Meme Report 6/17
My Mayor Muslim, My Pop Princess Filipino, Tookie De La Creme is alive, Knicks in 5
Knicks in 5
And it came to pass, All that seemed wrong was now right, and those who deserved to were certain to live a long and happy life. The story ended how it was supposed to. The best friends gang took on the French giant and came out the other side victorious. The spoiled children of New York get yet another present on their seemingly endless birthday. I’m not going to lie, it felt good as hell to get swept up in something. It was fun being a New Yorker, and it was only fun because of the previous years of loss. A classic New York story of years of struggle with no hope in sight, an institution only kept around for the die-hards and for the rest of us to make fun of. The bleeding heart romantics of New York City convinced the rest of us all that this would be worth it, and we showed up for them. Think of a bandwagon fan less as someone trying to get in on something at the last second and more as the unexpected guests that make a party more fun. We’re not watching on the street with projectors and bed sheets if it’s just the people who can name every player on the team. The magic of the moment is that it got everybody—even me.
Taylor Swift Matching Shirts
Of course, Winning never comes easy. Taylor Swift and the Haim sisters had a little fun at game 4, and everyone lost their mind. People hate to see women having fun. Most of the time, this can be chalked up to a number of unclear reasons that are attached to memories and instances so specific that we can not accurately diagnose them for every individual. This one is easy, though. It seems everyone has the exact same unprocessed Matching T-Shirt Trauma, and we all had to hear about it.
It is always jarring when beautiful women show up to an event in homemade matching shirts. It is proof of their friendship and their scheming, and the fun they had about the event, but not at the event. The worst part is they didn’t even think of you. They look so cool and fun and secure in their friendship, and you’re not involved at all. I felt this pang too. But I’m a grown-up, and Taylor Swift is neither my friend nor a girl I went to high school with. She did not invite me to wear a matching t-shirt with her because I wasn’t at the Knicks game. I was home watching the Americans and checking the score on my phone. Sorry about whatever happened at the homecoming game 15 years ago. That was then, and this is now.
To her credit, Taylor did what the girls in matching shirts never do: bring extras for the people who weren’t there when the plan was originally made. Maybe you can rest easy knowing that in the made-up scenario where this has anything to do with you, you get to be Mariska Hargitay and, despite not being in the “Haim + Taylor” Group Chat, you still get a shirt!
Tyra Banks’ Modelland
For a while in the early 2000s, celebrities were having fiction ghostwritten for them. Mostly, these were nothing books that were quickly forgotten. When I first heard of Modelland, I was not surprised, expecting a slim volume half based on Tyra Banks’ life and half in the style of proto-Emily Henry. A young model comes to New York, learns some lessons, and falls in love. A PG version of Veronica. Instead, Modelland is a nearly 600-page, surreal young adult novel about a modeling boarding school written at the height of the self-esteem crisis in young women. All I can say is yay! It soothes my soul to know that the gays and girls have found a new piece of 2000s ephemera to deep dive into, and we’ll be finding out new things hidden within the pages of Modelland for at least the next week. Finally, it has an audience that can appreciate its absurdity. I really enjoyed this section of the Wikipedia page, as I believe all of these criticisms have been leveled against memeforum at one point or another.
Hannah Horvath and Her Gay Dad
I’m actually obsessed with this as a format, and if I were the teacher in the largest collective creative writing class known as the internet, I would make everyone do a version as an in-class exercise. If I had my way, most of Twitter would just be insane things our parents have said to us about celebrities. I love reading those. I love knowing that you never stop being a person with all your quirks and oddities. There’s no such thing as normal, and most of the way I learned that was through hearing the deeply held beliefs the adults around me had about public figures.
The Americans Renaissance
I love what the The Americans renaissance represents, which is, coincidentally, what the Modelland Renaissance also represents. Culture is as much an archive as it is anything else. We can always reach back and pull something forward to the present and reassess. If you weren’t around the first time, there’s always the future. It might come around again. We all finished Mad Men after it got added to HBO Max, and now we need another show to fill 45 minutes or an hour and a half of our evening, depending on the day. Pair this with the success of Widows Bay, and we have an answer. America has Matthew Rhys fever!
ICYMI
Mean Girl Moment: Horror Discourse
My readers who come to Memeforum to be validated or challenged in their thoughts on the internet might be wondering what I, Kathryn Winn of Memeforum, think of the discourse surrounding Obsession and Backrooms. As someone with both a love of and academic appreciation for Film, surely I have an opinion on the two movies on everyone’s minds. Well, here’s what I think.
More on ORod and Taylor Swift
Taydaughters
This Summer, two young women, Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams, are releasing new albums. If you live in the House of Taylor Swift, this is kind of a big deal; these women have a feud that only people who are already fans of both of them care about. Maybe feud is the wrong word. Maybe it’s more like a sibling rivalry. Or an adaptation of
TikTok
Love Island has not reached my section of the collective consciousness yet. I’m excited to learn their names as soon as something breaks through. Right now? No dice.
New ORod (YSPSFAGSIL)
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This is what I want from an album release. Weeks of build-up to a sonically interesting album that more or less meets expectations. I like the album. I think there’s a lot there. It does make me feel like I’m drinking with my friend’s little sister, which I know Rodrigo would hate. I wouldn’t say ORod is all grown up, but she’s getting there. Some day, hopefully soon, she will realize that being a good girl only gets you so far and do something a little bit out there. Put on the Pantsuit, as it were.
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I consider this album to be another checked box for my sweet ORod. Yet another passing grade in a series of passing grades. I am waiting for her to be truly undeniably great. I am waiting for her to let go of the thing she keeps holding on to and yet claims to be trying to get rid of. She needs to take a big leap. She needs to stop citing people who were cool 30 years ago for being wild and have now mellowed out. I like the instinct of being seen with Cameron Winter, a peer with a little grease in his hair. Follow it. Make a mistake and do it on purpose, and write a difficult song about it.
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As for the album itself. I liked it! The first listen felt like a wall of melancholic 80s-inspired sound, but I was able to parse some of it and stick with some lyrics and melodies I liked. As the days have gone on, I’ve been able to declare clear favorites and differentiate one song from another. It’s a good album to have on. I like just letting it play, and I like the cover she did of the CMAT song that I am getting constant ads for. CMAT, whom I love because I see in her what all of you see in Chappell Roan.
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The real test of the album is in the endless swirl of what has become the culture I am most interested in: Edits! Call it the Big Feelings industrial complex, but I simply can’t get enough. Part of what I love about them is how we incorporate both estuaries into the big river of edits. There is the music side and the media side. Here, media means movies, television, sports, and real life. When we get a new one on either side, we must process it through the old ones on the opposite side. When a new album comes out, we must process it by applying the songs to all the old shows and relationships we know. Some artists get lucky and one or two songs work, launching them to stardom. Others, like Olivia, must put forth at least half an album of edit songs. She delivered on that front. I’ve seen most of the songs used at least once, and my For You page is filled with clips from Sex and the City, Girls, Gilmore Girls, Gossip Girl, Taylor Swift in real life, and other things I’ve never seen before but understood implicitly. The album accomplished what it was supposed to on that front. Content is King.
Bangladesh
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It’s still 2010 somewhere.