The cultural year has finally begun. It takes a while to get into the swing of things. All those fresh starts have either taken hold or dissipated. The culture has completely reset since Christmas and we’ve shed our pre new year content (And Just Like That) completely. It’s all about our new shiny cultural objects (Gilded Age). The super bowl has happened, leaving little impact. The Oscar nominations have come out and several artists have released year, or at least winter, defining albums. Culture is alive again after a fallow period that comes every January.
Enough Champagne To Fill The Nile
A movie with the most canceled cast to be released post-cancellation is coming out soon. Every other canceled cast member is too much to wade into but Gal Gadot is an ever present punching bag. Without getting into literally any other part of why she is problematique, we can just go with the classic, she’s a bad actress, which she is! The phrase itself is fun to say without the affectation but with the attempted accent that becomes even more mangled as people repeat it, it is perfect. Say it to yourself a couple times today. Have a little laugh. Have enough champagne… to fill the Nile!
Kanye
People are always going to make jokes about the world around them and the goings on. The farther removed they are from the subject, the more callous they will be Beyond the everyday callousness we treat most subjects of the press, we as a culture have never understood the right way to interact with Kanye. Especially when he’s posting through a crisis. The cycle goes: Have you seen what Kanye’s tweeting? To jokes about what Kanye is tweeting to scolding from people about how to treat Kanye. When he’s having an episode of some kind, the scolds want us to sympathize with him and when he’s attacking Kim or someone else, we’re supposed to have some other kind of reaction.. Hold him accountable I guess? I think we all know things are not right with the way we handle Kanye’s posts but when we get to the end of the cycle, we haven’t learned anything. We’ve just stopped liking as many memes so we don’t keep getting yelled at. We don’t take any lessons from being yelled at, we just stop for the time being. The thing we do remember are the memes. I don’t remember any cogent points from the moral part of the cycle during the last twitter storm but I do remember “I don’t have a manager. I cannot be managed.” and the jokes that went with it.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how to correct and modify behavior on the internet. How do we get through to people? How to we convince people to have common decency again? However I don’t think the people here are trying to modify our response to Kanye, they just want to be right. They want to give their two cents on the whole situation (which also contributes to discourse, by the way). or they want to make Kanye into a symbol of something else, which still contributes to celebrity myth making., which is how we got into this mess in the first place. The internet makes us think we are players in this game. That we have something of value to offer. That if our jokes have the “power” to “affect” things, so should our other reactions. If our other reactions are justified and morally correct, they should stand separate from the system they are in. I.e. Discourse is ok when I do it because I’m part of the solution (twitter discourse is never part of the solution).
But our calls for “accountability” don’t mean anything. If Kim can’t get through to Kanye, neither can any random twitter user, not even a verified one. The solution requires a much more nuanced understanding of celebrity than the current climate is capable of. I see the Kim concern trolling as similar to this past winter when we were exploiting Brittney all over again but this time under the guise of being worried about her. Does making fun of Kanye’s posts exclude the possibility of being worried for Kim? Does being worried for Kim even mean anything? If celebrity by its very nature is exploitative, where is the line? What am I supposed to do? Wait three months for the New York Times to make a doc about this whole situation and then smugly talk about how right I was? I didn’t like @stankass420’s Kanye meme but I did watch a documentary that exploited Kim’s pain for the purpose of “journalism” so I won the morals of that round. But that’s all about me. That’s really the only person anyone can focus on in this whole thing. What can I do to help Kim Kardashian? I don’t think Kim Kardashian needs our help with this, not that we can even offer it in any tangible way.
I don’t know that the memes are necessarily good for culture or empathy or basic decency but I think they better assess our distance from the situation than anyone is willing to admit. The memes about proving his instagram account is actually him are probably the most harmless as they are so far removed from the situation. Nobody really knows what to do and most people choose jokes and the others choose scolding and a third chooses silence and I don’t think really any group is right. But the memes always have the most impact.
TikTok
Paul F Tompkins once said that steampunk was an idea from an imagination that could only stretch so far. That is how I feel about this sound. You all are so creative but only in the same way every time. Everyone had the same idea at the same time and that idea is dog = boy =yelling and cat =girl = sad. Visionary, breakthrough, absolutely stupid. I hate when TikTok gets obsessed with how creative everyone is when we’re getting nothing.
I hope this is a renaissance of Clueless sounds. It’s time for Cher to have her moment in the sun. It’s a perfect movie and deserves to have a resurgence among the TikTok teens. The meme itself is nothing special and pretty much fine. It’s inoffensive but hopefully indicative of more fun to come.
I love this. I think this is the apex of a song that is both good and funny. “She’s not a lesbian/For P she turned Pesbian” is genius. I say it to myself every day. The addition of Weezer makes it all sillier. We’re back to regular mash ups. No more of these cheap smack my ass like a drum edits anymore. We’re growing up and getting better. This is our height right now and I don’t think we can do better but I’m excited to see us try.
Have you ever seen a gay guy complain? They love doing it. They do it a lot. They’re very good at it. And yet no one under this sound is nailing the actions. Gay men under this sound are doing stereotypical gay gestures but as if they are not and have never seen a gay person. We’re not doing twink Pinocchio justice! It’s so funny as source material and yet we're returning to limp wrist well. Why! We might need to wait for the full movie so we can grab clips from it and expand our meme potential. Right now Pinocchio is funny enough on his own and doesn’t need our help. He’s certainly not benefiting from it.
We all talk like this. Literally everyone I have ever met talks like this to some extent. Stop making fun of her because if you’re talking on camera you are capable of sounding like this. If you are not actively trying to affect your voice and don’t have a strong regional accent, this is what you sound like in front of any kind of audience. It’s fun to say gems the way she does and as long as we’re having fun with it, it’s fine. Girls with vocal fry are laughing a little too hard, is all I have to say.
This trend is wholesome and cute. Normally I don’t go for that but this I’ll give it a pass. It’s a wholesome trend that is all about personal growth and how year to year we continue to grow and change as people instead of about like… a boy. I saw one about a woman who was 36 who said at 34 she never thought she’d ever ski and now it’s her favorite thing! I’d love to see more stuff from older people whose past selves span decades rather than a handful of year. I’m seeing too many young people! 16 year old me and 22 year old me are pretty different but 25 year old me is very similar to 22 year old me. Also so many people my age have so much to say about this trend because they are easily suggestible and don’t know themselves well enough.
So sorry about this but never have I been happier to be 25. Good luck out there everyone.
Deep respect for wading into the Kanye/Kim morass. Exploitation ouroboros. No correct angle to take—all we can do is repeat, “yep, I guess something is up!”