It’s Supposed to Look Like Shit: The Internet Ugly Aesthetic

The internet has long-term aesthetic trends, one of which is Internet Ugly, a previously unnamed style that runs through many separate pieces of online culture, but especially through memetic content. Internet Ugly can be created by amateurs without specific aesthetic intention, or by creators choosing it intentionally as a dialect. It spreads on the internet thanks to the medium’s unique bottomup architecture. Many memes (and many specific creators’ bodies of work) begin in Internet Ugly but evolve away from it. Longabandoned forms of Internet Ugly can reappear on new platforms or from referential creators.

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