Meme Report 12/29
On the Internet, One Moment You're In The Next Moment You're Out
Tumblr
They made an update to the terms of service and now there’s a new list of banned words we’re not allowed to tag posts with. The list is nonsensical and includes words like “girl” and “brunette”. It is an absolutely horrible system that makes the website nearly unusable. But not wholly unusable. The memes about it have been great and practically revitalized the site. It’s the most active it’s been in days. We’ve always been at our best when we’re at odds with the designers of the site. Nothing can stop the people still there. If you still have a semi active tumblr account in 2021, you’re in a blood oath to use it until they make us delete it. We are the band on the Titanic, playing until we freeze to death.
Marten in the Supermarket
This video combines a couple of truly great things. A wild animal in a supermarket. The fallout of that wild animal. A truly mind boggling amount of damage that no one can be charged for. Chaos. Germany. Aftermath. A great video for the holiday season to marvel at. If there was nothing else bringing you joy this week, at the very least there was this. This being a great thing to have as our very least.
Joan Didion
This past week, Joan Didion died. It should be no secret that I love her and her work. I believe to some extent every modern culture writer is inspired and influenced by her whether they know it or not. This week we saw a lot of posturing to prove that either you were the biggest Joan Didion fan or you were unfazed by her. Everyone in either direction was really doing their best to be annoying. There was a large middle the rest of us fell into sharing their favorite didion piece or quote or what have you. (I didn’t see anyone try to make their claim for her screenwriting as their own personal Didion domain, maybe because it’s too easy and you would have no one on your side. There’s not much competition for world’s biggest Panic in Needle Park fan.) The best of the best in an effort to prove their devotion in her death were the truly bizarre. The genius at Golf magazine who wrote about her deserves an award. The Paul Walker/Joan Didion meme was extraordinary. We all grieve in different ways and some are funny and some are incredibly annoying, which is fine to say since none of us knew her, personally so at a certain point it’s all posturing. That’s all social media is anyway.
Neil Degrasse Tyson Grinch Mode
I hate this bitch so much. His Um Actually-ism has been out of fashion since 2012. Absolutely no one needs him to fact check Santa. Even worse, no one needs him to fat shame santa. Santa wouldn’t be so fat if instead of giving him cookies we gave him carrot sticks. Who is that for? Did Neil Degrasse Tyson get bought out by NOOM? Is there some group of people who have been trying to disprove Santa for years but needed an expert opinion? Doesn’t Neil Degrasse Tyson know that nerds like him who ruin everyone’s fun are no longer invited to the party? Also wasn’t he Me Tooed?
Imagine Not Living in New York
This has been around for a while but reached its zenith this week for no other reason than we haven’t done it in a while. It is important to make fun of New Yorkers every so often. Remind them that even if they are right about their city, it's annoying to say it, and it shouldn’t go on unchecked. We haven’t had a good beat down since the great Bodega Wars of December 2020. This one is fine and mostly consists of gross pizza rather than being willfully obtuse about New York and how it operates. We can do better but we don’t always have to. We need to work the muscle a little bit before we get a full fledged blood bath, which I’m hoping comes in the next couple months. I love when everyone fights with each other about the same thing.
In/Out lists
Writing an In/Out list is an acquired skill that takes a combination of good taste, clairvoyance, and a flair for the dramatic. It is not about accurately predicting next year's trends! It’s not about trend forecasting. I leave that to the tiktok girlies and it’s an entirely different skill. It’s about telling the world what you can no longer stand and what you look forward to changing. It’s ok to be wrong because it means you’re better than the time you live in, which we should all strive for anyway. It’s also not for everyone! It’s for the fashion forward, it’s for the born leaders, it’s for the aquarians among us. It should be fun! If you are thinking too hard about it, give up. Just read the Washington Post one that comes out on January 1st. That’s what we’re all copying anyway, and if you’re just learning that now, you shouldn’t have been writing one anyway. Call me old fashioned but I still think we have to learn from the masters before making our own way. Finally the number one part of the in/out list that no one seems to get is that they should be a little funny. There should be at least one joke but not like a joke answer, but a cleverly constructed list that accurately pokes fun at culture while still being a willing participant. If none of this makes sense to you, I’m sorry but you can’t be helped. The girls that get it, get it and the girls don’t, dont.
Muppets
We did this on tumblr to death when The Great Gatsby went into the public domain. I’ve seen it all before. It’s fine but reminds me of when my mom and her friends started playing Cards Against Humanity.
Tiktok
Memeforum is as much style guide as it is criticism, at least that’s the goal anyway. The format is “gorgeous gorgeous girls love x, x girls are the blank blank blank”. Don’t repeat gorgeous gorgeous girls. We only say it once. I personally am glad we’re moving on from gorgeous gorgeous girls loving soup. I’ve made my hatred of soup known and am glad we can admit that gorgeous gorgeous girls can also love onion rings or pizookies or driving aimlessly or what have you. The definition of a gorgeous gorgeous girl is getting bigger every day, and that’s a good thing!
None of the tiktok girlies are good at describing archetypes. I love archetypes. I study them and how they present. I love to see people trying so hard to be one and instead becoming another. There’s so many different kinds of people and I want to know all of them. The types of girls described in these posts do not exist. Not because I have never seen them but because these girls keep getting their wires crossed about when to be broad and when to be specific. As every professor I have ever said on the first day of class, there’s universality in the specific. It’s fine to be insane and say Phoebe Bridgers is only for scorpio moons or girls who drank grande iced pistachio oat milk lattes in February but not March. We all know you’re just describing yourself, just go for it and do it more explicitly. That’s a type of girl! Otherwise you might as well say it’s for girls who breathe.
I hate this sound. Like I hate the auditory qualities of it. Interesting reaction is so quiet and short and the music is bad. I also just hate any sound that’s a fake argument the author has clearly been having in their head for months. I hate watching someone do a gotcha that I have no interest in. Except it’s not really a gotcha. It’s the other person just having a bad response to what the author originally said. There’s no great counterargument. Just an… “interesting reaction”. That’s nothing. That’s not a win of any kind. It’s a nonargument. The app has too many smug teenagers for this sound to be popular and enjoyable. Not that it ever had to ability to be enjoyable.
I like this trend but I don’t love it. Not because it’s not good, it’s great. But I think we could be meaner to empaths. I think we get lost in the weeds of fighting with thm. We get too caught up in the details rather than go for the killing blow. This time the Empaths are claiming that they can sense when the person everyone likes is a sociopath. The claim is truly outrageous and everyone is trying very hard to make fun of them which is good but no one seems to be playing the trump card. Empaths are not real. It’s not a real thing and even if it were a real thing, the people who call themselves empaths would not be how that manifests. We need to go in for the kill with these so called empaths and we’re simply being too nice about this whole thing.