Link Tank: How Shrek Became One of the Most Meme-able Franchises
A history of Shrek memes, why you should watch Shadow in the Cloud, Signal's overly honest Instagram ads, and more in today's Link Tank.
Few movie franchises are as ripe for memes as Shrek. Here’s a history of how Shrek went from a CGI classic to one of the most prolific internet in-jokes.
“Shrek, the movie, is an important cultural document that heralded the arrival of CGI animation as a dominant medium and essentially forced the Oscars to create its Best Animated Feature category. Online, Shrek has long provided source material for memes and artistic expressions, but the internet love for the movie’s actual substance has, by far, been overshadowed by the seemingly unquenchable joy of reinterpreting Shrek, often in explicit, NSFW ways.”
To all chocolate lovers out there, check out a brief history of chocolate and the cacao beans they’re made from.
“In 2017, two members of a Russian crime syndicate in the United States were charged with the transport and sale of 10,000 pounds of ‘stolen chocolate confections.’ The indictment didn’t mention whether the thieves took a few bites for themselves, but if they did have a sweet tooth they’d hardly be alone…”
Shadow in the Cloud, starring Grace Moretz, is the scariest action movie of 2021 so far—and it’s now available to stream on Hulu.
“August, 1943. A female Royal Air Force officer boards a B-17 bomber manned by short-tempered misogynists. With no room on the plane, she’s forced to stay below in the claustrophobic turret seat of glass and rusty metal. She can barely make out the ground thousands of feet below. Meanwhile, something small and evil sneaks through the plane’s crevices. This is Shadow in the Cloud.”
Over 500,000 people have placed orders for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service.
“SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has already received over 500,000 orders. SpaceX mentioned the number on Tuesday during the company’s 26th mission to launch satellites for the Starlink system. ‘To date, over half a million people have placed an order or put down a deposit for Starlink,’ said Siva Bharadvaj, a space operations engineer for SpaceX.”
The messaging app Signal’s overly honest Instagram ads about data collection by tech giants immediately got banned.
“A series of Instagram ads run by the privacy-positive platform Signal got the messaging app booted from the former’s ad platform, according to a blog post Signal published on Tuesday. The ads were meant to show users the bevy of data that Instagram and its parent company Facebook collects on users, by… targeting those users using Instagram’s own adtech tools.”
The Invincible fandom’s dislike for Amber Bennett is unsurprising, but nevertheless disappointing.
“Invincible is an adult animated superhero series on Amazon Prime based on the comic series of the same name, by Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker. In eight hour-long episodes, we are introduced to Mark Greyson (Steven Yeun), son of the most powerful superhero on Earth, the alien Nolan ‘Omni-Man’ Grayson (J.K. Simmons). He finally receives his alien superhero powers and becomes the superhero Invincible. But since this is an adult series in the same vein as The Boys, things get dark quick. Yet, one of the most disliked characters is Amber Bennett (Zazie Beetz).”
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