Meme Report 3/27
Hamilton is Back
Smoking Duck Gif
In late March, we muster whimsy. We make it wherever we can. We create from nothing. Some struggle to understand where it comes from or why the rest of us take to it so easily. They forget one of the central tenets of memes. The origin doesn’t matter. The duck conveys only what it is supposed to convey in its expression. Nothing more, nothing less. The only thing to understand is shaking your head as you smoke a cigarette and then laughing to yourself in an endless loop. It lacks a “why now?” but most memes do. It was simply the right place at the right time. Early spring with nothing else going on. It lacks the despair of winter and the pure joy of summer. Where fall has a poetic love of time and change, Spring is a reserved acceptance of what has come before and what will come again.
Qual Dinner
This meme is for everyone who is old enough to remember when political reporting in this country was a little bit different. Before Trump, many people who followed politics closely had a slight sense of humor about the minutiae of the US government. The humor that fuels shows like The West Wing and to a lesser extent Veep used to be present in everyday life as well. Before everyone got so uptight about “the future of the republic” we used to laugh and laugh at senators both Republican and Democrat. This would fill whole episodes of The Daily Show on a slow news day in ‘06. The tweets about this are half-hearted and weak. It’s not what it was. It’s not what it used to be.
TikTok
Mr. Vice President
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There’s still room in the cultural consciousness for young people to unironically engage with Hamilton content? I would have said this was impossible and yet here we are. I don’t have a concrete theory about why this is allowed to happen but I think Hamilton’s legacy is not done being formed. There was the praise and then the backlash and now we’re in the part where a lot of people have to hang their head in shame and admit they liked Hamilton the whole time. Of course, no one is willing to do that so instead Hamilton sounds are going to trend and otherwise cool people are going to participate without making excuses for it. We’re all just going to look the other way and pretend not to notice that seemingly everyone knows the words. The new Hamilton revival will happen slowly and almost unacknowledged. We won’t know we’re in it until upwards of 5 sounds start trending at the same time and some idiot will blow our cover and someone cool will be forced to defend Hamilton. We are in the early days and no one has to say how they feel or defend anything yet. Figure out your stance on Hamilton now because no one will be spared when we all decide it’s corny again.
There is something going on here. This song has been all over my For You page for two reasons. One has been because two white people with dreadlocks made a video dancing to this song and talking about how good it is, which made everyone upset. Everyone involved in that discourse is falling all over themselves talking about how good the song is and how much they hate hippies. The other way this video has appeared on my fyp is a slideshow explaining that this song is good because Bob Marley is his grandfather and Lauryn Hill is his mother. I have seen some version of that slideshow every day if not twice a day for the past week. There is a concentrated effort trying to make everyone believe this song is good. No one’s said it’s bad though so I’m wondering why every video I see about it is trying SO hard to convince me that it's good.
Make You Mine
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In one week, this song has sparked an unseen and unknown thirst trap trend, a hundred moms complaining about how they would have bodied this trend before they were a mom, and a thousand people making fun of the moms. It’s some kind of viral marketing campaign that ultimately worked because Madison Beer might finally have a hit on her hands.
I do wonder if the second half of the trend (people making fun of the moms) was intended. The original attitude feels like one that corporate America came up with but is not in line with TikTok’s current morality. The vibe on TikTok has always been one of “you go girl” and encouraging people who felt they were too old/fat/bad at dancing to at least try it. Not that TikTok is an overwhelmingly kind place but there is a kind of toxic positivity present that prevents them from talking how the “moms” talk. The sentiment seems foreign and almost not allowed. Insecurity is supposed to be revealed through tearful confession, not an offhand joke. That’s probably why there’s such an outsized reaction to the moms. It’s not one of compassion or feeling sorry for these women. The young women are yelling at them for expressing a sentiment we simply don’t anymore. There is no more casual self-consciousness, you idiot. Why aren’t you more confident you dumb bitch? While this may seem harsh, I think it’s more a reaction to marketing than to real people. We don’t talk like that here, so either get with the program or get out.