Meme Report 10/2
Me on October 2nd
I think we finally killed “Me on September 30th, Me on October 1st.” which is probably a bad sign for the user base of Twitter. We haven’t replaced it with anything so we’re just kind of listlessly moving towards Halloween, immediately followed by the election. Fun!
We’re Gonna Have To Kill This Guy
Oof. Something has broken containment. It’s not so much that I shouldn’t be seeing this because despite my better judgment I try to see as much as I can. It’s that we all shouldn’t be seeing this. This template is nothing. It’s everything wrong with fandom spaces and fandom jokes. This is a meme made by an 8th grader and any variation is playing below our intelligence.
[x] Gap Relationship
I don’t want to come down too hard on this one but it feels like the last gasps of something we used to do with ease. In the old days, this meme would have sparked a few days worth variations, have everyone from television writers to beloved fast food chains to tolerated politicians participate and generate at the very least one or two online articles summarizing the trend. Now what do we have? A few paltry throw aways. We cant ask for a silly parlor game the same week Eric Adams goes down. Only a little bit of fun at a time now.
TikTok
309 Girl/80s Rom Com
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This is what this whole apparatus is for. We want more than anything to rally around strangers and be a part of their story. We love a college setting because it allows for wildness and connection between people who have nothing in common. It’s a pretty good set up. In the middle of a hazing ritual for a fraternity a guy knocks on the door of a girl and is so struck by her that he can’t finish the line. Instead of laughing it off she stares back in silence as we watch her face journey. She’s not expecting him, he’s not expecting her. He’s a frat boy, she’s got alternative style. I mean I’d watch it. Unfortunately this is real life, and the lesson we have to learn time and time again on TikTok is that things are not as good as they look. This meet cute may look good on camera but upon further investigation, the girl’s TikTok reveals she is a lesbian. This is a moment of virality that will pass, not the beginning of a story.
The moment also has everyone saying the phrase “80s Rom Com”. This is one of your classic TikTok phrases that means nothing. One person said it, meaning something very specific and now it exists as a general phrase that will be repeated ad nauseum. I think they’ve latched onto the phrase because the girl looks like Jennifer Grey, the star of Dirty Dancing and Ferris’s older sister in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I’m against this phrase because everyone wants to be the Rom Com expert and no one seems to know what they’re talking about. The more we talk about it, the less we understand the genre. Any broad strokes further diminish understanding/
Natalie Nunn
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There’s too much going on in this dance for anyone to execute it correctly and not enough going on for it to be interesting to watch. Every attempt feels like it’s missing something. What are they getting wrong? Do they have stage presence? Can they be interesting sitting still which is most of the trend? Anyone who is a good enough dancer or a big enough personality to do the trend adequately isn’t given enough to do.
And Suddenly…. Which Is Weird Because
I don’t love what this trend does for sentence construction. The average TikTok user is not smart enough to pull this off. It’s not that they are confusing, it’s that it's incredibly awkward and there’s not much of a reveal. We know from the first slide that whatever circumstance you find yourself in now, is not one you initially thought yourself to be in. There’s a dramatic framing with “And suddenly the words” which I’m not opposed to. Have some fun, romanticize your life or whatever but don’t immediately undercut it with the word “weird”. Whatever grand story we were about to be told is now immediately less interesting.