Meme Report 3/2
What Am I Going To Do In a Submarine?
Look out for a special surprise in your inboxes later today!
Substack
High/Middle/Low
Notes is becoming a semi-interesting place to be on the internet. It’s not all the way there yet, so I can’t wholeheartedly endorse it, but as with any social media site, if you put in the work and find some favorites, there’s fun to be had. On Friday, BDM posted this note, which asked people to name three things: highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow. Everyone is obsessed with mixing high and low culture, but as the game pointed out, nobody really knows what highbrow means anymore. To me, it felt like a good ice breaker. If you’re on substack you know you’re surrounded by people who could be smart, interesting, and funny, but we’ve had no way to prove it except by trying to announce it to each other. This meme has been a dynamic way to see who is actually smart, interesting, and funny. That’s how all our favorite Twitter personalities cut their teeth. Let’s keep up the good work.
Kitchencels Posting
Twitter is still, to some extent, the town square of the internet. We are still able to dig up Reddit pages and shine a light on them, and have them gain a bit of notoriety. The latest to capture our attention is r/kitchencels, most notable for their unique style of posting a depressing thought or life update and the meal associated with it. Kitchencels is a rich text that gets at the bare bones of most posting on the internet, a depressing thought someone had, and a photo of the meal they are currently eating. What I love about these posts is that the meal always underscores the depressing thought. “What if I’m not capable of love? kraft mac and cheese.” We can almost see how one got to that thought from the meal they are eating. How, in the process of standing over the stove mixing the cheese packet in with the milk and the noodles, the mind takes stock of the whole situation and begins to wander. The kitchencels cadence is instantly recognizable both to the uninitiated as something universal and true and to the well-versed as a useful form that gets down to brass tacks. This is what I’m feeling, and this is what I’m eating. Fill in the rest for yourself. It’s like our version of a haiku.
New York Archetypes Quiz
Say what you will about Buzzfeed, but they knew what they were doing with those quizzes. I want to know what I am and who I should be. We’re all a little gun-shy around quizzes now, and anyone who tries too hard to be the next purveyor of quizzes will be met with skepticism, but if there’s a one-off every now and then, we’ll eat it up. Brooke from Style Toast has gone viral once or twice before for similar quizzes, and they’re only getting better. There are enough different archetypes that I didn’t feel like one of 4 easy options. Though I am one of the rare few who chose Fran Lebowitz as a style Icon over Donatella Versace, I didn’t see anyone else with the same archetype as myself. I loved this brief return to quiz culture and sharing our results, knowing that it means 6 more months without quizzes. I was surprised to see who among my cadre of Twitter and Substack girlies took the quiz. There were the usual marks, but also a larger number of girls who seemed too good for something like this who were participating. We all want to be a New York fashion archetype, even if we don’t want to admit it.
TikTok
Earrings
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Audrey Hobert’s brother, Malcom Todd, is the indie it boy of the week. Los Angeles’s answer to Cameron Winter. Cameron Summer, as it were. This song is designed to play in the background of edits. It’s moody and dramatic. It’s endlessly driven by angst instead of following the traditional structure of verse/chorus/verse. It says a person’s name, and the editors love it when a song says a person’s name. It’s been around for a while, but now people are really latching onto the song as the soundtrack for March 2026, probably because there’s not really a lot going on otherwise in the music world.
Do You Guys Actually Want To Do This or Not
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One of the parts of meme culture that I love is the reflection on childhood. As adults, it is so fun to look back and remember how bad it was. Every so often, those of us who can should thank the lord that we are no longer in 10th grade and do not have to come home after a long day of nonsense to our least favorite dinner in the crock pot, among other indignities of childhood and young adulthood. It’s also important to look back and realize how stupid everyone was being. The way we were all spoken to as children when we didn’t really want to do something. Nothing is funnier to me in adulthood than looking back on a speech where someone was trying to get you to care about something that simply did not matter to you, thinking it was the first or most important time you would get that speech. Someone has to give it to you at some point, and every adult in a minor position of power wants to be the one to do it. Most of the time, it’s just an ego trip, and you’re stuck between the ages of 8 and 18, listening to someone audition to be the person who inspires you. It’s so funny when it doesn’t work.
What Am I Gonna Do in a Submarine?
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I wonder if our modern culture could support a band like the Village People or if it only works if most people don’t get the joke.
You Are The Light, and I Will Follow
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Much like Elphaba and Glinda, Charli XCX and Taylor Swift were once friends. Well, not friends but coworkers. Charli opened for Taylor on the Reputation Tour. That’s what all this goes back to. A nice gesture and over exposure. It’s not just random girls fighting. They know each other. This clip harkens back to a simpler time before it all happened. It’s funny that the meme is about finding a kindred spirit when everything that has happened since is a dissolution of their relationship. Maybe that’s what makes them kindred spirits after all.
can't believe he's actually audrey's brother, I thought you were saying they're spiritually siblings