The Meme-ification of Barbie

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Come on Barbie, let’s go party.

Last week the trailer and cast posters for this summer’s anticipated film Barbie the Movie got social media buzzing.

The trailer itself is fairly vague. Outside of introducing the main characters of the film, the clip reveals few details about the actual plot to build intrigue among audiences.

A few hours before the trailer dropped, official images of the cast were released on Twitter. Each image features stylized graphics of each Barbie character and their occupation.

Upon the release of the trailer and images, Warner Bros. launched the Barbie Selfie Generator, an AI-powered website that allows users to put their own photos along with a Barbie-style occupation in a graphic that resembles the cast images.  An accompanying TikTok filter was also created.

Almost immediately, social media feeds were flooded with AI-generated memes.

Social media users who are excited about the film quickly created and shared their own images, distributing valuable user-generated content that has the potential to get further reach than the initial trailer or official posters.

This UGC play touches on an important element of nostalgia for those who played with Barbie dolls as a child. Part of the fun of playing with Barbies was having the dolls act out real-life scenarios and gravitating towards Barbies who had occupations we were interested in.

In other words, many of us wanted to be Barbie and by making ourselves the subject of Barbie-inspired memes, we can be.

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