internet is obsessed.

The kinds of videos that do well on YouTube Shorts are depressingly predictable: cute cats, heated arguments, crazy stunts, and plenty of good old-fashioned shots of people suffering low-key injuries. The issue is that the real world produces only so many epic fails. And of the small number that do happen, even fewer are caught on video. Think of all the airplane passenger arguments and dropped wedding cakes that have gone untaped and unposted!

Last September, Naima Troutt was one of 25 liberal college students chosen to debate Charlie Kirk. One interaction in the 90-minute video was particularly memorable: After Kirk attempts to argue that abortion is murder, Troutt mutters to herself, "Ugh, his smile is very creepy." "Oh, so smiling is creepy?" he asks, to which she replies, "No, your smile specifically." The room erupts into laughter. The clip went viral. Fan edits were made in her honor. In the world of debates designed for maximum social-media engagement,