Well, there’s no denying the Donald’s Twitter account remains a headline-grabber unlike any other (HERE).
That link above will take you to that ‘beating up CNN’ video that’s all the rage right now, but I think we’ve all had enough of the Donald for today.
You can find all of TIME’s 25 most influential folks over HERE, but we’re going to pluck five from that list that may surprise you.
First up – remember that chicken nugget guy? Nailed it:
A simple eight-word request — HELP ME PLEASE. A MAN NEEDS HIS NUGGS — earned Wilkerson a place in internet history. In April, the 16-year-old Nevada teen tweeted this message along with a screenshot of him asking Wendy’s how many retweets it would take to earn a year’s supply of free chicken nuggets.
He never reached the 18 million mark set by the fast food chain, but after a few weeks, he handily broke the record for most retweets ever, garnering nearly 3.7 million and dethroning Oscars selfie queen Ellen DeGeneres. Don’t worry, he got the nuggets.
When a 7-year-old girl tweets that she’s scared of dying in a bomb strike, the world takes notice. So it was with Alabed, whose everyday dispatches from rebel-held East Aleppo (“bombs falling now like rain,” “my brothers are very scared and I don’t want that”) raised awareness about the horrors of Syria’s Civil War at a time when few journalists could even access the region.
Although Syrian President Bashar al-Assad initially dismissed the account — which is run by Bana’s mom, Fatemah — as anti-government “propaganda,” it nonetheless drew widespread coverage, turning Alabed into a posterchild for Syria’s thousands of struggling children. Her story has a happier ending than most: In December 2016, she and her family were evacuated to Turkey, where they’re now living as refugees. She recently signed a book deal with Simon & Schuster.
In recent months, interest has surged in so-called wholesome memes that promote earnest messages of empowerment. And the 27-year-old Sun — better known as “jomny sun” to his 475,000 Twitter followers — is one of the movement’s biggest advocates; last year, he made headlines for launching a campaign to turn the “Sad Kermit” meme into a symbol of hope. One goal, Sun says, is to help his readers cope with negative feelings like depression and anxiety.
“Everybody feels those feelings,” he tells TIME, adding that creating and consuming wholesome memes is about “acknowledging and accepting that instead of beating yourself up over it.” Sun’s work is advancing well beyond Twitter, though: he’s releasing a book loosely based on his online persona. —Lisa Eadicicco
Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin (founders of The Skimm)
Depending on whom you ask, Zakin and Weisberg’s daily news digest is either a pioneering model for the future of news or a harbinger of the apocalypse. But the fact that it has generated so much debate is a sign that its profile is rising. Zakin and Weisberg launched The Skimm in 2012 as a daily email newsletter designed to summarize [sic] the news in a way that would inform and entertain its core audience of millennial women — often by using an irreverent, conversational tone that has been accused of being overly flip…
The email newsletter, which Weisberg and Zakin still co-edit, has more than 5 million subscribers and high open rates, and its celebrity fans include Oprah, Lena Dunham and Trevor Noah.
Chance the Rapper didn’t need a record deal to become a hip-hop superstar. That’s thanks largely to his mastery of the internet, both as a distribution method (all three of his mixtapes have been streaming-only) and as a tool to build meaningful relationships with his many young fans. The Chicago native (born Chancelor Johnathan Bennett) released his latest effort, Coloring Book, for free via Apple Music; it went on to become the first streaming-only album to chart on the Billboard 200 and, eventually, to win a Grammy.
And that’s five you might not have seen coming.
Yes, Rihanna and Kim K and Katy Perry and all the rest are there too.
[source:time]
