The internet moves fast, and if you aren’t chronically online (like I am), you’re going to miss some of the best bits. That’s why we’ve made a list, in no particular order, of some of the best internet moments of the year.
We’ve got you covered on everything from AI trickery to spy balloons suspicions. Don’t say we never did anything for you.
Wednesday everything!
Credit: Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images
Netflix’s Wednesday inspired everyone to indulge their inner weirdo, online and off. The titular character’s kooky dance sequence became a TikTok sensation, Wednesday-themed storytelling popped up everywhere from Roblox to ASMR, and the show transformed star Jenna Ortega into the It girl of the moment, with appearances on late night shows and “Hot Ones.”
“Queer icon” M3GAN
Horror movie M3GAN, and the sentient robot doll at its center, is super queer, say gay men. The film opened to an impressive $30 million in early January and quickly grew to become an iconic addition to the queer oeuvre. The doll was also much enjoyed as a meme. Sometimes M3gan murders people, but she also dances and performs aerial flips with a straight face. What’s not to love?
Pope Francis’s AI coat
Credit: Pablo Xavier
An image of Pope Francis in a chic white puffer coat went viral on Twitter in March because, hey, the guy looked pretty good in that kind of drip. The photo, along with several others that showed the Pope in various other states of higher fashion, was revealed to be a fake created in AI image-generator Midjourney by Chicagoan Pablo Xavier while he was high on shrooms.
The rise of AI-generated content has been huge in 2023, and coat-gate was an early indication of just how convincing — and ultimately misleading — AI-generated images can be.
Rihanna’s Super Bowl performance
Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Roc Nation
RiRi’s Super Bowl performance had been highly anticipated since her iconic September 2022 announcement and, though the show was met with mixed reception from fans, there’s no denying how impressive it was. She performed a medley of 12 hits while dancing on a floating ledge, all while visibly pregnant. No matter what the internet says, RiRi pulled out the W.
Musk axes Twitter’s blue check verification system
Credit: Twitter
The death of the blue check was just one more joke in the comedy of errors that has been Elon Musk’s reign over Twitter. The verification system that once helped separate news organizations, journalists, politicians, celebrities, and other public figures from imposters was nixed in favor of a blue checkmark that cost $8. While Musk originally allowed accounts who had been verified via the old system to keep their checks, he removed them from all non-paying accounts on April 20th. It was the end of an era for Twitter, which had relied on verification to keep users safe from fake news (and people) on the platform.
Cockroach on the Met Gala red carpet
Credit: @vulture
2023’s Met Gala theme celebrated the work of late designer Karl Lagerfeld, but his signature palette of white, black, and tweed resulted in some disappointing red carpet looks. So disappointing in fact, that Vulture’s photo of a nasty little party crasher racked up more than 20,000 likes over the course of the night.
Super Mario movie uploaded to Twitter
Credit: Universal
In another Musk-era blunder, Twitter announced it would allow Blue subscribers (those that pay for a blue checkmark, among other benefits) to upload videos as long as two hours to the site. Meme account @vidsthatgohard seized the moment, uploading the entirety of the newly released Super Mario Bros. movie.
The film had already been the butt of online jokes for a while, because you can’t hire Chris Pratt to play famously Italian plumber Mario and not have people make fun of it. The video was eventually taken down and @vidsthatgohard’s account suspended — but not before it was viewed more than nine million times.
“This Barbie”
Credit: Warner Bros.
I’m worried that the promotional rollout for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie will have been more fun than the movie itself. Because, so far, the rollout has been so much fun.
It’s a ‘Barbie’ world on Twitter
On April 4, the movie’s official Twitter account posted for the first time, sharing an official trailer and images of 24 characters. Most had unique taglines that proved that while Barbie “is everything” — from pilot to President — her amorous counterpart is “just Ken.” Fans could visit BarbieSelfie.ai to become their own Barbie or Ken, and Twitter and Instagram timelines were soon flooded with custom images of friends, coworkers, and celebs proclaiming that “this Barbie” was “hungry” or “grievously underpaid” or some other clever play on the trend.
Chinese spy balloon
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a Chinese spy balloon! Between January 28 and February 4, citizens of Canada and the U.S. had something hanging over their heads — literally — as a white balloon the size of three buses floated its way across their airspace. The inflatable was shot down off the coast of South Carolina, and debris analysis by the military revealed that it had been used for surveillance, despite the Chinese government’s claims that it was merely a civilian airship blown off course.
SNL gave the balloon the sympathetic treatment, humanizing it as a haggard ocean-hater.
The Succession series finale
Credit: HBO
It felt like the entire internet (or maybe just Twitter) held its collective breath to find out which Roy sibling would ascend to the Waystar Royco throne during Succession’s 90-minute finale in May. It was hard to say goodbye not just to the critically acclaimed series, but the internet culture that surrounded it. From babygirl-ing eldest boy Kendall to memeing moments from the show for tens of thousands of likes, Succession fans were online and obsessed. The fandom proved that half the fun of loving a show is geeking out with the people you love it with.
