The phrase “task HBO” first appeared on a Nigerian meme page at 2:14 a.m. Lagos time, sandwiched between a crypto-scam hotline and a video of a goat boarding a BRT bus. Within 36 hours it had been retweeted in Tagalog, subtitled in Cyrillic, and turned into a dubstep remix by a teenager in Novosibirsk who…
A Name That Travels: How “Laken Snelling” Became the World’s Favorite Meme-Cum-MacGuffin By Dave’s Foreign Desk, still jet-lagged in three time zones PARIS—Somewhere between the espresso fumes at Café de Flore and the perpetual drizzle of a British B-road, the words “Laken Snelling” started showing up on every smartphone screen like an unsolicited life-coaching text….
Bobo Baldé and the Global Comedy of Errors in Defense By our Special Correspondent in the Cheap Seats Every so often the world rediscovers a name it once filed under “That guy who used to play for Celtic,” and the name currently doing the rounds—thanks to a viral clip of an own-goal compilation, a podcast…
Rolling Ray, the 5-foot-tall, 300-pound viral hurricane who answers to both “Mr. Raymond” and “the wheelchair-bound chaos goblin,” has been unleashed upon a planet already wheezing from 2024’s buffet of existential hors d’oeuvres. From Lagos to Lisbon, screens flicker with the same clip: Ray, sequined durag gleaming like a disco ball that’s seen things, flipping…
