Meme Report 1/5/26
Surprise!
Remember when I said there would be a lot of changes around here? Well, here’s the first one. Meme Reports come out on Mondays now. 8 am sharp. I’m a busy girl, and I have a very full schedule, so it made sense to move some things around so it would stop coming out late. Keep reading to see what else I’ve changed!
This section will stay more or less the same, but I’m going to write about things I care about and am interested in that are also discussed on Twitter, and be less tied to memes as my guiding light. Similar to what I did with Heated Rivalry. (Cottage episode was awesome btw.)
In/Out Lists
Every year, the uninspired among us write in/out lists and every year, everyone gets mad. I have been writing In/Out lists every year for the past ten years, and no one else is doing it like me. I’m mostly writing jokes while also trying to capture and understand the spirit of the next year by identifying what is particularly stale about last year. Everyone else is trying to be the next Anna Wintour and failing miserably. The first mistake everyone makes is that they’re not having fun; the second is that the lists are supposed to correspond. If something is out, it has to be replaced by something of a similar vein. If tinned fish is out (observant!), the question the author must ask themselves, the reason we’re all turning to these lists in the first place, is what will replace it as the trendy food item? As I am always saying, the format makes it fun! Otherwise, all of this is a useless exercise, and it’s a useless exercise already!
Bill Simmons’ Top 50 Rewatchable Movies
As I understand it, Bill Simmons is a widely hated figure among men. He is also the most popular sports/pop culture writer/empire builder. Every six months, at the far corners of my internet, I see men get up in arms about something Bill Simmons said 45 minutes deep into a podcast episode. They both think he’s an idiot and hang on his every word. He’s kind of like their Lena Dunham. For the last week of the year, Bill Simmons released a podcast episode with his cohosts where he read his 50 most rewatchable movies of the 21st century. I think it speaks to something about Bill Simmons that he knew this would be good content because he knew he would be made fun of. Every explanation for why he loves his most rewatchable movies is stupid but also correct. The reason this podcast episode is breaking through The Ringer-verse is that, though the original complaints were not good-natured, Bill comes off well, and I can’t help but be endeared to him. I, too, love The Devil Wears Prada because there’s a costume change and you go to Paris.
Mamdani Inauguration
Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as the Mayor of New York City on January 1st, 2026. So began the new era of New Yorkers being annoying on Twitter. Victory is annoying but only to the losers. I’m not really interested in the bragging rights of New Yorkers and am more interested in how well put together the party was.
I love Inaugurations. It’s the height of where politics meets culture. I know we’d all like for politics to just be politics and not to elevate those in power to celebrity, but that’s what like 70% of all elections are. Inaugurations are pure celebrity and ideology. Zohran is a great politician because he understands that while most of DSA is allergic to the fun parts of politics, he cannot be. Bread and Roses, baby. Everyone seems to forget about the roses.
Zohran makes good choices for how to incorporate celebrity. He has a good pool to choose from. Bernie Sanders. Walton Goggins. Mandy Patinkin. He got Mero in the Desus and Mero divorce. The inauguration was a series of wins after wins. As it should be. Though I would have chosen a New Yorker, or someone more strongly associated with New York, to sing Bread and Roses, too. I would have chosen Samia over Lucy Dacus, but I always chose Samia.
TikTok
I am making restructuring to the TikTok section. The trends on TikTok are becoming less and less interesting to me. A lot of it is arguments that I am too smart to waste my, and therefore also your, time with. However, I am still clocking into the app every day, and I want to share what keeps me coming back and why (besides my addiction to short-form content).
365 buttons
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The 365 buttons girl embodies the spirit of the internet. Optimistic, Didactic, Stupid, Defensive. ICYMI, in the comments of the TikTok I included last week about the 2026 rebrand, a girl said she was going to get 365 buttons to monitor the passage of time. She was then asked a series of questions about why and how. Her response was “Hey so it actually only has to make sense to me for me to do it and I don’t feel like explaining it to anyone else.” which is classic girl-in-a-fight-repeating-something-that-really-inspired-her-from-a-quote-she-saw-over-a-picture-of-a-horse sentence construction. It really spoke to a contingency of people who are both making fun of her and know she’s right. It was kind of obvious that she was going to put the buttons in a jar or something, but her refusal to just say “I’m putting them in a jar” is how we got our first iconic moment of 2026. Sometimes the Diva Fit is worth it, rather than just explaining yourself.
Funeral Stud
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I wasn’t really keeping up with this one, but I’m happy she got to sing in front of the Planet Fitness New Year's Eve ball. 15 minutes of fame wrapped up in a neat little bow.
Creator of the week: Opinated Hag
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I want to start highlighting creators I love watching because more and more I find myself drawn to personalities on TikTok and seeing what they have to say about the world, rather than looking for trends. These are the people who keep me coming back. Opinionated Hag is one of my favorites. She showed up for The Summer I Turned Pretty and has risen to the content occasion every week. I really start to like someone when they start to branch out from what they’re known for, when I learn I can trust their opinion on anything, or they at least will have something interesting to say about the world around them, even if I don’t agree. Opinated Hag is a student of the culture, and I trust her as someone who also spent a lot of time alone in her bedroom.
Best Edit I saw this week:
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I’m also on TikTok for the edits, and I want to talk about them more than I already am. This I loved, and I think it speaks for itself, but in the future, when given the opportunity to really dig into the meat of an edit. This is where I will do it.