Meme Report 12/11
Good Men Die Too.... So I'd Rather Be With You
Twitter
Assassination Nation
Part 1: The Shooting
On Wednesday, December 4th, the United Health Care CEO was shot in broad twilight in midtown Manhattan at the Michael Clayton Hilton. Many people on Twitter have fantasized about taking down the executives in charge of making the world a worse place, somebody finally did it. Most rational people could imagine the motives behind the killing. The face of one of the most distrusted and disliked industries was shot in the middle of the street. I wonder what it could be about.
It’s not a surprise that this was a big hit with people who spend their days on Twitter dissecting and discussing all the ways the world is bad. American Healthcare is our white whale. It is unfixable without radical action. Sure we would have preferred the radical action to be socialized medicine with little to no violence, but little to no violence simply isn’t the American way.
The feeling online was pure excitement. Something Happened. Something with fallout that we could all talk about. There would be hours if not days of conversation generated by this. We would get details, a manhunt, a suspect, Eric Adams would chime in at some point. Millennials and Gen Z were getting our OJ Trial. Our Nancy Grace moment and no white girls had to die for this media circus. We needed the news only for updates. We could be our own CNN and our own late-night show. We’ll take it from here.
Part 2: The Manhunt
After The Event, we were living in a golden era of “what’s gonna happen?” the next few days were streaked with promise. At any moment news could break. I would liken it to the same feeling as the 2020 election. Something is going to happen, we just don’t know what or when. In this era, our imaginations could run away with us and we all decided to let our imaginations go in the same direction: Sexual Fantasies. Bad Boy with Convictions is what half of those YA romance books for adults are about so it makes sense that he he stole our hearts when all we knew about him was the bridge of his nose. We could imagine him to be whatever kind of hot we wanted. Masked vigilante is the bad boy for the post-2008 era. He’s the modern version of the Patriot the Cowboy or Batman. A man with a gun and a code strikes right at the heart of American fantasy. Of course, we thought he was hot before we knew he was hot.
It also helped that his opponent was the NYPD. The increasingly bizarre pieces of evidence they revealed to the public only made us like the shooter more. They were building his mythology rather than turning us against him. Masked Vigilante on a Citi bike through the streets of New York the same day as the tree lighting at Rockefeller Center? We can picture it now! The Fugitive meets Home Alone 2. If it was 1994, this movie would be in development already. Paul Mescal would be on the phone with his agent trying to make sure Timothee didn’t get to it first. The great thing about the collaborative writing process of Twitter is that every version of the movie can exist. We can all take a pass at it while we wait for the main event.
Part 3: The Shooter
On Monday they caught him. They got the guy. Lucky for us he’s a 27-year-old private school/Ivy League grad which means he’s got a huge digital footprint and he’s about 1 degree of separation away from anyone else who went to private school and ended up at an Ivy League/Ivy League adjacent school which is A LOT of people of Twitter. By the end of the day we had picked through everything he had to offer and built a case many were sympathetic to. We didn’t have the full manifesto but we could imagine. Driven mad by back pain and a claim denial. Obviously, he took it too far but it was clear how he got there. He’s so exceedingly normal. He looks like someone we had a crush on in middle school and went to school with our friend’s roommate’s sister.
From here the story gets more complicated and requires more involvement and more time and we have short attention spans. Of course, we’ll keep updated as the trial progresses but legal battles are complicated and long. New York doesn’t allow cameras in the courtroom, which is too bad because they’ve yet to find a bad angle. Things could get more interesting and we could have some form of happy ending but that requires following the case and sticking with the details which we’re not interested in as long as they’re not flashy.
Spotify Wrapped
Oof. Not a great year for Spotify Wrapped. Nothing shocking or new. I didn’t find out anything fun about myself or my listening habits. Their nonsense genres didn’t delight and amaze. Most importantly their faulty statistics aren’t holding up under any scrutiny. We can’t all be in the top .05% of listeners. It used to be fun but it’s not if all the statistics are obviously fake and the artists we listen to are weighted by popularity, a theory I’ve long held that is now gaining popularity. It’s better for everyone if Taylor Swift is my top artist on Spotify. I don’t care what other people think or who’s PR team paid who to be #1, I want to know the truth. Which struggling indie musician was my top artist?
TikTok
Sports Edits
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When these are good, they’re amazing. They illustrate the appeal and narrative of certain athletes. Some of the best and most tragic stories are those of professional athletes, it’s just most of the time they don’t bother to tell the rest of us. When these edits craft the story in universal terms, I feel a connection to the world around me. Finally, I understand what everyone else is talking about. However, not everyone understands exactly what we’re doing here. Sometimes I’m just watching highlights set to Midwest Emo and I don’t realize until it’s too late.
In the Middle of the Party, Bitch Get Off Of Me
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Nostalgia for the last Trump Era. It would be too obvious to have a Rae Sremmurd revival. Instead, we turn to the second or 3rd song on the playlist. The one with the fun vibe and happy memories attached. No Drake, No Migos. Just pure nostalgia for the last time we did this whole thing, right before it starts up again.