Meme Report 6/25
The Nonbinary Parisian is Still Rambling
Widows Bay
Listen, I loved Widows Bay. I’m from a charming New England town partially isolated from the world by the water. To me, it’s a documentary. Up to and including the son’s only connection to the wider world being a love for the Boston Red Sox. It got me! It is competent television from a former Parks and Rec writer and the originator of the Babadook tweet. All the episodes are now out, and the culturati of Twitter are taking a peek. There are starting to be rumblings of “nice core” and millennial cringe. Enough. As I’ve said before, that is the fault of television as a medium. Sorry, it’s not Cum Town. I would love it if there were a comedy that finds its edge somewhere between a six-episode Adult Swim show and I Love Lucy, but I can’t get mad every time a show meant to be enjoyed by most people falls closer to Lucy than Squidbillies. Widows Bay does have a mean streak! While we’re at it, so does the Four Seasons! But at the end of the day its all television, and it has to end with all characters loving each other to set up for the same thing next week. Also, just assume that half the people tweeting about a show positively are bots or paid to do so, and approach everything with an open heart.
Nancy
Those of us still on Twitter have grown fond of the comic strip Nancy. It stems from the days when automated self-proclaimed bots were everywhere and easily made. I have a love and deep appreciation for the archivist nerds who go through the full back catalogue of something from the past, like Nancy comic strips. Nancy also has a universal appeal as a rambunctious little girl who is always getting into schemes with her hobo boyfriend, Sluggo. The comic strips make Twitter feel like an endless newspaper, complete with the funny pages.
Of course, this means that people have opinions on Nancy, and as someone who can’t help but love Nancy, I was already aware that earlier this year Caroline Cash took over the strip from Olivia Jaimes. Now people are up in arms because the comic strip is becoming more focused on Frizi, Nancy’s lesbian aunt. To that I say: Ok!
I do not care about the sanctity of the Nancy cartoon. I like when she goes to the circus or is otherwise emotionally volatile. Otherwise, I take what I can get when it comes to a comic strip I am vaguely aware of. Sometimes it makes me laugh! That’s all I need it to do. There’s one where Nancy is dreaming of a pig, and the pig is also dreaming of Nancy. I loved that one, but they can’t all be winners. It’s not high art. It can afford to incorporate Aunt Fritzi’s alternative lifestyle.
Club Chalamet is BACK
Simone Cromer AKA Theater of Zen AKA Fan Account Storrie Glorrie FKA Club Chalamet, was back “in the news” (trending on Twitter) because she got in an altercation with another fan outside of Heated Rivalry star Conner Storrie’s hotel room. She wrote one of her megalomaniacal missives with her Twitter blue subscription, and we had to hand it to her: She sure gets herself into situations and knows how to put words together.
I am less intrigued by her Connor Storrie fandom. Connor Storrie has done one thing, and he’s hot, but so clearly a gay guy that it doesn’t register to me. There is also no angle for awards season for this. He can’t win an Emmy. We’re just watching her pursue someone without her supposed love of cinema as a backdrop. It lacks pretense! A love of Timothee Chalamet is an appreciation of the arts. A love of Connor Storrie is a little gauche.
As for the continued platforming of Miss Club, some of you seem to think that fame is a meritocracy that we only let our favorite people participate in. Not the case! Has never been the case! Think of Club Chalamet like Ayn Rand. Both of whom are famous for their writing and opinions. Neither of whom I would want to be friends with. There is no “should be” in fame. There just is and isn’t. Club Chalamet’s crush on Connor Storrie isn’t rational or merited, but most crushes aren’t. They defy logic and reason and have you waiting outside a hotel in Paris. Should that be happening? No, but we understand why it does.
Disclosure day reporter
Psyop. Well, that’s too far. I don’t think it’s a true psyop because I don’t think this meme will make people go see the movie. But it just feels so flat to me. There’s no organic love for Disclosure Day online except for this. It’s no Ella McKay. We see it because we have to. Because it’s Spielberg and it’s aliens and it’s fun or whatever. We make the meme because the middlebrow who loved it know how to do that. I feel no love here, only pattern recognition.
Tumblr
The Vampire Lestat
Tumblr and Substack are the only social media I’m allowed to look at on my phone at work, so I’m more on top of what’s happening over there than most. Usually, there is nothing to report, and this barely counts, but I feel a duty to my subscribers that the girlies et al. over there are going crazy for The Vampire Lestat. The Vampire Lestat is a rebrand (?) or spin-off (?) of Interview with the Vampire, the television adaptation of Ann Rice’s series of novels. I don’t really have any further commentary as I’m Not Watching That™, but it’s fun that we’ve gotten to a place in TV where a whole subset of nerds are getting exactly what they want out of a TV show. It’s also interesting to me that after their success as a prestige TV factory in the early 2000s, AMC’s original programming is exclusively about Vampires and Witches. Also, for as unique as we think the Tumblr archetype may be, Ann Rice is proof that all of this has been done before in one way or another.
TikTok
If A Bitch Broke
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All love to the outdoors community, your memes are indecipherable to me. It’s because you’re body people and not brain people. Happy you got to see Yosemite. It looks cool, and I’m sure it was rewarding in that way that you people find those things rewarding. Find a better way to explain this to an audience.
Dot Cake
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What if cake were in a cup and the entire top layer were sprinkles?
Think of this as an autopsy on the Dot Cake trend. For those who don’t understand, Dot Cakes went viral earlier this spring because chi-chi Upper East Side boutique grocer Butterfield Market started stocking them. West Village influencers took to the market and bought out the supply. The Viral Dot Cake is born. Quickly, people realize all it has to offer is scarcity and therefore exclusivity, and decide to make their own. This gives the trend about 2 more weeks of life.
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Most brands that we see in luxury grocery stores or shoppy shops are somewhat prepared or hoping for viral hype. They are made by a range of young Gen Xers, experienced millennials, and overprivileged Gen Zers who want nothing more than to be featured in the glossy pages of the Bon Appétit Instagram. Dot Cakes is no such business. Dot Cakes is a gimmicky bakery from Long Island that seems to specialize in full-size custom cakes with college colors for graduation parties. If I had to guess, I think they got into Butterfield Market either because someone’s cousin got involved or because someone with a big job out in the city was missing the comforts of home. Dot Cakes was not prepared to go viral, so much so that when I tried to order one for a non-Memeforum-related reason, they could not ship it to me in Manhattan. The cakes don’t travel well in hot weather, and their storefront is only open from 1 to 4 Wednesday through Sunday. They were not ready for random girls in offices to order a cake, which is the cornerstone of any successful business in New York City.
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The spectre of Long Island hangs over the city. Some of us spend our whole lives trying to understand it. I think if things had gone differently, I might have grown up there and would be, as a consequence, the most normal girl in the world. I would have gone to every homecoming dance and continued to play soccer throughout high school. I would have had a One Direction phase and worn makeup and gotten really good at braiding my hair. I would have had a Dot Cake at my graduation party. This is the past I imagine for all of us had we grown up on Long Island. This helps me understand the place that exists quite literally as an extension of New York.
The city tries to shy away from Long Island’s influence. Plenty of people in New York are here in a kind of halfway status, many of whom are people who grew up in Long Island, come to the city for a few years, and spend the rest of their lives going between the two. Run any New Yorker’s family tree out wide enough, and eventually, there are people from Long Island hiding there. It’s this whole annex we pretend doesn’t fully count for one reason or another. The closest we’ve come to acknowledging the influence is Dot Cakes, but even then, none of the current NYC residents are willing to claim them as also hailing from their former and future home.
Jimmy Awards
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The only award show that has quickly and easily figured out how to market itself on TikTok is the one for teenagers doing musical theater. I was able to watch the entire show in perfect clips from the comfort of “phone in bed” time. The Jimmy Awards are a more pure celebration of love for musical theater than the Tonys. By the time we get to the professional level, most people have either fully gone crazy or mellowed out, but the Jimmy Awards are pure, unrecognized, hungry talent. Everyone on stage is fighting to be the special one at the next level.
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The Jimmy Awards celebrate and play with the energy that can only come from nationally recognized teens who love trying their best. All the best young performers from around the country stand in a line and sing their big moment from their show. Whose big moment is the best? How do the 14 Elle Woods from 14 different productions of Legally Blonde stack up against each other? Every performance is a microcosm of insanity that makes one ask who let this happen? What high school is doing Alice by Heart? Or Ragtime? But also Good, they should.
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The story I tell myself is that there is some small town in Anywhere, America, that subjects its slack-jawed yokels to melodramatic stagings of plays too mature for high schoolers to even begin to understand, let alone convincingly play. Yet they try. I like to see people try. I like to see people force musical theater down the throats of everyone because, despite protests to the contrary, everyone likes musical theater. They just don’t believe they do.
THE VAMPIRE LESTAT IS A REBRAND and also an inspired aesthetic rehaul of a fantastic show. This season is also fantastic. 🧑⚖️