Meme Report 3/24/26
I guess they come out on Tuesdays now
ICYMI: There’s still time to weigh in on how you feel about Margaret Qualley in the comments of my latest paid post!
Chappel Roan
I’ve made my thoughts on Chappel clear. This is obviously stupid, and I’m not on the side of anyone who takes to Instagram to write a paragraph of text. There are also too many people removed from the actual incident. The story is all nuance and technicalities, which is a lot to ask for in an Instagram essay. It is asking to be interpreted as Chappel hit a kid, even though that’s not what happened, and the response from everyone is, who cares? If you want us to fall for this, the story has to be cleaner and clearer, and Chappel needs to have a hit on the horizon. Otherwise, it’s a non-story. It’s already a non-story, but your honor, relevance?
Lindy West and Polyamory
This is not for anyone who doesn’t already know who Lindy West is. It’s to relive the glory days. Play the hits one more time. Everyone still here, on Substack, on Twitter, on various other platforms, just wants a thriving ecosystem of bloggers back. We want to be and read the bloggers. Lindy West is one of the superstars of that time, walking away with a TV show out of the deal. Now she’s back with a new book, and she must return to the world of under-edited casual writing. Local girl makes good, but she has to come back and let the bloggers have her. No one gets out of blogging unscathed.
The outcome is the same as it was 10 years ago when West was one of us. People who spend too much time on the internet are wrapped up in their own dramas to generate clicks on their websites. What has changed? There’s no more Gawker. No more Bustle. No more Hairpin or xoJane. The middle is gone, and now we have her former peers who have graduated to legacy outlets and substackers, or former readers of the previously mentioned sites that hoped to work there one day before it all went bust.
If you are a real Substack head, there are probably people you trust and go to and expect to write about Lindy West. I liked Default Friend and saw a lot of people show enthusiasm for Cartoons Hate Her’s take. Other people will chime in shortly, now familiar names and faces. We’re rebuilding. But these people are not Lindy West’s peers the way they used to be. It’s not a fair fight anymore. Lindy West has multiple books under her belt and a TV show to her name. She won the blogosphere game the rest of us are still playing to diminishing returns.
Lindy West is a cautionary tale not for opening her marriage but for what we can get out of this whole experiment. It’s a post-mortem for a time that ended long ago. Her book, which I tried to read, feels so dated in its voice, and it’s jarring to hear from someone over 40. All the things that thinking and talking like that were supposed to get us did not save her. You can be bold and irreverent and annoying on purpose, and you will still be miserable and get taken advantage of. Then you’ll have to present your life to the former bloggers that you worked with, and they will revel in your misery. Especially because you don’t know you’re miserable. The whole thing, the book, the road trip, the husband, all of it bums me out.
Dinergoth
Tech guys can’t be in charge of naming things. They’re not good at it. Diner is evocative of a place with solidified aesthetics already, so to name a subculture after it when using diner as an idea rather than a location or its existing visuals is a misstep. They don’t hang out at the diner! Why would you name an aesthetic after something borderline irrelevant? The choice to cling to Diner as emblematic of provincial America points even more to the fact that tech guys think in stereotypes and are totally disconnected from culture. He can’t even get the name for his little theory right.
It just feels so obvious to me that anyone who dresses like that spends a lot of time on the computer, and it’s their way of expressing themselves, because who else are they dressing for? There’s no reason not to dress like Hatsune Miku if you want to. We recognize it because while the algorithms feed us only our interests, sometimes it’s like cable, and you’re just flipping around. They’re not dressing for a standard or some unknown observer. That’s better than most of us!
I do think this subculture spends as much time on the computer as a West Village girl and her imitators, but the West Village girl uses her time on the internet to craft her image so it translates more readily to the real world. She uses her phone to prepare for the world while the “diner goths” bring the phone into the world. We hate the West Village Girl, too. So there’s no winning. We are all addicted to our phones, and it informs our aesthetic choices. The people with more money and better taste in general end up looking more presentable and desirable, and the people who don’t want to play that game and can’t afford to, dress in a way that makes them feel comfortable. The tech guys wring their hands, wondering what we all know that they don’t.
TikTok
The Pitt
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I don’t watch The Pitt because I don’t watch hospital shows, but I am enjoying consuming it little by little over TikTok and Twitter. It removes all the hospital parts and just gives me straight emotional and social dynamics. I don’t care what’s going on with the patients; I just care about their interpersonal drama. I am really excited for Brian Cranston’s daughter and the hot guy to get together. I think it would be the boldest thing anyone’s done on normie television in years, mostly because nobody else wants it. They need a touch of industry where anyone could sleep with anyone else at any time. Next season, they should all be fucking in the supply closet.
Edit of the Week
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The best edit I saw this week was about The Apartment because nothing else is happening. Nothing is happening on TikTok. I haven’t seen a good TikTok in weeks. The industry edits are over. The Carolyn and JFK Jr. show is basically like one long edit. I need something to grab onto. Usually in times like these, it’s best to go into the archives. Find something you missed from before, or you loved previously and forgot about. This week, we had to go all the way back to 1960. What else is on the schedule? Something has to be coming down the line to feed the part of my braid that craves this stupid shit.
Gaddafi
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I take it back. This is the most interesting thing I’ve seen on TikTok in a long time. I didn’t know Gaddafi was that good-looking when he was young. We should talk about that more. People love to talk about young Joseph Stalin and how hot he was; no one is talking about how hot Gaddafi was.
"The middle is gone, and now we have her former peers who have graduated to legacy outlets and substackers, or former readers of the previously mentioned sites that hoped to work there one day before it all went bust." This. Watching people I thought were her friend-peers basically turn has been the most abysmal part of this discourse.