Hey everyone, and welcome to Mini Scroll, the daily Internet
culture podcast bring you the biggest stories from social
media, the creator economy, and the digital space every Monday
through Thursday. My name is Annabelle and I'm
your Wednesday Mini Scroll host and also the deputy editor of
the youth digital media brand Centennial World.
Welcome back to Mini Tech Scroll, everyone.
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We are on the journey to 1000 Spotify star reviews and other
than that, let's just get straight in today's stories.
OK, so two of my stories today aren't super tech related, which
I'm sure some of you may enjoy it for a change, but they are
definitely Internet culture related, focusing on what people
are talking about online. So my first story for today is
all about the supposed mean drought that everyone is talking
about. I felt like this would be a fun
one to start off with, so let's just get straight into it.
Over the past week, social media users I've particularly seen
this on TikTok are talking about how we are in the middle of a
meme depression, which in other words, means that the meme
landscape right now is pretty dry.
According to Know Your Meme, the origin of the meme drought came
from a social media user called at Goof Angel.
In the video posted to TikTok on March 10, he noted that March
had not seen a single original meme.
When I'm really old and have grain kids, I'm going to tell my
grandkids about the tech Talk Great Depression of March 2025.
It has been what, 9 days into March and we haven't had a
single original meme. Like yeah, you might mention
that Subaru meme, but that was made back in 2021.
It just resurfaced. There's nothing new.
According to the article on Know Your Meme Quote, the concept of
a meme drought on TikTok was popularized online over the next
few days as users started to recycle old memes or share
ironic meta jokes using real pictures of the Great
Depression. So I have seen a whole bunch of
videos that definitely fit into this description and most of
them are talking about how people are struggling to find
memes to send to their friends. For example, one TikTok that I
saw read quote how the Great March meme drought will be
described in the history books, and this text was accompanied
with historical pictures of people waiting in lines and then
also graphs showing the downturn in meme production over the last
month. Another TikTok I saw had a
similar caption, but it also included a picture of a very
dehydrated SpongeBob, which obviously is insinuating how
deprived we are of memes at the moment.
As you probably have already noticed, most of these Tik Toks
are essentially making a meme of the meme drought, which is
ironic because it has become a meme in and of itself.
Nevertheless, I have also seen users discuss why they think we
are experiencing an alleged meme drought. 1 TikTok user put it
down to social medias quote dragging everything to the Max,
which obviously is like people just taking things too far where
we're getting tired of memes quickly.
So I have a couple of thoughts on all of this meme depression
discourse. First and foremost, I don't
necessarily buy the concept of a meme drought in this day and age
simply because the Internet is so fragmented.
You can't really have a full meme drought because I've
definitely seen some chronically online memes going around like
the 19th birthday in Poland meme on Stan Twitter, and of course
the I believe in children RuPaul meme on TikTok.
This is sounds insane for me to talk about but if you know you
know. I will say though that these
memes are obviously different to brain rock content and I feel
like that is more what the meme depression is referring to.
On top of this, I don't really think we should be expecting new
memes or brain rock content to come to the mainstream every
week or every month or however frequent we expect it to be.
I think the reason why we may be feeling that we are experiencing
a meme depression is the impact of the fast-paced trend cycle.
Now I feel like we're often accustomed to talking about this
in terms of fashion, but it is definitely applicable here.
Recently, I feel like we expect something new to have reached
the mainstream or at least our corner of the Internet virtually
every week, where this assumption and the fast-paced
trend cycle has definitely changed the life cycle and flow
of memes in the digital landscape, ranging from their
origins, rise, widespread discovery, and subsequent
normalization in the digital landscape.
Having said that, I definitely feel like it's normal for there
to be lulls in the frequency of memes.
We feel the same way reporting on Internet culture here, There
are definitely periods where there is not much going on, but
there is always something. It may have just not hit the
mainstream yet. Aiden Walker, who I actually
cited last week, but he just honestly has great takes on
memes. But he added that it is really
difficult these days for a singular meme to go viral.
When we think of some of the most popular memes and periods
of memes that we have seen in recent years, they've often come
in groups. I mean, on Twitter, for
instance, you often will see social media users write a post
and then add comments, like the way you need to be chronically
online to understand this. So often memes are becoming
popular with context to make users feel like they're in on
the joke. So with that point as well, I
think we definitely need to learn to be a little bit more
patient with the meme cycle because honestly, it's quality
over quantity. I feel like I just said meme so
many times while telling you guys about that story.
And the next one is also kind of related to the meme drought.
And that is that TikTok users are plotting to flood YouTube
Shorts with content from TikTok. This is what TikTok users are
called. The quote colonization of
YouTube shorts. I will just say I am not
obsessed with the phrasing here. I always find it a little bit
weird when Internet users use this kind of language and put a
positive spin on it. Call me sensitive, but do with
that what you will. Essentially, TikTok users are
planning to flood YouTube Shorts with all different types of
content on March 25th. One of the earliest videos to
post about the move across was posted five days ago with the
caption quote. We are posting brain rot and
replacing dead Internet comments.
We plan this will take a week or maybe two weeks.
So with that, let's get into some of the reasons I've seen
online as to why users want to move across to YouTube Shorts.
The first was alluded to in that caption and it is that users
want to post brain rot and other content hoping to eliminate all
dead Internet theory comments. Lauren has definitely spoken
about dead Internet theory across mini scroll and infinite
scroll, but I'll give a little bit of a summary here as well
just to make sure we're all on the same page.
So dead Internet theory operates under the assumption that AI and
other bot generated content has surpassed human generated
content online. The dead Internet theory
essentially claims that activity and content on the Internet,
including social media accounts are predominantly being created
and automated by AI agents. So I think with that these users
are hoping that by posting brain rock content and other content
these allegations will be defeated question mark.
But I think the next theory is way more telling and that this
is a pre emptive move for the potential TikTok ban that is
coming soon maybe in the United States where these users are
trying to improve the algorithm and YouTube shots.
I know we have been talking about the TikTok ban for months
now, but we honestly still do not have a resolution on what is
going to happen next. Because as we know, Trump issued
an executive order at the beginning of his presidency
saying that TikTok will be allowed to function for another
75 days and we are coming up close to that deadline on April
5th I believe. Presumably, if the US has not
found a potential buyout or Byte Dance is not in the process of
divesting, the app will shut down again, or so it seems.
Who honestly knows? With that being said, no one is
quite sure of the progress that has been made as I have been
covering consistently on Mini Tech Scroll.
But at this current time, there are reports that Oracle is the
top choice to help run TikTok. According to the information
quote, Oracle is the leading contender to help run TikTok in
a new deal. This isn't a total surprise
because TikTok has been using Oracle to store data of US users
I think since 2022 at this point.
So obviously Byte Dance and TikTok familiar with the company
already. That said, it is also likely
that Byte Dance will still want to have a substantial role in
the platform's operations, so it makes sense that they would want
to have some familiarity. But who knows if this will be
sufficient for the US government.
Anyway, that was a little bit of a tangent from the move across
to YouTube Shorts, but I feel like it was relevant, so I hope
that gave you guys the context you needed.
Well, this whole plan has definitely become a meme in its
own right. I am intrigued to see if users
will genuinely start posting on Shorts.
On top of this, if they do post, I am curious to see if this even
makes a difference with the existing algorithm.
But who knows, this might just all be a fun little Internet
bit. OK so my last story is an actual
tech story and that is Meta has officially started rolling out
community notes on its platforms.
If you remember, I think it was on my first episode of the
podcast, but I reported on how Meta was changing its moderation
policies. For a quick refresher, in
January, Meta announced that it would be replacing fact checkers
with community notes, removing restrictions on various topics
like immigration and gender, among other changes, all to
supposedly protect free expression and limit censorship
across the social media platforms.
The response to this decision was split along political lines,
with right leaning users supporting the changes and
praising Zuckerberg and Meta for embracing free speech.
left-leaning users, by contrast, claimed that this would have a
negative effect on the social media landscape, claiming that
these changes would help spread misinformation and encourage
hate speech. On top of this, many of these
users were particularly concerned by the way Meta seem
to fall in line with the Trump administration's attitude to
censorship and free speech in the digital world, which many
claim includes protecting discriminatory rhetoric.
And this of course was in a broader discussion of big tech
kind of following suit of the Trump administration.
With this context, many users throughout these conversations
also discussed how there seemed to be more and more right wing
content popping up on the social media landscape.
And this is a hypothesis that Media Matters, which is AUS
based not-for-profit progressive research and information
recently approved in a new study.
So the researchers conducted an analysis of 320 online shows and
podcasts to check whether right leaning or left-leaning ideology
dominated those shows. Quote.
We found that right leaning online shows dominate the
ecosystem with substantially larger audiences on both
politics slash news shows and supposedly non political shows
that we determined often platformed ideological content
or guests. Having said all that, with an
increasingly biased digital landscape, I'm not sure how well
this bodes for Community Notes, which is a way of fact checking
essentially through crowdsourcing for context.
Community Notes originated on X and quote allows regular users
to submit additional context to posts offering up supporting
evidence to set the record straight.
According to an article by Bloomberg from Tuesday, March
18th, which is today in the USI believe Meta will start testing
a similar system. According to a Meta blog post
quote. We're going to take time to do
this right. Around 200,000 potential
contributors in the US have signed up so far across all
three apps, which is Threads, Instagram, and Facebook, and the
wait list remains open for those who wish to take part in the
program. The blog post also explained
that community notes on Meta will have a limit of 500
characters and will need to include a link to support the
note and to get a note published and allegedly safeguard against
bias. The community notes won't be
published unless contributed. It is with a range of different
viewpoints. Broadly agree on them.
Of course, Community notes have been met with a lot of pushback
since they've been instituted on X, but they are definitely
better than nothing. Having said that, though, as
Dave Lee and Carolyn Silverman continue for Bloomberg quote, a
Bloomberg Opinion analysis of 1.1 million community notes
written in English from the start of 2023 to February 2025
show that the system has fallen well short of counteracting the
incentives, both political and financial, for lying and
allowing people to lie on X. Obviously, Meta's social media
platforms are very different to the environment on X, but this
platform is definitely worth considering because community
notes have been around for quite a while.
In their analysis, the authors also discovered other
problematic factors on X, in that notes on contentious topics
are more likely to be removed and that most community notes
don't even see the light of day as used, increasingly failed to
reach a consensus. That being said though, the
authors also pointed out some of the positives of the community
note systems, where they characterize it as faster and
sometimes trustworthy and more transparent than professional
fact checkers. I will also just add that there
was a lot more interesting data in this Bloomberg article, but
obviously I am just giving you the highlights, but it will be
linked below if you want to give it a read.
Well, most of the discussion online about the efficacy of
community notes is restricted to X.
I am intrigued whether Meta will try capitalize on its failings
or simply copy and paste the format.
So far it does seem that it will be operationally similar to how
it works on X, though it definitely remains unclear.
I'm also curious whether Meta will be able to drum up the same
amount of enthusiasm that X has for community Notes.
Obviously they have had a lot of sign ups, but with community
notes being rolled out on platforms like Facebook,
Instagram and Threads, they are all very different to X.
Like I kind of already touched on.
And I think this is especially interesting in Instagrams case
given that as a platform which focuses on photo and video, it
hasn't really developed a community centered around
discourse. And it hasn't really helped that
for a while that Instagram and Threads really stopped
recommending political content. I know I'm pulling from the
Bloomberg article quite a bit when I am telling you guys this
story, but the authors noted in this article that it is really
important to have a certain level of enthusiasm built into
the culture of the app. And of course, at the end of the
day it does benefit users, but I will say it benefits people like
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg more.
Speaking to ex Specifically, Lee and Silverman write quote In
February, almost a third of submitted community notes were
addressing basic terms of service violations such as
posting gambling advertisements or warning of, in other words,
free labor for the network owned by the world's richest man.
Anyway, that is everything from me today.
Lauren will speak to you tomorrow.
And Please remember to register your interest for our event if
you would like to come. If you have already, I believe
you should be getting an e-mail soon.
But other than that, I hope you enjoyed and yes, I'll see you
next week. Thanks.
Bye.