Meme Report 4/13
Memeforum doesn't stop for Holy Week
We’re Cancelling Each Other
Twitter like all social media is home to many who make their name from engagement farming. Despite their somewhat nefarious origins and purpose, they do help fill out the website when nothing more interesting is going on. It is fun to see what people think about the mundane. Information they would never volunteer on their own but you do sometimes wonder about. What is my 3rd favorite Atlantic writer’s least favorite city in the midwest? However this week we started with a semi interesting question that quickly got out of hand. We love to argue about food and I’d rather do that than a third week of slap discourse. So we all played along, not realizing that we were in for a week of most cancellable opinions about everything else. The borings couldn’t stop. They were asking for cancellable opinions left and right. People did their best to riff but it wasn’t enough to take them down. They’re still asking and I don’t know when they’ll stop. Somebody… anybody… Cancel them.
Bowling Gifs
Every couple of months someone will go viral for pointing out that the animations they play in between turns at bowling alleys are over the top and dramatic. It’s fun to remember and brings back nostalgic memories of birthday parties in childhood and other various bowling adventures. This past week we went a little crazy with it and found the weirdest, wildest, and grossest homemade bowling gifs. They were everywhere. As stand alone tweets, in replies to other unrelated tweets, and most egregiously, hidden by Nintendo's official twitter account after the announcement of a new bowling game. I was partial to the Jesus one because there’s a couple twists and turns and I wish there more like that one. The market was saturated with repetition rather than creativity, which is always a shame. I wish there had been more of a variety but we can’t win every game. Sometimes a spare is good enough.
TikTok
This trend signals the return of some kind of creativity to TikTok. We’re working with the sound to present information in a new way. Rather than molding the sound to go through the greatest hits of tiktok. It’s not necessarily a trauma dump nor a surprise cause and effect but a shock at being left off a list. A feeling that is unique and not something we see all the time. It’s fun to watch and people are doing a pretty good job of executing the sound. It’s nothing spectacular but it’s a kind of trend that breaks up the monotony and I’d be happy to see more of them.
This filter is bringing the fun back. It’s bright and high energy, just in time for spring. We’re ready to have a drink by the water in a light jacket. We’re ready for three day weekends and small vacations. Daylight savings time is over and it’s time to party. Seasonal depression is gone! This filter celebrates that. I’m not one for positivity for positivity’s sake but I do love fun and I’m ready to have again after a long winter of listening to everyone complain. Turn on the filter, turn up the sound and have a little dance. It’s time.
One of our favorite accounts is finally getting the meme treatment. The Black Menaces, a group of black students at BYU who ask their fellow Mormons on campus about their thoughts on political issues, are beloved by TikTok right now. They give us a peek into America’s favorite cultural oddity, Utah. After a couple months of devouring their content, we finally have a meme. The meme is repeating the BYU students favorite phrase “I want to say yes”. They say this in response to questions like “Should Queer students be able to show public displays of affection on campus?”. They say they want to say yes to appease the audience of The Black Menaces, but they ultimately say no because the Church, and by extension, the school disapprove. A good member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints says no. They give the performance of being conflicted in order to earn points with the audience and now we see through it. Especially because everyone else has given in. The rest of the campus either gives us enthusiastic yeses or quick affirmations to avoid the comments attacking them for being a bigot. We’re familiar with the archetypes of BYU now, and we know that you can’t have it both ways. I want to say yes is the same as saying no.
Ah, how we love cultural exchange on TikTok. Somehow, this very British piece of content made it to the Americans and we love it. Louis Theroux is a British investigative journalist who went on a show called Chicken Shop Date and recited (performed?) a rap he did in the early 2000s. Another pair of Brits autotuned it and it finally reached us in America. We can’t get enough of this simple silly little song. There’s even a fun minimalistic dance. I for one can’t get it out of my head. I love it. I think it’s a lot of fun silly things coming together and not our typical fun silly thing.
For Breakfast We’ll Do Something Cool
I am biased here. I love Kroll Show. I have always loved Kroll Show. I owned the first episode and used it to watch it on my iPod touch. I quote Publizity with my mom all the time. I am always happy to see it on tiktok and I will never admonish anyone, no matter how stupid the trend is, for using a Kroll Show audio. I’m happy to see it and I’m happy to hear it.
loovve when something is just in time for spring
Some good ones this week. Disappointed that the bowling gif didn't evolve much more outside of a shock image