Cam from Modern Family
When something like this comes along, I have to wonder where it came from. Is there someone digging through old sitcom promo images thinking they’re going to strike gold every time they post? Are we days away from a picture of a New Girl cast member posed in a somewhat unnatural fashion? Or is Cam just the natural response to the Kevin James meme? Is this the opposite reaction we need to keep the internet in balance? I have no opinion on this meme as I accept it as a natural extension of the Kevin James one. Tide Goes In (Kevin James), Tide Goes Out (Cam from Modern Family).
My Roman Empire
I hate what the Roman Empire meme has become. I hate what it started as too, but I really hate what it’s become. No one understands that those men were lying and bad at judging how often they think about things. It’s a false premise. A hoax. It’s not real. It’s also an issue of Mass Hysteria. It isn’t that one man is thinking about the Roman Empire, it's that “all” “men” “think” about “the Roman Empire” constantly. When people sub in with their own Roman empire and the girl version, it doesn’t work. All women are not consumed with the same thought nor does one single person have their own version. It just becomes a chance for a person to say I think about this thing a lot, which… okay, sure. This has become a prompt to start talking about something no one needed prompting on. I think about Taylor Swift a lot but that does not make her my Roman Empire, nor did I need an excuse to start talking about her. Nor does anyone else who participates in this. We’re all acting like we need someone to ask when up until now, the whole point of Twitter was that we never needed anyone to ask for all of us to just start talking about our desired topics.
AI Pop Girl Starbucks Baristas with Non-Binary Vibes
This meme is notable because it is the first time we’ve used AI Art to make its own meme. When we first did Dall-E mini all those years ago, we had recurring themes but that was mostly stealing other people's ideas. Joan Didion trail cam pictures vs. Wendy Williams trail cam pictures. That’s not a meme and more copying someone else’s idea. This is also copying someone else’s original idea but requires a little creativity. It is a creative challenge to rewrite Ariana Grande's song titles as if she were Non Binary, the picture itself is just a copy of someone else’s AI prompt. Now we’re putting them together and creating a genre of image, one that we would have just photoshopped beforehand. Now no one needs skill or ability to make a Non Binary Starbucks Barista Beyonce, they simply type in the idea and get the image for the rest of us to use. All the AI Acolytes want this to be a harbinger of creative potential on the internet. My bet is this is lightning in a bottle, not to be replicated.
TikTok
I.T. G.I.R.L.
On TikTok, we listen to a lot of music that seems to be made in a lab to soundtrack an OOTD. A hyper-confident for-the-girlies song about being hot shit. This is my least favorite of the genre so far. We’ve seen several showcased in the Tube Girl videos recently, and this one lacks something the others have. It is a song that wants to go viral by being a kind of self-aware funny bitch anthem. This one is not funny or clever enough. It’s missing something. There are no punchlines or good melodies. It’s the opposite of those parody songs we seem to love, which are the exact midpoint of good and funny. This is a fine enough song as far as production goes but it wants to be more than that and I’m just not seeing it. It’s a silly hot girl song but it lacks actual silliness. It’s just nonsense in the hopes that we’ll fill in the rest. If it half achieves the goal, so we give it more credit than it deserves. Even though it lacks both the humor and hidden depth of an Ayesha Erotica song or the better-than-we-were-expecting music production of a Planet of the Bass.
Everyone At The Party Wondering Who Put This On
The format itself is whatever. Everyone is obsessed with seeming weird. There is no idea more beloved on TikTok than being fake ostracized at a fake party for playing a relatively normal song. However, I love the blending of old and new. I love the party meme. There’s something about being shamed by a group of people that we need. There are a lot of memes that have to do with shame but very few convey a collective social shaming the way this one does. It also captures a 2013-2016 experience that I can’t explain unless you were there. There is also the mixing of the old with the new. The way TikTok has seamlessly incorporated the Kevin James meme into their lexicon. There is a one-sided flow of information. Things move from Twitter to TikTok seamlessly and without objection. To move something from TikTok to Twitter is an arduous process that requires great pearl-clutching on the part of Twitter users. No idea from TikTok exists there without being tagged with the of view of being lesser. The people of TikTok have a reverence for or understanding of Twitter that is simply not reciprocated.
Wow This Piercing Looks Good On Me
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This is the most halfhearted we’ve ever done one of these. I long for the days when we at least pretended it was some kind of creative writing exercise. Now it is pure “I look good and here is my one deep thought.” The others had a little more oomph to them. They were more of an attempt to do something rather than an obvious ploy to seem interesting, creative, and introspective. The old ones were also that but a few could have fooled me. There’s nothing to be done with this prompt, a naked attempt at mass-market poetry.