If I Text You [x emoji]
I love this meme on principle. Every single time a very basic meme comes along with even a little bit of imagination I love it. I love everyone getting a turn. This one is so broad that we’re seeing some new editions, not just the classics. It’s not just limited to the note from Jersey Shore, or Erika Jayne’s Tom speech. I’m seeing new contributions. It doesn’t require a lot of thought but, if one wants to be original they could spend a long time looking at the emoji and find something new on day three of this meme. It’s not earth shattering or particularly smart but I feel like it’s adding a lot of moments from both life and cinema and reality tv to the meme cannon, which could use some fresh meat every once in a while.
Rosalia Chewing Gum
Rosalia is having fun with it in Spain! She became a meme, mostly on english speaking stan twitter (based on my cursory search on twitter) for flamboyantly chewing gum before every performance of her song Bizcochito. She’s putting her all in and the gays are eating it up. Good for her. Good for them.
Mayor Eric Adams New Shirt
Every now and then a politician tries to mix it up with a fun outfit. It never ever goes well. Especially if you are one of the most talked about and widely disliked mayors on Twitter. The problem with twitter is that we all end up learning too much about each other’s shitty municipalities but the upside is that we all get to poke fun when something stupid happens. Eric Adams was saying something stupid and wearing something stupid, a killer combo. It’s, at that point, a civic duty to make fun of his stupid little blouse.
When You Outside And Smell That Zaza
This meme harkins back to the early days of memes. It has a vintage layout and feel yet it’s completely new. It is once again from Stan twitter and it is purely ironic. But on the off chance someone saw it not from stan twitter, they would believe that it was just an old fashioned meme from around 2009. Ironic detachment is good because sometimes people get so ironically detached that they accidentally create something they used to enjoy genuinely. It’s a reference to a reference to a reference but no one can remember that far back, so it just feels genuine.
Brendan O’Neill
This one is fun. I learned about this meme from our friend’s across the pond when someone retweeted it onto my timeline. Brendan O’Neill is a conservative columnist in Britain and whenever he contributes something to The Spectator, the replies are filled with people making fun of his big forehead, which to be fair is really big. He’s their Mitch McConnell, kind of. Which I think is fun. I think making fun of the appearance of men who makes the lives of everyone around them worse, is good and justified. Also, it’s always funny to edit someone’s forehead to be really long.
Time to ⚠️BeReal⚠️
My current favorite way everyone is casually breaking their NDAs has finally become a meme. We finally have something we can use it for. Before we were just talking about it: what would you do if your bereal went off at a funeral; or while someone was breaking up with you; or while you were firing someone. Now it’s a meme format. It’s nothing special. A little shot reverse shot, which is the format of BeReal, to be fair. But I was hoping for something a little more inspired. A little more fun. A little more thought provoking or even edgy, than our classic “here’s a movie we’ve all seen.”
TikTok
TikTok Language
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We do this every so often. We realize that we’ve been speaking a language we didn’t even know we knew. But that’s true of every social media platform with a history, and true of every generation of young kids. It’s just that these things are happening at the same time now, so that makes us think we’re special. It’s good to review every now and then to realize that we’ve been communicating in a way that might be incomprehensible to the people around us, and that the language of our peers hits deeper than other more ancient forms of words.
My Birkin, Another Birkin
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I love this sound. Charles Gross is one of the few genuinely interesting people still regularly posting on TikTok. This sound hopefully popularizes him for even more people. What I love about this sound is how bewildering it is to those outside of whatever niche collector community it is. My Birkin, Another Birkin means nothing until your niche interest comes along. I will admit the one that really hit me was the one about the LL Bean boat and tote versus the Land’s End boat and tote. I finally understood it, because I know instantly the difference and cannot explain it. It is the Birkin of the Northeast girlies. To explain to non collectors is nearly impossible. With this sound, succinctly and easily everyone gets to have their Charles Gross moment for their own Birkin.
Alright!
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Well the person who does social media marketing for The Boys deserves a raise. Two memes in two weeks! Good for them. This sound has become an excuse to victimize oneself and talk about all the ways we made ourselves smaller to avoid conflict as children. Who cares? Boring! Get over it!
I Need To Feel Something
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This is an interesting concept. It seems like a sound that could be better used for facts that we just don’t know how to square in our minds, like the fact that Texas and France are the same size. Instead it’s yet another sound devoted to weird things people have said to the creator or, and this is most of the sound, girls who can’t get over the fact that their boyfriends have dated other people. Sometimes when I look through a sound for examples I find a horrific subculture I am happy to not be a part of, or even aware of at all. Anyway, people are making themselves angry in order to feel something. Good for them. Never been a problem for me.
Fuck It, We Ball
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Personally I love a fuck it we ball moment. Sometimes it’s all you have. The people saying “Fuck it we ball? My brother in christ…” don’t get it. You only say “Fuck it. We ball.” when you have nothing left. One could only ball once they’ve said it fuck it. Fuck it we ball is a kind of freedom, and freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. Naysayers be damned…. Fuck it, we ball.
Scary Jimmy Buffett Law and Order
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Memes are a world of endless remixing, Every idea can be changed and expanded upon until the original idea is unrecognizable. That’s why I love them. On TikTok, the only second idea anyone seems to be able to come up with is, what about me and my bad life and my understanding of how the world is bad. Every time a meme is about being pleasantly surprised by joy and good in the world, these people need to add their two cents which is always “well my life is bad and people say bad things to me!” Ok. cool. Why don’t you use the 10,000 other meme formats that are about how things are bad? Or how strangers are rude? No one is allowed to appreciate when good things happen because bad things also happen. There are so few good things, why not let the good ones stay good?