Meme Report 7/6 AND 7/13
Special Double Issue!
I’M BACK! Sorry for the delay but I had a hellish 24 hours in Newark and was unable to write the report. But after sleeping and ruminating on the Memes of the past two weeks, I am ready to present my findings.
🚨🚨🚨TRANSCENDENCE ALERT🚨🚨🚨
The Minions
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The Minions have long been a powerful cultural force, both according to their canon lore and in real life. This time they have reached a new demographic: Teenage boys. The boys dress us in suits and go in groups to see The Minions: Rise of Gru. They bring Bananas to throw at the screen and ultimately get kicked out. This phenomenon is well documented on social media and I love it. This is the same group who earlier this year were pulling devious licks. They need a better place to put their energy and I’d rather it was with their boys at a family friendly movie than down the alt right pipeline. As long as young men are hanging out in groups with an activity and not alone watching Ben Shapiro, I think it’s a net good for society.
There’s also the element to consider that maybe these boys genuinely want to see the movie. They’re a little too old to express genuine interest in going to see the minions movie but just old enough to see it “ironically”. Much like the citizens of Los Angeles, these boys grew up under the watchful eye of the minions. Their mothers were probably constantly reposting Minions memes on facebook. They more than anybody have ridden the rise and fall of public opinion on our old friends. It’s time they reclaimed the narrative for themselves and the Minions. Get all dressed up to see their old friends.
I am going to say something that might be controversial in the meme criticism space. I don’t care that this meme is free marketing for the minions. I don’t think the be all end all lense of criticism should be whether or not something is free marketing. I could go on in terms of memes and money and how we view them (I think everyone is thinking about it wrong) but I’ll save that for another time. For now I will side with the minions. It’s funny. The tweets are funny, the TikToks are funny, the minions themselves are funny. You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a minions and all I have to say about that is: Banana.
Anonymous Asks
For Instagram, this little game is a revelation. The questions feature needed an anonymous element. We needed to be able to ask “what’s your fucking problem” or “are you single” without revealing ourselves. It a fix for a problem I’m sure a lot of people didn’t realize they had. However on Twitter, this is just curious cat and ask.fm and for the old among us… Formspring. On Instagram, this feature gives us a pass to be either a little mean or a little revealing, with people who we might have to see again in real life. On Twitter, it’s a long road to bullying strangers. A chance to bait someone who thought they were too smart for the other anonymous messaging apps. I need it on Instagram to bring out drama and cause drama among acquaintances. I hate it on twitter because it always seems like a desperate plea for attention or a refusal to participate in the old systems. If you want to answer anonymous questions from your basement dwelling followers, you should have to endure the shame of using Curious Cat.
Kamala Looking
We have yet to really hit our stride as far as daming the democrats with memes. THis most recent version is just yet another example. This time is the worst version. It is the most egregious failure on the Democrats part to both do something and also look like their doing something. We’re so mad and so annoyed at their failure to do anything that we can’t really make a funny joke out of it. Kamala looking at her TV looking and listening had the potential for a meme but we were so rightly overcome with anger that the meme was neither funny not effective. If you want your meme to be “effective”, you’ve already lost.
Elvis
The greatest skill of any director is creating memorable imagery. Baz Luhrmann certainly did that here. This picture of Austin Butler as Elvis may hurt to look at but I’ll never forget it. When was the last time we had a good old fashioned straight up reaction image to depict the feeling “sweaty and dying”. No added text, no explanation. Just a sweaty man who is quite literally on the brink of death, or at least made to look that way. Sometimes that image is the best explanation of how I feel. It’s a shame it came at the end of Pride month but maybe the most apt because that is how we looked after four straight weekends drunk in the sun.
Kim Kardashian Walking
She sure does walk weird. I don’t really care about this meme. This feels like just another day at the Kim Kardashian Kontent factory and I can’t be bothered. Models with bad walks is really something I try not to concern myself with. I am capable of getting mad about so much but even I still need to pick my battles and this is one I will happily sit out. For our own mental health we should only chime in on every third Kardashian story. They’re not all worth our time. Especially if they’re the age old battle of do the Kardashians belong in the world of high fashion? It’s a losing battle and we just did Kim in High Fashion discourse with that whole Marilyn dress. I already need another Vacation!
This One Has A Little Sweetness To It
Baby, this is Keke Palmer and she already gave us the first meme of the Nope press tour. It’s low level and there’s not really a lot to do with it but it’s Keke Palmer and even her most off hand comment can produce a meme. Hot Ones is usually only the beginning. Just wait until we get to Vanity Fair, or Vogue or….. Memeforum? (Keke, call me).
Shinzo Abe
The former prime minister of Japan was assassinated and everyone sure had a lot of jokes locked and loaded. Maybe it’s because I’m not an expert in world affairs but I did not have a quip ready for this. That’s clearly a failing on my part though because everyone else was prepared. They were good jokes too! I had to do some googling but they were pretty funny after I read various wikipedia pages. I learned a lot and had some good laughs and got a little mad about human rights abuses, all the markings of a great meme.
Lea Michele finally gets to be Funny Girl
I love drama. I love the arc of careers. I love myth making. I love broadway. This whole ordeal has been great for me. When was the last time everyone was glued to their twitter feeds so we could who was replacing the lead in a Broadway show? I was constantly refreshing to see if any insiders were giving hints or if there were any other names being tossed into the ring.
I love the memes and I hated the discourse. I think people are jumping over themselves to defend Beanie and hiding behind moralism to hate Lea. I could be wrong but I think more people hate Lea Michele for being an annoying theater kid than for the actual bad things she did. But at the end of the day, it’s Broadway and the theater kid is king.
However you may feel about Lea Michele, this got us to pay attention. Everyone had a take and that creates chatter and now people who were never going to weigh in on Broadway are talking about Funny Girl. And that’s the goal with stunt casting. The girl on TikTok who works with the unhoused population on Skid Row in Los Angeles, is chiming in because it lets her talk about restorative justice. I’m sure she’s not as invested as who’s replacing Sutton Foster when her contract in The Music Man ends. There’s are plenty of suburban moms in New Jersey that don’t know that Lea Michele was cancelled and still love her because they watched Glee with their gay son. They’re going to buy tickets and the rest of us will not, but we were never going to buy tickets anyway. Any way the justice here is not literal but cosmic. Lea Michele gets to live her dream… almost. She can’t win the Tony for her dream role, she can only garner positive reviews and relish in a job well done. Which let’s be honest is a fate worse than death for someone like her.
Last thing, the illiteracy jokes are tired. We’ve all seen the video, it’s not a secret reference or an in joke anymore. It nearly five years old at this point. It’s well trod unfunny territory. If you’re going to make fun of her, at least be original.
Little Miss…
Little Miss is having her quadrennial moment! Every four years we remember these little ladies and try to give them a moment. They don’t really have a lot of staying power because the joke is always in the name, so there’s not much fodder but good for everyone for trying. I did not know my fellow Americans enjoyed these. I thought they were french canadian because the version I grew up with was Madame Catastrophe. I am not french canadian, I don’t know how I ended up with her but because of that I have not attachment to the version anglaise.
TikTok
Assume that everything I didn’t cover is either trauma dumping or just saying one thing is better than another thing or examples of people being kind of annoying. These are the ones that stood out.
Rise and fall of Jake Novak
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The problem with people living out their high school bullying fantasies on the Internet is that they’re not good at it. They want too much too quickly. They go too far and then are surprised to realize that they’ve been beating a dead horse. So now we’re out of fodder and Jake is scared to post again. People are coming out and saying the songs are not that bad. This whole thing was a wash. Nobody realizes that sometimes the act of posting something is embarrassing enough. We can simply point and laugh. We don’t need to pile on. Nobody wins, we all lose. Pick better targets. There are worse crimes than writing topical songs about the news.
Taylor Paul Announcing Her Custody Schedule on TikTok
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I feel like it’s weird that it took us this long for someone with an ounce of fame to announce their custody schedule via TikTok dance but here we are. The joke is now just the reality. We need a new one. Perhaps universities announcing one by one which students did and did not get in. Something that maybe couldn’t happen. Go bigger for the sake of satire. Announcing custody schedule was only a matter of time now that I think about it. My favorite part of this is a lot of rich kids are getting in on it, which I love. Bring back conspicuous consumption! Tell us that your dad got the yacht in the divorce! Also people are using this as a way to talk about how their parents split up and they’re missing the point. Taylor is telling us this info that has been mutually agreed upon by the court. She’s not telling a story she’s making an announcement. Not everyone with seperated parents gets to chime in here. You have to match Taylor’s energy. This is not the divorce announcement, it’s the custody agreement. I don’t need everyone to relive how they found out their parents were splitting up. I need them to convey sensitive but mostly logistical information through dance.
This Is Music!
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Stranger Things got a meme a little bit disconnected from the literal text of the show. Good for them. This one is easy and from the first 30 seconds of the most recent drop of episodes but at least it’s not just people talking about how much they love Stranger Things. Which don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a good show. I got the Gen Z brain chip that makes one uncritically like it, and I couldn’t be happier but the memes are just direct marketing with nothing more going on there. This one though gives people a chance to show of their favorite songs that are a little off the beaten path, which we need every once in a while.
Cool kids
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A direct response to the “you think I’m annoying?” about your younger self trend. There’s something about summer that makes us nostalgic and want to think about our younger selves. So happy for everything all of you have accomplished, style or career wise, but I don’t really care for unironic romanticization of one’s tumblr era. There needs to be a little bit of shame.
Ew This Is So Cringe, Guilty
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We do this all the time but this round seems to be the most creative. I am learning new cringe behavior every day. Mostly from straight women who are deep in the trenches of casual dating or girls who really love their boyfriends. I like this one because when its good you learn what an absolute freak a lot of different kinds of girls are. It hasn’t gotten to the point of not putting one’s business on the internet yet but we’re in the sweet spot. Just teetering on the edge. Let’s see how long we can stay there.
Breakfast Cars
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For some reason everyone is having a little bit of a meltdown over breakfast cars. Breakfast cars for the uninitiated in the greatest debate of modern times are sausage link wheels, a hashbrown chassis, and an egg for the body. It looks like a car, it’s made with breakfast items. You get it. For some reason instead of being branded run of the mill millennial cringe that one can participate in, it has become a point of discourse. Touch grass, please. If breakfast cars is causing an emotional reaction of some kind, close the app and go outside.
Fab Five Freddy Told Me Everybody's Fly
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This is a classic “One thing is better than the other” meme. In the format of Virgin vs. Chad , with a little bit of viral marketing for The Boys. However I can’t fault it. The song is the weird kind of relic that mesmerizes me. Both versions are a little weird and not necessarily enjoyable but have the TikTok earworm quality. I can’t get away from it. The way Debby Harry says “Sure Shot” with about eight extra syllables. The enchanting cadence of Jensen Ackles’ version. Every time a video with this sound comes on my For You, I watch it twice. I can’t help it.
There’s No One As Irish As Barack O’Bamagh
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There’s two wolves inside me. One who’s been on Barack O’Bamagh TikTok since about March and has enjoyed it thoroughly and One that hates the fake weird “OMG I’m on Barack O’Bamagh TikTok” We’re about two weeks into all the videos just referencing the original videos. The amount of videos under the sound doubled and very few have added something new. Next time the algorithm blesses you with something weird, either contribute or keep it to yourself. The need to constantly announce how weird one is, has ruined the internet. All I ever wanted was to enjoy a fine jig about Moneygall’s favorite son and everyone ruined it.
Freshman Year Roommate
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I hate this trend. It’s people saying “I don’t understand hating your freshman year roommate because mine was nice.” You don’t understand? You can’t see how pairing random teenagers together and making them live in close quarters while they’re on their own for the first time could go badly? Are you stupid? It’s great that you want to share the story of your freshman year roommate but like come on. It’s also a take off on the original trend which is about straight women having a straight boy best friend who constantly berates them and calls them ugly, which is a situation that I simply can’t bring myself to comment on. I hate everything about this trend because having a great freshman year roommate is just luck. You’re lucky if your roommate is cool because it’s just as likely you could have gotten a weird religious girl or a hard ass or a slut who didn’t care that you also had to sleep there. It’s all… luck. Also if you hated your freshman year roommate, get over it. It probably wasn’t that bad and if it was that bad, don’t put it on TikTok.
Hashbrown Chassis great band name
So happy memeforum is back!! I hope you had a restful break. Hopefully we will get a Howie Mandel Prolapse take next week! Not a lot of good supplementary memes separate from the original video, but it's still very funny