Trends of the week
The Dutertes sure know how to kill a joke
MANILA, Philippines - What gets lost in the Ramon Bautista persona non grata story — with all the discussions of freedom of speech, of highly sensitive Pinoy sensibilities, of the Dutertes bullying instincts — is that the “hipon” (shrimp) joke he made while hosting a Kadayawan Festival event was really funny. “Hipon,” for the uninitiated, is what you derisively and jokingly call people (more commonly applied to women) who have great bodies but less-than-stellar faces, hence the joke “tapon ang ulo” (get rid of the head). It’s funny because it’s irreverent, which all great comedy is. You can ban Ramon Bautista, Davao, but just know that by doing so, you have granted immortality to a joke that would’ve otherwise been buried in festival noise.
Social media dreams on with #makeuptransformation
The template is simple enough, but the results, apart from a few duds, are hilarious: four picture frames formed in a square, showing people in faux states of getting dolled up and ending up looking like a famous celebrity, cartoon character, or delicious pastry, among others. This trend has been going on for more than a week now, which, given the short shelf-lives of any Internet-based fads, is probably already annoyingly passé by the time you read this.
Taylor Swift’s awkward dancing reaches DEFCON 1
One of the greatest things to ever happen on the Internet is a tumblr page called “Awkard Taylor Swift Dancing,” which is a seemingly-infinite scroll of GIFs showing Taylor Swift, well, awkwardly dancing. It’s pretty damning evidence that Taylor Swift is not a very graceful human being. So is her latest video that trended on Twitter this week, “Shake It Off,” which seems like a blatant attempt to make awkwardtaylorswiftdancing.tumblr.com finally implode from its sheer density.
