Screenshot: Jake Peterson
If you’ve spent any time on social media this week, you’ve probably see tons of memes in which people have photoshopped themselves (or anyone else, from Succession characters to Lydia Tár to Donald Trump) into a poster for Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie movie. The thing is, you don’t actually need to know how to use Photoshop in order to join in on the fun: a quick and easy tool just dropped that lets you put yourself into Barbie’s shoes for free.
The timing makes sense: Warner Bros. is pulling out all the stops for Barbie this week, following Wednesday’s big trailer drop. It’s a truly creative campaign—it’s no easy feat to launch a meme on purpose—bolstered by the selfie generator, which allows you to quickly insert whatever you want into the Barbie poster and add a unique caption to boot. (Time will tell whether Christopher Nolan and Universal will do the same for Oppenheimer, which arrives in theaters on the same day.)
Barbie | Teaser Trailer 2
How to make a Barbie poster meme
Creating your own poster meme is a simple affair. Head to the official Barbie Selfie Generator and hit “Start.” As long as the device you’re using has a camera, you can choose to either take a selfie or upload a photo from your computer or camera roll. Either way, the Barbie generator do its best to remove the background of your photo, and will show you a preview of its work before you go on to add the text. If you’re happy with the selfie cutout, continue onto the final processing.
Once the generator adds your selfie to the poster, it’s time to customize. You can reposition the photo if the AI didn’t get it quite right, edit the caption (or have the generator pick a new one for you), switch your character name from Barbie to Ken, and change the background color. Once you’re done, you can download the finished product to your device and share it with everyone you know, alongside literally everyone else still on Twitter. You’re the Barbie now, dog.
