[BiteCode_dev]

My guess is PR.

Regularly, on imgur, you see a pic in interest for a celebrity, a rich person, a movie. It looks organic, but if you look closely, there are plenty of weird things about it. Then it disappears as suddenly as it arrived.

I believe that they sell the front page to PR firms that need to promote something in a way the people think themself came up with the hype.

It's probably the same for a lot of communities with a strong influence on trends, like popular sub reddits or hacker news.

There is no better ads than the one you don't see. There is no better slogan than the one you repeat to your friends as a catchphrase. And there is no better propaganda than the one based on ideas you thought you had by yourself.

[robertoandred]

Yeah but who goes to the front page of imgur?

[handmodel]

I one time posted an album on Imgur of my hobby project. I was hoping it would do well on the niche subreddit it involved.

It did ok on reddit (100 upvotes) but a few thousands upvotes on Imgur and made the front page with hundreds of thousands of views. I was shocked since I didn't even know that was a thing. But my guess is popular with people who are on their phone a lot, are not as tech saavy, or international.

[corobo]

The exact opposite personality type to people that browse HN I'd wager

[JadeNB]

I, and apparently Swizec (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28676558), do both, and I doubt we're the only ones.

[everdrive]

Yes, there might be dozens of you.

[cheschire]

For the uninitiated, this is a meme reference to a clip from the TV show Arrested Development, popular on Imgur as a reaction to show support for someone else who expresses a sense of loneliness in their appreciation or affection.

A version of this: https://i.imgur.com/pgXjbNy.gifv

[w-ll]

How much could a banana cost? 10 dollars?

[BoorishBears]

No there's plenty, HN just has the kind of people who need to loudly proclaim they don't engage with <insert popular thing>

That wrongly creates the impression that there are only a few HN users engaging with it.

[still_grokking]

HN and Imgur are among my favorite sites on the web!

Both sites are quite "nerdy". Each in their own way.

[cobertos]

I used to in college. Extremely bad habit, was easy to spend 4+ hours there just hitting the right arrow.

[wheybags]

Same. I stopped when I realised it was passively teaching me celebrity gossip, which I never wanted to know.

[new_guy]

It's so easy to absorb 'celebrity' gossip, I always wondered if it'd be possible to do the same with say science or maths, if it was presented in the same kind of format.

[cobertos]

I think the hardest part is the rigour. Math and science build on concepts over time, and mastery is easier with more hands-on experience. Just presenting it to someone in a feed might be waaay too passive for absorption.

[rchaud]

Easy way to find out. Remove the pictures from celebrity gossip posts, and see how much you remember.

[andkon]

Somehow I’d always end up doing this most right in the middle of finals.

[still_grokking]

You can actually spend days doing that…

[hbn]

I recall being in high school (around 2013, 2014) and some of my classmates would browse imgur while slacking off from work. Not sure how big it is these days, but I think some people use it the same way you'd browse r/funny on reddit, or iFunny. Except there isn't really a topic, it's just images of whatever people think is interesting.

[Swizec]

Who doesn't? It's the best source of almost everything. Perfect mix of culturally important twitter and news screenshots and entertaining gifs.

[clavicat]

I scrolled through it for five minutes just now. Advice animals, rage-bait about politicians, political cartoons, cute animals—this is complete garbage.

[dTal]

Absolutely this. imgur.com is the only reason I can pretend to be "down with the kids".

[Swizec]

Oh yes also all the good/important tiktoks end up on there. I don’t even have tiktok and am conversant in all the memes.

7/7 would recommend

[plinkplink]

If you were really an imgurian, you'd know that the correct perfect score is 5/7.

[shrikant]

Huh wow, you weren't kidding!

I remember going on the front page of Imgur once a couple of years back and it seemed less entertaining and more rage-baity than now -- think I'll revisit that decision...

[still_grokking]

Some of the comments are sometimes quite interesting. Sometimes they're even brilliantly witty.

[joymonger]

The way some of the replies talk about the front page of imgur (huge time sink, insightful, entertaining, keeps you in the loop) is the same way I'd talk about the FYP on tiktok.

[latexr]

Plenty of people, overwhelmingly men[1].

Make no mistake, Imgur is a social network. It has its own memes, regular posting themes, and users recognised by the community[2].

[1]: They are (were?) proud of that and bragged about it in a page describing themselves.

[2]: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/anewbadlyphotoshoppedphotoofm...

[rchaud]

People that subscribe to default subreddits and click the Youtube "Featured" section.

[Blikkentrekker]

I only now learned that it has such a thing and decided to see it, and I am very confused by the lack of advertisement on it indeed.

[snthd]

People who want to find memes to repost on their social media.

[MengerSponge]

My retired father?

[fnord77]

you're forced there if you want to upload something

[djhn]

But who are these companies that successfully provide this service?

[BiteCode_dev]

It's just an educated guess, so I don't know.

Besides, such company would do its best to stay discrete, by design.

[Abrownn]

I'm aware of one such company that uses Imgur like that and that deals with celebs. Imgur isn't their primary target, it's just a handy layer of abstraction away from the real target so the content can't TRULY be taken down on the target site. Plus, it shows you how many impressions you get for free. That way they can gather up their campaign image urls and views at the end of the contract and show hard results without the need for a fancy, paid analytics dashboard or campaign tracking system.