I’ve been seeing memes like the one above circulating around Facebook and I thought I’d explain how they work. I’m sorry if I’m bursting any bubbles by explaining this, but no—your cell phone doesn’t really have a name. 

The secret to the meme is a little hack in Facebook’s commenting and reply system. When normally tagging someone in a Facebook post, the user types “@Firstname Lastname” to find the user. This little trick—and others like it—instructs Facebook to look up the user mentioned in the @reply by a profile’s identification number, resulting in the name of a random Facebook user when you type in the code. 

Thanks to a variety of factors the presence of all kinds of memes has exploded on Facebook—if you’ve noticed an upswing in cute baby animal pictures, politically charged sentiments and funny gags on your feed, you’re not alone nor are you going crazy. Facebook has become a place where media can go viral. It’s a departure from the way Facebook photos and photo albums were used when the service first started—it’s definitely not solely for baby pictures and college exploits anymore. 

This dramatic “re-enactment” is a word-for-word interpretation of a conversation that took place on a 7th grader’s Facebook page. High drama. Highly viral.

Digitals from Chris Crutchfield on Vimeo.

This video of a little girl imitating a street dancer currently has 2,969 views on YouTube. We call viral! This thing will have at least triple that by Wednesday. 

SH*T OSCARPRGIRL SAYS from Oscar de la Renta on Vimeo.  

In the complete and utter takeover that has been the Shit _____ Say meme run, only two brands we know of so far have created their own memes following the style of Shit _____Say: the Wedding Channel in collaboration with The Knot with Shit Brides Say, and the above Shit Oscar PR Girl Says. Hosted on their vimeo feed, Oscar PR Girl has produced a parody of herself that is unbelievably funny and dead on.

Not only has the Oscar de la Renta camp signaled that they are paying attention to viral media culture, but also that they can roast themselves on their idiosyncrasies. Almost tempting enough to make a Shit Trend Forecasters Say. Almost.

Love listening to music on YouTube? Hate the clunky interface and totally unrelated ”related videos”? Never fear, internet music addicts, Tubalr is here! Your friendly web app DJ, Tubalr allows you to effortlessly listen to a band’s or artist’s top YouTube videos without the ads/spam videos/inefficiency that YouTube can bring. Just type a band’s or artist’s name into the search box and select only or similar, and Tubalr will instantly serve up an excellently selected playlist of YouTube videos in its own sleek site. Perfect for parties and discovering music!

Possibly one of the most amusing parts of the SOPA protests were the people who totally did not understand what was going on. And thanks to @Herpderpedia, who retweeted every funny freak out from the day the hysteria can live on forever. 

TUMBLR OBSESSN OF THE WEEK! ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS IS…JUST WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE! CHECK IT OUT FOR YOURSELF!

HERE’S THE LATEST POST:

SHHHHHH. SPEECH IS FUTILE. LET US COMMUNICATE THROUGH PURE THOUGHT, UNDILUTED, OUR INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS DISSOLVING IN A COMMON POOL, MINGLING, BECOMING ONE.

YES, LET US MERGE MINDS. OUR SPIRIT IS THE LIGHT, REFLECTED AND REFRACTED, WHILE WE ARE BUT FACETS OF THE SAME JEWEL. COME CLOSER. CLOSER. YES. THAT. SEEMS. TO BE. WRRRRKKKNNNNG.

… WAIT, ARE YOU THINKING ARBY’S?

YEAH, YOU TOO?

WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST SAY THAT?

Thank you internet. THIS is what we’re trying to protect. 

If you were using Tumblr yesterday, chances are you happened upon the PIPA/ SOPA protest requesting you to black out your blog for the day. An interesting move for the brand to take rather than blacking out Tumblr itself, to show its support in asking hundreds of thousands of blogs to shut down for the day. So far in support, Wikipedia held to its promise to black out and direct users to information where they could contact their state representatives (below), and Google has changed its logo to a black bar code theme for the day…

This is a very interesting moment for Gen Y’s relationship to both the internet (which could fundamentally change should either SOPA or PIPA pass), but more importantly, to activism itself. One could say that the Occupy movements could just be the beginning of a long strain of activism being sparked within this generation; an activism that isn’t electoral, but very democratically/ socially oriented. We are keeping our eyes open for brands that understand this moment. 

After many a public political/celebrity/college/athlete scandal, we’ve all learned from others’ mistakes to think twice about taking drunken, debaucherous photos. Because you never know who may find that lost camera…it could be this guy! The creator of I Touched Your Driftwood was strolling along the beach this December, found a camera that had washed ashore, and uploaded all the pics to create a charming Tumblr with the wonderfully scandalous 127 party photos! He (she?) has even gone the extra mile and fabricated characters and a decent storyline to accompany the embarrassing photos. Morally questionable? Maybe. Whatever, I’m pretty sure we get fresh karma in the new year, so this can just be strike one. 

This video might be proof positive that while a popular twitter feed can’t be reliably turned into a hit sitcom (sorry “Stuff My Dad Says”) they should ABSOLUTELY be used as fodder for online shorts guest starring Juliette Lewis. We would watch a whole channel devoted to creating these.