In Buzzfeed-esque fashion truly befitting its medium and substance, TIME Magazine’s online branch has published a list of what they consider to be “The 30 Most Influential People On The Internet“. It’s like their iconic “Person of the year” feature, but a lot tackier and utterly defies logic right towards the end. Long live the internet.
Your usual suspects are there: Beyoncé, for the cult place of worship that is her instagram; Kim Kardashian, for breaking the internet; Brandon Stanton of HONY, for breaking your heart on the daily; Barack Obama, for boasting the most “likes” on facebook out of any world leader, and Taylor Swift and Jimmy Fallon for being Taylor Swift and Jimmy Fallon, respectively.
TIME has also thought to include those whose fame wouldn’t exist without the internet itself: Joy Cho of quaint mom-blog fame ‘Oh Joy!’ and veritable queen of Pinterest; Anita Sarkeesian, feminist gamer blogger caught in the middle of the nasty #GamerGate scandal, Josh Ostrovsky AKA The Fat Jew, Vine star Brittany Furlan, YouTube king Tyler Oakley, Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report, and your gal Shakira, for having the largest number of followers on Facebook (107 million).
Who run the internet is narrowly won by girls, as women lead the list 16 – 14.
And for some fucking reason unbeknownst to all rules of logic and reason, the woman behind The Dress which plagued your life this time last week is also there. Go away.
Internet, here are your top 30 most influential people. Enjoy:
- Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg – Swedish gamer and vlogger
- Taylor Swift
- The Jester – anonymous hacktivist
- Nash Grier – prolific Vine user
- Barack Obama
- Kim Kardashian
- Joy Cho – blogger
- Janet Mock – transgender rights activist
- Justin Bieber
- Ta-Nehisi Coates – writer and journalist
- Grace Helbig
- Vani Hari – food blogger
- Beyoncé
- Gwyneth Paltrow
- Tyler Oakley
- Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – Argentinian president
- Matt Drudge
- Yao Chen – actress, blogger
- Bethany Mota – beauty blogger
- Alexei Navalny – Russian blogger and whistleblower
- Brittany Furlan
- Shakira
- Denny Januar Ali – Indonesian political analyst
- Anita Sarkeesian
- Josh Ostrovsky
- Brandon Stanton
- JK Rowling
- Narendra Modi – Indian PM
- Jimmy Fallon
- Caitlin McNeill – responsible for unleashing The Dress on the internet. SMDH.
Via TIME.
