Meme Report 3/26
Please Incorporate Memeforum into your Morning Routine
Yet Another Important Week in Meme Journalism and I am here dutifully with a full a thorough Meme Report, just for you. Remember that from now until April, you can help support one of your favorite creators and newsletters for only $2.50 a month (or $27.50) for the whole year! What a deal!
The Morning Routine
Over the weekend, Ashton Hall went viral on the social media website formerly known as Twitter for finally taking things too far. Ashton Hall’s videos are obsessed with the idea of success without concrete details. It’s filled to the brim with empty signifiers. Nothing he does has a purpose, and any person with real experience in the things he is attempting to do immediately sees he’s a faker. This would be one thing if he were attempting anything advanced, unfortunately, he is journaling, stretching, and swimming. Things even losers who wake up at noon can and have done successfully. Successfully enough to know he is just pretending.
Something has broken in our culture for the better. We are surrounded by people like Ashton Hall. People who are driven by success, by any means necessary. Success at what? They’ll figure that out later. This is the culture that worships at the altar of Elon Musk and is driven by numbers with no regard for quality. We have decided it’s finally time to make fun of these people. The only weapon we have in our arsenal.
Making fun of Ashton Hall, I believe, is the first domino in getting the general public to turn on success bros, so they might turn on themselves. These people are the lasting cultural impact of Silicon Valley. They are an imitation of what they imagine successful people do. Of course, what these people don’t understand is that they are mostly entertainers. They are successful on Instagram because they are good at presenting the appearance of success. It’s a testament to production more than anything in his actual routine.
The rest of us see right through him. We know none of this would work for anyone else. It’s not a recipe for success, it’s a short film portraying ideas of success. Not a very good one. It’s just that, up until now no one was talking about how silly it was. His success only existed in the vacuum of other people who are obsessed with success. A positive feedback loop where words lose all meaning.
Shrimps With The Wimps
This is a meme for those of us who have stuck it out. This is all we’ve ever really wanted: to play fun little word games with our friends and people who used to work for BuzzFeed. The phrase “when are you going to stop eating shrimps with the wimps, come eat lobster with a monster?” has been around in our cultural lexicon for a little bit now. It’s almost concurrent with the Eric Adams-ism, “My haters will become my waiters when I sit down at the table of success.” Fun little rhyming mantras that are more about their expression of word play than they are about messaging. After a long, dark winter, with spring we have an explosion of this fun wordplay we all love so much.
Cause I’m Too
We are revving up for the late spring and summer cultural season. A time where all the pop girlies battle it out for song of the summer and viral moments. Will Chappel and Sabrina dominate again? Will Ariana regain her pop princess crown? Will Raes, both Adison and Tate Mc finally achieve ultimate cultural relevance? All will be revealed at a later date. Until then, we have to practice with Lola Young. TikTok’s viral sensation made her way to Twitter, and we were less than impressed. Say what you will, but the song is an earworm and fits in well with our nonsense world. Once the first “cause I’m too spongebob” hit the timeline it was over. It was all a joke.
TikTok
Sally
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There is no way everyone knows who Role Model is. I heard the Sally song a couple of weeks ago like everyone else and I liked it fine. Now I’m supposed to believe that everyone either liked it so much they bought tickets or they already knew the band and had tickets? No way. It’s a decent song but it’s the epitome of TikTok music. Songs that are great for the background music while someone makes a disgusting pasta recipe or shows off their enviable apartment.
Each night on their tour, Role Model invites a girl onstage to be the titular Sally of “Sally, When the Wine Runs out.” Everyone wants the honor of being Sally, though it’s not clear what she does or is supposed to do. The honor is more in being chosen and getting to be on stage than actively doing anything. From what I’ve seen, the girl runs on stage, does the smallest suggestion of a dance for the bridge, and then runs off. It’s a facsimile of the Courtney Cox Springsteen moment, but every night in every city. It’s fun as long as you don’t think about it for too long or want anything more.
5th Grade Composer
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I like this because it feels like something a teacher would show in high school at the beginning of class to say nothing more than “isn’t this cool?” It is cool. It’s cool that a 5th grader made this screwing around on her dad’s computer. It’s cool that music is the universal language. It’s cool that technology makes it easy for anyone to compose things because it sounds cool. It’s also cool that people all over the world get to see it and say Great job! It’s a shame the internet ever became anything more than this.