Everyone is cringing at Facebook's new meme service called LOL
22 January 2019, 12:53
Urgh, can we not just keep one thing for ourselves!?
Facebook wants to get down with the kids by tapping into something the younger generation just can't live without – memes. The social media platform is rolling out a new service which will be a one-stop shop for hilarious memes and video content called LOL, get it?!
Facebook confirmed to TechCrunch that they were working on the new feature, which is currently being tested on a small group of 100 US high school students. The app will host themed collections of memes, including "For You", "Animals", "Fails" and "Pranks", as well as content pulled from News Feed posts by top meme pages on Facebook.
Now it's now exactly hard to find good memes. Whether it's hilarious Sasuke memes, or the egg meme memes which practically broke the internet, they are plentiful on social media. But Facebook have reportedly encountered some problems finding the funniest memes in real time.
Insiders have reported that Facebook's current collection of memes aren't hitting the app until several days later and by that time they're old and have already been covered everywhere. It's not clear if this could be resolved if it does eventually roll out on a larger scale.
But why memes? Well, you might not have noticed, but Facebook has now been taken over by angry mums and relatives who needlessly comment beneath your posts from 2016. They're desperate to connect to the younger generation, who have been turning to other platforms like Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram. In theory, LOL would pull in the teens... so they hope.
As to be expected, the internet had thoughts.
*FACEBOOK IS BUILDING LOL, A TEEN MEME HUB: TECHCRUNCH pic.twitter.com/Tte6197j06
— modest proposal (@modestproposal1) January 18, 2019
#Facebook is developing a meme platform called "LOL".
— Jack Moore (@JackMoore240) January 21, 2019
Historians will look back on this day and point to it as the day Facebook officially became a meme. pic.twitter.com/kIusKrPmNm
Why any high schooler would log onto FB dot com to see weeks old memes in an (adult) curated Watch-like tab is beyond me. Also people want to see memes when they're fresh, it's not like a Hey, watch this old meme's greatest hits https://t.co/io9MXCBTDK
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) January 18, 2019
This was the worst. Srsly. (get it?)
— Brian Hall (@IsForAt) January 19, 2019
"The content found in LOL is sometimes weeks old, so meme-obsessed teens may have seen it before." Dearie me, even at my age I know that's going to be... pic.twitter.com/bPloq5jPrm
— 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐞 𝐏𝐨𝐝𝐠𝐞𝐫📱🎓 (@corinne_podger) January 19, 2019
— SkeleCrafter (@SkeleCrafterYT) January 19, 2019