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Ironically enough, a divisive moment in the Oval Office last weekend seems to have brought the entire internet together. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the White House on February 28, ostensibly to hammer out plans for a peace agreement between his country and Russia, he probably didnt expect to get berated by both Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The ensuing, historically fiery exchange appeared to catch him off guard. Similarly, most people watching the spectacle play out on live TV were probably not expecting Vances role in the meeting to explode into a meteor shower of memes among people of all political stripes. But thats exactly what has happened. Have you said thank you once https://t.co/kCNfr59RAn pic.twitter.com/01mm34xg1u— New Liberals (@CNLiberalism) March 1, 2025 Anyone wandering around X at just about any moment this week is bound to come across images of Vances boyish face enhanced to look cartoonishly cherubic. (The surrounding beard adds a perverse dissonance.) The meme pokes fun at how petulant some say Vance came across by getting angry at Zelenskyy for his apparently insufficient gratitude over U.S. aid, which Vance himself had nothing to do with. The archetypal version features an altered Vance sitting smugly in the Oval Office, with the caption: You have to say pwease and tank you, Mistow Zensky. As a result, the word pwease is now so associated with both the Zelenskyy meeting and the meme that followed, some X users now refer to Vance as the pwease guy. The origins of the JD Vance meme actually predate the doomed Zelenskyy meeting by many months. It began last October, when Republican Congressman Mike Collins tweeted a photo of Vance that had been digitally altered in a flattering way. X users noticed the yassified portrait and responded by going in another, decidedly less-flattering direction. With ever-weirder alterations to images of Vances face last fall, the kindling for the pwease meme spread around the firepit of the internet. All it took was Vance going aggro in the Oval Office to light a match underneath it. For every 100 likes I will turn JD Vance into a progressively apple cheeked baby pic.twitter.com/WgGS9IhAfY— 7/11 Truther (@DaveMcNamee3000) October 2, 2024 Throughout this past week, the JD Vance meme continued to evolve, branching out into stranger spaces. It now includes pop culture figures such as Pennywise, the clown from It; the Teletubbies; and the oafish village boy holding a lollipop in Shrek Forever After, along with political leaders including Kim Jong Un, but also increasingly esoteric and abstract variations. (Vance as Las Vegass The Sphere, anyone?) However, what may be most strange about the memewhich has gotten so ubiquitous, many now claim to have forgotten what Vances actual face looks likeis its bipartisan appeal. Obviously, left-leaning social media users are into infantilizing the vice president. Not only is it a chance to mock the opposition, but an indirect way to show support for Ukraine in their war with Russia. Its no wonder popular accounts like the anti-Trump media group Meidas Touch and even The Daily Show have gotten in on the action. Less obvious is why Vances supporters are also into it. Polymarket, a MAGA-friendly, Peter Thiel-backed betting platform, has put Vance memes in multiple tweets throughout the weekand many of the vice presidents fans suspect the hyper-online Vance is enjoying his own memedom. (At least one reporters account backs that up.) actually i think its good that people are making me look insane is a very funny way to play this https://t.co/IYHs4Q4hql pic.twitter.com/CJ0eC3NKZW— rat king (@MikeIsaac) March 6, 2025 Its unclear exactly why the online right has embraced a meme targeting one of its own. The most generous explanation is that theyre still ebullient from last Novembers victory, and secure enough in their partys current dominance to admit these images are funny. Another possibility is that the 4Chan-bred, meme-savvy faction of Trumps base never much cared for Vanceeither because of his former resistance to Trump or for more disgusting reasonsand are happy to throw him under the bus for the sake of some lulz. Some X users, however, claim their embrace of the JD Vance meme is a way to neutralize the lefts use of it. If Vances supporters are also in on the joke, the logic suggests, they cant also be stung by it. (As when liberals repurposed the Biden-bashing Lets Go, Brandon into the Dark Brandon meme.) While some X denizens seem pleased that the meme is bringing both sides together, others seem to see it as a zero-sum meme war. When the Never Trump conservative PAC, the Lincoln Project, tweeted Weird Vance after Tuesday nights congressional address, one user responded, Its only funny when we do it, and added a slur for good measure.
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As an app designed to facilitate gay hookups, popular site Sniffies has had a limitation since it started in 2018it was only accessible via web browser. Until Monday, when the map-based cruising site debuted its Apple-approved iOS app. Building an app that complies with Apples notoriously stringent content moderationand total ban on apps that directly serve adult contentwas a challenge for Sniffies, which wears its sexuality proudly. Its users, which it calls cruisers, do, too. Many users put nude images as their cover photos, meaning adult content is visible from the second the platform is opened in a browser. The company needed to tame the experience for Apple to get on board, without losing what most users come to Sniffies for: sex. We needed to be very strategic about this, to get around Apples strict not safe for work content policies, but also keep the magic of Sniffies, says Eli Martin, Sniffies chief marketing officer. The key was giving cruisers control of the experience. How Sniffies met Apples content safety standards Sniffies leadership werent begging to get on the App Store. Its web app format worked well, particularly for the men who arent out or are exploring their sexuality, who Martin says make up a coreand growingpart of its user base. But fans wanted a native app, and it was difficult to compete with the markets heavyweights like Grindr without the App Stores discovery tools. When they finally decided to make the move, the Sniffies team looked to bigger apps like Reddit and X, both of which host explicit content, as models. Similar to those sites apps, when you download the new Sniffies app, it is in Vanilla mode (internally, the company calls this deep safe). Anything explicit is blurred; to unblur the photos, users must follow a link to the browser version, where they can change their settings. Then, the app will respond to the changed settings and allow users to see graphic content. [Photo: Sniffies] There was certainly back-and-forth with the App Store and figuring out how to make it work on both ends, Martin says, estimating the process lasted about a year and a half. It took way longer than we thought, but it seems like Apple was very open to us being a part of the store as long as we could meet the guidelines. They had to make some concessions. Sniffies anonymous log-in function, which allowed users to enter with only a birthdate, wont be accessible through the iOS app.(This anonymous log-in feature has left the door open to the abuse of minors, per The Information.) Theres a friction to the process of creating an account that will be necessary in the App Store, Martin says; users cant just download and see the map. But there are also benefits: Some users report the map being faster, and the apps notification system is now more robust than it was just with the web version. Preserving the cruising spirit While the company doesnt yet know which audiences will gravitate towards which mediums, Martin has his suspicions. Those DL and curious guys, as he describes them, will likely stay on the webapp, not wanting to download something to their phone. (This is a problem with Grindr, he points out: Users download and delete the app, over and over.) But the iOS launch opens them up to a new audience: the users that were never going to navigate to the Sniffies link. This audience was loud. Martin recounts years of comments across the Sniffies social media, begging them to get in the App Store. His team is now going through each and every one of these comments, telling them to download. App users are also privvy to the larger brand world that Sniffies has built around its main offering. The company has invested deeply in its (often explicit) marketing, which spans an apparel shop, its Hush lifestyle blog, and its Cruising Confessions podcast. The company has also sponsors in-person events and parties, echoing the pushes from other dating apps. Even in the app store, Sniffies proclaims that it is for cruisers, by cruisers. Martin points out that the companys marketing strategy is based on foreplay, teasing the apps sexuality without being completely blatant with it. They can do that in the app store, too. But does Martin see access to a mainstream audience as a threat to the more clandestine nature of the web app that made Sniffies unique? I personally am not too worried about that, Martin says. Weve only seen better results for cruisers the larger weve gotten. The important thing is the culture. Weve already set the groundwork.
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E-Commerce
At the height of the summer of 2020s racial reckoning, bright yellow paint filled the streets just north of the White House. Overnight, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had ordered a giant street mural to say Black Lives Matter in 35-foot capital lettering. That street art became the center of Black Lives Matter Plaza, and a few months later, D.C.s City Council voted that the name and mural would become a permanent fixture of the city. Five years, two elections, and a large cultural shift later, Mayor Bowser has announced that BLM Plaza will be painted over. The mural inspired millions of people and helped our city through a very painful period, but now we cant afford to be distracted by meaningless congressional interference, Bowser said in a statement published Tuesday. The move is one small piece of the Trump administrations continued attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Volunteers painting “Black Lives Matter” on the street near the White House on June 05, 2020. [Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images] At a Wednesday press conference, Bowser told reporters that there were bigger fish to fry within the nations capital. She also confirmed to NBC that her decision came after talks with the White House, but she did not specify anything further. Bowsers office did not respond to Fast Companys request for comment. Republican Rep. Andy Clyde introduced legislation Monday that would withhold apportionment funds from D.C. until Mayor Bowser renamed BLM Plaza to Liberty Plaza. However, Bowser said at the press conference that her decision had been made before Clyde introduced the bill. She added that a replacement mural will focus on Americas 250th birthday, and a new name would be decided after citywide discussion. Scholars at University of Illinois once argued that BLM Plaza is an important landmark that is a powerful symbolic reinsertion of widespread social and civic support for Black struggle. They wrote that it can be dignifying for people of color to see such affirmative support in an area of the U.S. most politically prominent real estate.
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