This essay by Prof. James Grimmelmann is an enjoyable read, especially if you're curious like me about the many ways in which the Tide Pod Challenge speaks more to the absurdist nature of modern communication (as opposed to, say, teenage impulsiveness), and how such expression is increasingly difficult for online platforms to moderate.
As Grimmelmann states, in pertinent part:
It’s easy to find videos of people holding up Tide Pods, sympathetically noting how tasty they look, and then giving a finger-wagging speech about not eating them because they’re dangerous. Are these sincere anti-pod-eating public service announcements? Or are they surfing the wave of interest in pod-eating by superficially claiming to denounce it? Both at once? Are these part of the detergent-eating phenomenon (forbidden), or are they critical commentary on it (acceptable)? Online culture is awash in layers of irony; there is a sense in which there is no such thing as a pure exemplar of eating a Tide Pod unironically or a critique of the practice that is not also in part an advertisement for it. All one can say is that the Tide Pod cluster of memes and practices attract attention: the controversy only adds to the attention. The difficulty of distinguishing between a practice, a parody of the practice, and a commentary on the practice is bad news for any legal doctrines that try to distinguish among them, and for any moderation guidelines or ethical principles that try to draw similar distinctions.
This short essay is easily accessible for legal and non-legal persons alike. It elegantly breaks down the hallmarks of online user behavior, doing so by framing them in terms of parody, virality, fake news, and, more generally, the memetic media complex. In the end, Grimmelmann concludes that "[o]ur media ecosystem makes everyone froth at the mouth: some from eating Tide Pods, some from talking politics. It’s not that news is broken. Platforms are broken, and that means everything is broken." To me, this makes platform law all the more fascinating.