Twitter (Or X, I guess?)
Barbie and Oppenheimer
Well, just like the nucleus of the atoms that power the bomb, the Barbie and Oppenheimer memes have split. Barbenheimer is now made of its two separate camps, no longer united in idealism. The movies, as we all know, are different so the audience response is different. The two movies no longer follow each other in quick succession in conversation. Now that we know the details, we are consumed with them. Oppenheimer garners discussion of morality and legacy, while Barbie is now embroiled in the culture war. C’est la vie. Both camps seem to be having fun with their new toys so it’s a draw. Great Job everyone. Now please let’s go back to our niches. I hate the monoculture and I need something new to talk about.
IJBOL
To eagle-eyed observers of the internet, we have a new phrase to add to our lexicon. IJBOL, which stands for I Just Burst Out Laughing. Like everything, it is used semi-ironically. It is neither deeply sincere nor fully detached from reality. It takes on a meaning and grammar of its own, as all digital acronyms do. Sure, there’s a literal interpretation but it won’t get you very far in your understanding. I can’t give you the answers because in writing it out a certain X factor is lost. Observe before participating is the best advice I can give.
Male Loneliness
Say what you will about the New York Times, but sometimes they give us a gift for no reason. Often in the middle of summer when everyone is on vacation, someone decides to swing for the fences and create something beautiful for no reason. This week it was a cartoon about Male loneliness and pickle ball. We could have had a simple graphic. Something thrown together on photoshop. Instead we were given a beautiful tableau featuring a crying man and the friendships that await him, if only he would pick up a paddle. This image inspired a meme for two reasons. First of all, The man crying in the foreground did what all great art should do and evoked something in all of us. The second reason is much more elusive. Sometimes we create memes just because we recognize something good and the only way we know how to show love to it, is to give it the meme treatment. No version was better than the original but still we needed to copy and reproduce. We needed to get our fingerprints all over something, affect it to show how much we appreciate it.
Rosalía Laughing
I know it’s my self-appointed job but I don’t really understand Rosalía’s cultural standing. I understand why she’s popular but I can never tell if the people talking about her online actually like her or are just making fun of her. They almost never talk about her music but the conversation is never mean spirited enough to be able to glean outright animosity. It’s certainly not positive or loving either. This week a picture of her laughing went around, it was corny and silly but nothing too crazy, yet those who understood dug their claws in and celebrated. Each meme individually has had enough to get me through but I do not understand the root emotion driving any meme about her.
Please Stop For Me
There’s nothing funnier than self importance. Someone over estimating their position in this world and demanding that someone else simply stop their self destructive habits for the sake of another. “Please stop… for me” is about hubris and stupidity. It’s also about all the ways we mark ourselves in modern life. Hair ties on the wrist, doc marten blisters, cartilage piercings. All the ways some idiot might pretend to care for us by telling us to stop.
TikTok
Attenzione Pickpocket
Even if you don’t personally know someone in Europe this summer, there’s no doubt TikTok is showing you Euro Summer content anyway. It’s all about the same stuff anyway. No one drinks water, there’s no air conditioning, and there’s only stairs. This year there’s a new entry into the Euro Summer extended universe, the woman who yells Attenzione Pickpocket at pickpockets in Italy. She’s an instant icon. There’s something admirable about an older woman who doesn’t put up with any bullshit, especially those of both crime and social convention. Often the best solution to a problem is yelling and upsetting everyone in your path. This woman sets an example for all of us to call out the anti social behavior ruining our cultures with a special European flair.
Barbie Analysis
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I have yet to see Barbie so I cannot speak to the actual text of the film but the conversation about it online is headed in an interesting direction. I am sensing there is something left to be desired for Barbie when it comes to actual feminist analysis aside from the modern Pop feminism we have to work with. I keep seeing sweeping generalizations about how Barbie is the peak for feminism while others are calling for more intersectional feminist analysis from the film. No one seems to be able to recognize the Barbie movie for what it is, or that some of its setbacks are baked into the form of the film. I'm an adult with a brain so I know that no film made by a studio with the intention to make millions of dollars will be the peak of feminist discourse, nor do I need it to be that. However, others in the party should know that as well. There is a disappearing middle class of intellectualism that we lost in the Buzzfeed wars of 2015. As always we must return to the seminal text of online pop culture analysis: Is [pop star] a feminist? Is MasterCard a queer ally? Is this tv show my friend?
Barbie seems to be doing all that she can. I think just because someone is incapable of fixing their flaws, it is still worth it to point them out. Nothing is flawless, just like nothing is wholly good or bad. That’s what makes life interesting and complicated. The nuances we are forced to confront. It feels worth it to deal with those nuances rather than not talk about the shortcomings that all movies and all thoughts and all feminist texts have. We will never find one thought or idea to sustain us (or entertain us) through life. It is worth it to know what something is missing so we can more wholly experience the world. It will only increase our understanding to talk about Barbie’s flaws rather try to pretend it doesn’t have any.
Temu Scam Slideshow
Temu is a recent addition to the online market place. They have an aggressive marketing strategy and promise to send you items for pennies on the dollar. From what I can tell they are similar to AliExpress and other companies that sell cheap plastic stuff. I’m not sure if these slideshows are from Temu corporate, or a separate kind of scammer trading on the companies name but regardless, it is a scam. The thing that makes this scam so insidious and annoying is that starts out like any other TikTok slideshow. They are usually about capitalism and working too much and not enjoying life, but by the last slide they are about how to make money using Temu. We’ve been made. The scammers figured out how to meet us at our level. Our hobby is being used to trick us. We have to start over, and stay vigilant.
Regrettably, Temu is not only a scam for the false advertising but because the parent company had an identical platform for selling weird products and the app was straight-up malware. Temu is now being investigated for the same thing.
tl;dr do NOT install the Temu app on your phone. (Just keep using the other apps you already having spying on you.)