Meme Report 1/5

New Year New Memes

Welcome to the first Meme Report of the new year. Who knows what 2022 will hold for us? What celebrity missteps will we make fun of? What fascinating turns of phrase will enter our vocabulary this year? What images will enter our digital lexicon, and stay for what seems like forever? How will we find new ways to make fun of Drake? These aren’t things I will pretend to know in advance, I can only promise to catalog and analyze them here. Let’s get started. 

Twitter

Dry January 

Everyone is being really antsy about dry January this year.I haven’t seen anyone claiming to do it but I have seen a lot of people taking hits at and proposing their own amendments to it. It seems to be on everyone’s mind and also bothering them a lot. I’m all for making fun of things or amending them to suit your needs but Dry January seems bottom of the barrel.  It's very straightforward and feels morally neutral. Proof that there’s kind of nothing fun or easy to make fun of going on. We’re biding our time until something actually interesting happens. As we always do in the early days of the year.

I Lost All My Apes

The time has come for me to talk about NFTs. I don’t want to. I hate them for the same reasons everyone else hates them. Stupid, Bad for the environment, stupid, ugly, stupid, and a thousand various other reasons. This meme involves someone losing all their NFTs, something that isn’t supposed to happen, and uttering the phrase, I lost my apes. It’s fine, and necessary, to make fun of these people but, like with empaths, we have to be more vicious. Light teasing will not bring the NFT community to its knees. Be meaner. 

Oh Shit I Took Both Pills

The Matrix sequel is finally entering into the collective consciousness like I knew it would. Not in a manufactured corporate way but in a stupid silly way, as it should be. If we had too seriously integrated The New Matrix movie into our internet landscape it would not have undid the damage done by incels and their Red Pill oh so long ago. Damage like that cannot be undone. All that can be done is to hope that new silly memes overtake the old place red pill had in our brain. It cannot be done too deliberately or too obsessed with itself. Oh shit I took both pills is not a meme about taking both pills, as it seems on the surface but having fun with The Matrix again. At its core The Matrix is about saying “sick” when you watch a movie. This meme brings the online discourse about this movie a little closer to “cool as hell” and farther away from “Um, Actually”. 

200 Million College Educated English Speaking Audience

I tried to look into this but I don’t remember who Ben Smith is. I can only spend so much time getting mad at New York Times writers plus I only really read the styles section. This is a bizarre quote but I don’t see it really spreading beyond media circles and also even sticking around there for long. It’s bizarre but not that bizarre. It’s no 30-50 feral hogs. 

Hey It’s Che Diaz

It is here that I will take the time to say that I love “And Just Like That”. I think it’s really good and fun and actually depicts what our girls would be up to now! I think the haters are thinking too hard about it and also aren't remembering what sex and the city was actually about and what those characters were actually up to. As Alexis Wilson said on Twitter “The last time we saw these women one of them rolled down a window and yelled “Abu Dhabi doo!” Cut the bullshit and laugh a little.” That’s exactly how I feel. The “It’s Me, Che Diaz” Meme is incredible. To me it means we’re all coming around to the show and engaging with it on it’s level. Che Diaz is the ultimate new character to this show. They are antithetical to the old show and they are shaking things up to an absurd degree. We’re just along for the ride and hopefully no longer dragging our feet. 

Tiktok

Material Girl

I want to apologize. I have not done Material Girl justice. I don’t know what I was waiting for or avoiding but I’m covering it now. There have been so many lives to Material girls since November. There’s at least three versions of the song going around Tik Tok right now with some popularity. There’s the Roblox filter which I love for all its absurdity. I love every version of material girl. I think the ironic detachment we all have to apply for our unacknowledged love of the spoils of capitalism is the best way to approach it for now. Material girl allows us to admit our inner material girl and also point out when our vibe or situation is not very Material Girl™ at all. We have very little in our lives that accurately expresses these contradictions. Material Girl does it well. I sense we are nowhere near finished with our Material Girl era and I welcome the sounds to come. 

 

Balsamic Vinegah and Explain It To Elmo

There have been two Elmo memes in the past week and they both capitalize on the same general idea. Elmo breaking character. Or not so much breaking character but a change in character. The first one is fun because Elmo really uses his native accent, Sesame Street is in New York City after all. Kids of all ages from The Bronx are able to connect with Elmo and isn’t that what Sesame Street is all about? The second example is less localized and more about the universal feeling of being at your breaking point. Here Elmo simply gets it. No more engaging in the fantasies of others to our own detriment. I am starting to get worried here. Too many people who are disney adult ajancet are starting to get really into Elmo and his antics and I don’t know if I can suffer through a whole winter of people thinking they are so weird because they’re on “Elmo Tok”. It’s fine for now but we’re all on thin ice. We’re allowed one more week of fun but the second I start hearing Elmo remixes I’m out.

People Are Gonna Wish

With this sound I think we have finally found a balance with the trauma dumping to comedy ratio. It needs to make the audience laugh. The second part needs to be a joke. It needs to be absurd and funny in some way. It’s not enough to just to say a bad thing that happens to you as a punchline. This sound finally gets around to that balance. There have been some good jokes and most of them don’t leave me feeling sad.

Boo Corny Tomato Tomato Tomato

This is a sound for me and my people. Haters to our core. Sick of you corny bitches and your canned phrases and stupid feelings. We finally have a way to combat you all. If this happened to me, and someone hit me with the “tomato tomato tomato” I would never recover. We need to strike fear into the heart of the corny. Be afraid, Be very afraid. 

American Dream

We do this a couple times a year. We question why our ancestors, or parents, left wherever they were and how that action landed us where we are. I don’t know if it's necessary or helpful for figuring out our legacy or place in the world. The world we live in presents us with many questions that are impossible to figure out but if you can get a couple thousand views out of these unanswerable questions, go for it.