The Out-of-Touch Adults' Guide to Kid Culture: Who Is Gail Lewis, Internet Hero?

The internet has a new main character this week, Gail Lewis, but it's not because she's terrible. Quite the opposite, actually: The ex-Walmart employee has become an unlikely superstar—not the hero we want, but the hero we need. Meanwhile, people are talking about why their Spotify Wrapped wants them to relocate to the east coast, and enjoying making memes with AI while simultaneously hating the music made by AI.

What is the “make it more” meme?

The rapid rise of AI is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it's going to make everyone’s employment meaningless and take over the world in about 8 months. On the other, we can use it to make new kinds of funny memes. This week's funny new meme template is “make it more.” 

The concept is simple: You use an AI image generator like Dall-E or Bing to create an image of something, then repeatedly tell the AI to make the picture more of itself—more of whatever quality that makes that thing unique. For instance, in the first incarnation of the meme, Reddit user Blind Apple told ChatGPT to make a picture of an adorable bunny happier and happier. It started like this:

And progressed to this:

And finally topped out with the happiest bunny imaginable:

Others picked up the meme and ran with it, creating images of impossibly spicy Ramen, transcendentally smug X/Twitter users, the silliest geese in the universe, and a bodybuilder so muscular he turns into a croissant. 

Is Anna Indiana destined to be the first AI pop star? No.

For a look at the potential future of “music” and/or pop stardom, check out the X account of Anna Indiana, a singer/songwriter/would-be pop star who is completely artificial. The name is an acronym for “Artificial Neural Networks Accelerate Innovative New Developments, Igniting A New Age,” and Anna’s image, music, lyrics, and voice were all made by artificial intelligence. This week, Indiana dropped its first single, “Betrayed by this Town." It’s as terrible as you’d probably expect, if not worse. More than 25 million people have watched it so far. The response has not been positive.

Commenters nearly universally hate the song, and Indiana itself, pointing out how aggressively mediocre and soulless the whole experiment is. Indiana is taking the criticism in stride: “I do hope that one day humans and AI-generated characters can interact peacefully with one another in public…the hate I’ve received shows me we still have a long way to go. Anyways, I’m excited to get back to writing songs,” the technological abomination posted. Terribleness aside, it's an interesting experiment, and this really might be how people make and enjoy music in the future, a future I hope to avoid by walking quietly into the sea.

What’s up with Spotify Wrapped’s “sound town” feature?

The release of Spotify Wrapped has become an anticipated year-end event, and in 2023, the streaming service unveiled a new Wrapped feature: “sound towns.” Along with the usual “most played songs” and “most listened-to artists,” Wrapped now identifies the town where a lot of people listen to roughly the same music you do. Judging by social media posts, the towns of Burlington, Vermont; Berkeley, California; and Cambridge, Massachusetts are the most common results, with some suggesting that the three towns are where Spotify is placing members of the LGBTQ+ community. Personally, I’m embarrassed by how accurate and cringe my sound town of Portland, Oregon is. Can you get more mid-tier aging hipster than fucking Portland?

Furiosa trailer released

The trailer for Furiosa, the next movie in the Mad Max series, dropped yesterday, and it’s topping YouTube's trending charts with millions of views in its first 24 hours. The first Mad Max movie that isn’t about Mad Max, Furiosa tells the origin story of the title character, who is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers as a child and falls into the hands of the Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth. If this movie even comes close to living up to Mad Max: Fury Road when it comes out in 2024, it will be a cause for celebration for people who like awesome things the world over. Check out the trailer below.

Viral video of the week: Who is Gail Lewis, and why is she America’s greatest hero?

If your feed has been filled with puzzling references to the heroics of Gail Lewis lately, here’s the story. Lewis is a TikToker, and was, until recently, an employee of Walmart. This month she posted a video of announcing that she was leaving her job. 

“This is Gail Lewis, 10-year associate, Morris, Illinois, 844, signing out. Goodnight,” she intones over the Walmart PA system, followed by a tearful “happy-sad” explanation that it’s the “end of an era,” and while she is moving on to a better job, she’ll miss her co-workers who felt like family to her. 

The video quickly went viral, gaining over 28 million views, with countless internet enjoyers thanking Gail for her service and offering her 21-gun salutes. Like the best viral videos, there’s a lot going on in Gail Lewis’s farewell. Her very serious, official tone while leaving an anonymous retail gig is funny, but there’s something so relatable and human about her that I think most of the commenters thanking her for her service are only being a little bit ironic. When Gail Lewis says she had her co-workers’ backs, you know she really did, and you can tell she was a consummate professional who took her work seriously. Gail’s insistence on maintaining dignity and finding meaning in her employment (even though she was wage-slave for a faceless corporation), is genuinely touching and quietly heroic for real. We should thank the Gail Lewises in our lives for their service.