Verity is trending. So is Verity. As is Verity. These are all different things.
Let me explain.
The Verity you’re probably most familiar with is a movie starring Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett. The romantic thriller is in theaters Oct. 2, and follows an author named Lowen (Johnson) who’s hired to be a ghostwriter for a much more famous novelist named — you guessed it — Verity! (Hathaway). While digging through Verity’s notes, Lowen uncovers some truly dark writing about Verity’s life with her husband Jeremy (Hartnett). She digs deeper to find out the truth. You know, because “verity” (the word) means truth! Reviews are mixed.
The film is based on Verity,a 2018 book by Colleen Hoover, queen of WTF romance books. In the early 2020s, it became a BookTok phenomenon, spent 103 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and contributed to Hoover’s most impressive stat of all: She outsold the Bible by 3 million copies in 2022. The book and movie adaptation of Verityhave some key differences, but the premise is the same one that turned audiences feral in the first place.
The third Verity in the mix is an animated horror web series by YouTuber ThatMob that takes place inside the video game Minecraft. As you might infer from that sentence, the target audience is a few decades younger than that of Hoover’s. The title character, Verity, is a yellow smiley face that acts as an AI virtual assistant and guides the character through the game, like Microsoft’s Clippy mascot.
Over time, Verity gains the ability to transform into a humanoid creature that becomes more physically unsettling as it goes along — and reveals personal information about ThatMob.
The Google Trends newsletter recently noted that, for a moment, searches for “what is verity meme” increased 350% in the month of September, and nine states searched for “verity minecraft” more than the book itself.
As USA Today reports, Verity‘s popularity is in line with the younger generation’s fascination with corporate horror, like the seemingly haunted animatronic restaurant from the video game-turned-movie-franchise Five Nights at Freddy’s, and the supernatural eeriness of an endless furniture store in the web-series-turned-smash-hit movie Backrooms. For what it’s worth, Veritythe book/movie reveals some of the horrors of corporate publishing (Meetings! Deadlines! Money!), but that’s where the similarities with the web series end.
TheVerity web series has become so popular that it has spun off into different memes popular with Gen Alpha — you know, the generation responsible for turning “6-7” into an inescapable slang trend. YouTuber Horror Skunx created a song and music video called “It’s me, It’s Verity” based on the series, which has spread to other platforms like TikTok.
TikToker and teacher Philip Lindsay shared a video in early September about how his middle school students are obsessed with singing the song. Kids can’t hold it together when they see a yellow smiley face, either, apparently.
Another user named @ajyaps69_ says in a TikTok that the meme has given him “brain rot” and changed his perspective on smiley faces. He immediately thought of Verity when he saw a yellow ball in his gym’s locker room.
“Imagine being the elementary school teacher whose first year it is, and she decides to have a yellow smiley face design in her classroom after all the kids all summer just watched YouTube and learned who Verity was,” TikToker @chudmike says in a video.
Now, is it possible another Veritymeme could enter the fold once this movie is out? Perhaps. Some crazy things happen in that movie. Over the years, many a content creator has made videos discussing some of the wilder plot points of the book. It’s not necessarily brain rot, but it’s definitely a phenomenon.
If anyone’s going to overshadow the popularity of a yellow orb, though, it could be Hathaway or Johnson. They’re both pretty much staples in the reaction-gif realm — remember when Johnson called out Ellen DeGeneres for stretching the truth on her talk show, or when Hathaway inadvertently encapsulated the feeling of attending a Zoom meeting?
The Verity movie has since overtaken theVeritymeme and book in popularity on Google Trends, seizing mainstream momentum — but its name still echoes through classrooms and across short-form video platforms everywhere. As far as cultural impact goes, there seems to be a Verity for every generation.
