Media comes and goes, its a trend that is impossible to be broken. Some forms come and go much quicker than others. Some stick for a long time, such as Facebook, as it’s audience has been broadened over the years. The form of legacy media I would like to talk about today is the app known as iFunny. Now while this media is still around today, it is a shell of its former self. Back in the 2000’s iFunny had captured the young person’s mind, including my own. This momentary rise and fall of media is known as Residual Media. The app was a social platform for connecting people to other people through humorous pictures. This app practically invented the meme; a picture with bold writing captioning the image on top. It was particularly popular when the ipod touch was at its peak. This was mainly due to the ipod touch being the first handheld device other than a smart phone to have internet capabilities. Users could pass the time on their own Wifi scrolling through endless comical pictures to cheer them up. The app was popular from kids to young adults all the way to adults. The app had issues with consistency and producing new content. As times changed and the world continued to grow and evolve, iFunny could not keep pace. In the years since its peak, it has been overtaken by media such as Vine, Pinterest, and Reddit. Sooner rather than later, these will be overtaken by new apps and media that have yet to be created.
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You have educated me about iFunny! It’s interesting that it’s content that seemed linked to a particular device (iPod Touch)—and a particular moment in media history (a handheld internet media player that wasn’t—quite—a phone).
The interlock between content/software and device/hardware seems like a crucial (and under-explored?) aspect of media cycle.