The Daily Dot

A man has sparked discourse on TikTok by claiming that “popular kids have ruined the internet.”In a video posted to the platform on Oct. 2, Kushal (@skskskushal) presented his theory: that the decline of the internet from its peak around 10-15 years ago coincided with an influx of “normies” arriving …

A surreal TikTok trend sees the chronically online bringing meme culture into the real world, and the results are hilarious. The trend involves people approaching strangers in public and showing them printed folders full of brainrot memes and images, including John Pork and Skibidi Toilet.As always, reactions from members of …

A new TikTok trend is cracking people up…literally. In the viral “watch my egg” prank, which first originated in September 2025, users text friends or family an egg emoji (🥚) and ask them to “watch it” while they’re away. What happens next depends on the recipient’s imagination: the egg hatches …

A TikTok creator says she’s the one who coined the viral phrase “girlbossed too close to the sun”…and now she’s hearing it in a Taylor Swift song.Comedian Caroline Timoney (@carol.in3) explained in a recent video posted to the platform that she was the first person to come up with the …

A new meme called “Distracted by the Bob” has taken over TikTok, and like most SpongeBob trends, it’s as ridiculous as it is surreal. What began as simple jokes about secretly watching SpongeBob instead of doing homework or chores has spiraled into something stranger: people now claim to encounter “The …

TikTokers are celebrating all things messy, vulnerable, and unhinged again. Nothing new, but this time…well, you could say it goes deep.The “he is stable, you are deep” TikTok trend started as a fun way for people to contrast safe, dependable partners with intense and unpredictable ones, but it has evolved …

TikTok has found its latest obsession: kendama, a centuries-old Japanese skill toy now fueling leaderboard rivalries and TikTok fandom wars through an app called Kendamanomics.Kendama dates back to Japan’s Edo period. The game is simple in theory, using a wooden handle (ken) and a ball (tama) on a string, but …

It feels like we’ve only just entered our Labubu era, but TikTok is already suggesting that the viral toys might soon be dethroned as the internet’s collectible du jour.The cute and slightly creepy-looking Pop Mart plushies have been in the spotlight for a few months now, but recently they’ve faced …

A TikToker has shared her controversial theory on why being single is a luxury.In a now-viral video posted to the platform on March 3rd, user @onlinekeeks divided viewers with her positive opinion of singlehood. Her theory is being picked apart in follow-up videos on TikTok, and of course, there’s discourse …

A viral photo of a man talking to the large language model (LLM) ChatGPT on his phone has initiated extensive debate on X regarding contemporary uses of AI.The controversial photo, posted on June 3, 2025, shows a man on a packed subway train engrossed in an intimate and vulnerable conversation …

A new wave of AI-generated videos is taking the internet by storm. The videos—created with Google’s new, state-of-the-art AI video generator Veo 3—allow users to generate audio alongside visuals, leading to highly cinematic and hyperrealistic results. However, they are leaving users stunned and scared in equal measure, with many calling …

An emoji takeover is sweeping YouTube. After content creator John Casterline urged his 7.2 million subscribers to start using the aerial tramway emoji 🚡, allegedly the “least-used emoji in the world,” comment sections across the platform have been flooded with the little yellow icon.The campaign, which Casterline described as an …

A Black travel influencer is going viral after posting a TikTok alleging she was the only first-class passenger on an American Airlines flight who wasn’t served a meal. In a TikTok that has been viewed over 4.9 million times, the influencer says she was given just a cup of coffee, …

A new trend online is seeing users go outside and declare that the “2020 effect is over.”Those partaking in the trend are claiming that the world has finally regained its color after 4 years of dullness brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, often nicknamed the “2020 effect” or the “2020 …

Videos of kids setting fire to Chromebooks are going viral in a supposed TikTok “trend,” causing outrage and debate over whether there’s a new wave of classroom vandalism spreading, or if we’re seeing another round of internet-fueled moral panic. Though some are cracking jokes, footage of Chromebooks smoking and going …

An image of a quintessential English terraced house led to a deeper discussion on X recently, regarding differences between European and American lifestyles. It’s part of an ongoing trend best summarized as ‘The American Mind Can’t Comprehend This’ meme—that, while often fun and lighthearted, hints at a growing gulf between …

The internet has a new AI-image generation trend, and as usual, it’s proving highly divisive. The craze began with a now-viral video where a user inputted a picture of his friend into ChatGPT—instructing it to “create the exact replica of this image, don’t change a thing,” over 70 times. The …

‘I wasn’t officially diagnosed’: Women with endometriosis are posting about poor medical care online. Will doctors finally start listening?April Christina knows all too well what it’s like to be dismissed. After suffering from years of unresolved pain and other chronic symptoms, she was diagnosed with stage 4 endometriosis. It’s a …

If you’ve been on TikTok lately, you might have noticed a new unexpected fascination taking over your feed: the “Edge Of Las Vegas.” It all started with a viral video showing how abruptly the city gives way to open desert, prompting comparisons to video games like The Sims, or movies …

A self-described “leftist shitposter” said he had his phone searched while coming back into the U.S. from Mexico on March 31. The search comes as reports of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) searching travelers’ phones when entering the United States increase and, in some cases, denying entry over anti-Trump social …

In September 2024, a man by the name of “Royce” appeared on Stew Peters’ “Uncancelable” podcast.Peters is an extreme right-wing ideologue with over 500,000 followers on Rumble. He kicked off this particular episode by offering viewers a promo code for a Holocaust denial website.Royce was there to promote Europa: The …

The private messaging app Sidechat exploded following the arrest of a Palestinian activist who helped lead campus protests at Columbia University. Sidechat, an anonymous messaging app popular with college students that requires a university email address, has previously been used to coordinate protests at several American university campuses. It has …

Users on X are having a hard time believing Elon Musk’s claim that Ukraine was behind the site’s massive outage yesterday. Following lengthy outages on Monday that left thousands of users without access, Musk claimed the site experienced a “massive cyberattack.”“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X,” he …

Days after the 2024 election, Vice President JD Vance followed @captivedreamer7, an X user who boasted that his viral tweets about Haitians allegedly eating cats in September 2024 put it on Vance’s radar, sparking a weeks-long panic. The specious tale of migrants was a microcosm of both the election and …

My Daily Dot column about TikTok sounds.

A TikTok with over 2.4 million views begins with the title “POV: You wake up as a slave in 1800s America.” Viewers “awake” to see their outstretched legs on the ground of a dirt-floor shack, before “blinking” and reappearing in a field, holding a basket of cotton, as other enslaved …

In just a month of cost-cutting, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) saved the federal government $55 billion. Or $24 billion. Or $16 billion. Or, barely over a billion dollars. A spate of trackers keeping an eye on DOGE’s contract terminations has sprung up—including on DOGE’s own website—and no …

A video of a Trump supporter crashing his car while paying tribute to Jan. 6 went viral—because he was live streaming while driving. In the video, the driver is joined by two women in the car. Speaking to a live stream on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, …

Internet users swiftly went to work in the wake of an interview Meta executive Connor Hayes had with the Financial Times, where he said the company hosted entirely AI-generated characters that post on Instagram and other platforms. These profiles “exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that …

This weekend, a man set fire to a woman inside a subway car in Brooklyn. The suspect was arrested hours later in Manhattan, but the woman, who was sleeping in the subway train at the time of the attack, has yet to be formally identified.Given the suspect’s status as an …