Meme Report 8/20+8/27
Taylor Swift got ENGAAAAAAAGED
Last week I was at a Bachelorette Party in Cousins, so I had to miss a week. I’m here now with reporting on the biggest news on the internet.
Your English Teacher and Your Gym Teacher are Getting Married
TAYLOR SWIFT IS ENGAGED!!! Sorry, I’m happy for my girl! I love it when an exacting, mechanical, and cold woman, whose public-facing persona is somewhat trapped in a state of arrested development and eternal happiness, finally arrives at a place in her career where it is beneficial for her to get engaged. Sue me, I’m a romantic! TikTok has yet to explode, so for now, we’re limited to the worst takes imaginable on Twitter. Everyone’s got something to say, and none of it can harsh my excitement about all the stupid shit there will be to talk about when she gets married. I’m so fucking excited to see not only what she does, but what her more purehearted fans will say. For my full take on this, of course, watch out for this week’s (IM NOT KIDDING THIS TIME) Taylor Talk. As for the caption, she’s giving into her worst instincts, and every person (or brand) who is engaging with it is making it worse. Every take that considers this phrase for even more than a second is thinking about it too hard. It’s lame! She’s lame! She makes music for lame people! I’m one of them, happily. Anyone attempting to do real social analysis on an Instagram caption is not a serious person. She’s talking about high school because most people have experienced it! She appeals to most people! She needs an uncomplicated reference point. If you want more discourse out of me, it’s behind the paywall.
Saying Slop
We’ve officially hit peak slop. To me, this means that everyone is too enamored with it for it to be actually useful as a modifier. There was a point about 2 months ago where to call something slop was actually an insightful observation. Now it is just internet garbage people repeat as if they are the first people on the internet to put these phrases together. They act like the rest of us aren’t here. Like, this isn’t a network of people all creating a culture together, who see and talk about the same things day in and day out. The person who came up with saying slop thinks they are the vanguard of culture. Everything beneath them is slop, but I fear that’s not how slop works. AI Slop, Slop Bowls, etc, are worse than just simply being bad. They’re low quality and don’t care about being high quality. They are turning our brains to mush because they are taking away the actual good parts of life (food, art, creativity) and replacing them with automated nothing. I reject “saying slop” as an idea because most sayings come from universal truths whittled into easy sayings over time. Just because something is trite, clichéd, and easy does not make it slop.
Christian Girl Autumn
In the time since we last spoke, Christian Girl Autumn was both cancelled and then uncanceled. Canceled in the usual sense, meaning not happening. Caitlin Covington, the face of Christian Girl Autumn, posted a video crying about how she couldn’t do it this year because it was too much pressure. We privately and publicly speculated about all the personal tragedies she could have incurred in the year since we’ve seen her. But there was no tragedy. Instead, Caitlin showed herself to be an expert marketer. She had us all atwitter, which was exactly where she wanted us. Of course, Christian girl autumn wouldn’t be cancelled. We’ve all become so cynical that we forget about the easiest form of cynicism, a marketing stunt. We thought too little of Caitlin, a master of her craft. These are her busiest few months, and ever since she entered the spotlight, she’s been delivering. If you stay ready for Christian Girl Autumn, you don’t have to get ready for Christian Girl Autumn.
My Therapist Said
Therapy is that mystical, magical thing where everyone who participates goes behind a locked door to come out an hour later better, healed in some way, through a process that works little by little, inch by inch. We reveal our secret selves, and in exchange, that secret self is healed. On the internet, therapists are able to fashion themselves as all-knowing gurus with the keys to healthy living. Advice from therapy is seen as golden and unquestionable. Or at least it was, until one too many people began their tweets with “my therapist said,” and we all learned to call bullshit. There are two warring sides on Twitter right now: the people who have been there a long time and have seen it all, and the people engagement farming. Occasionally, we have to beat back the engagement farmers to remind them, and mostly ourselves, not to put up with their bullshit.
Audrey Hobert
I’ve been talking about Audrey Hobert since “Sue Me” dropped this spring. What starts as TikTok drama about the Nepo friend of Gracie Abrams has quickly become the album of the year. Enough people have done enough work via word of mouth that she has migrated to Twitter, and the intelligentsia of that website has taken to our girl. All of her music is good. The fun songs are fun, and the sad songs are also fun. Her persona is uniquely weird, and I don’t feel like I’m being sold a fake weird girl or someone emphasizing their weirdness to better sell it. The people rejoice at a real randomista.
Trump Foundation Patch
This go-around with the trump presidency, I’m not letting myself get excited about anything. Especially not something as small as this. I like to speculate on a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone, but this is no fake Melania. There’s a patch of foundation on his hand, hiding what? Bruising from an IV drip? Ok, and what are we supposed to do with that? It points to a medical condition that could be a serious as a routine blood draw or dehydration. That’s nothing. This is nothing.
Hijab Inspired Secular Accessorizations
The resounding cry from this incident was “Twitter’s still got it”. To me, this is less an expression of Twitter but a whisper of a truly confused kind of wokeness many thought had been completely abandoned. In the shuffling from Tumblr to Twitter to Bluesky, we had and then lost a kind of person who was so obsessed with their morality and their understanding of language that they had completely lost the point. They can rationalize anything with their command of the English language, but more importantly, with their command of the social justice dictionary. Hijab inspired secular accessorizations come from the mind of someone trying too hard to understand the world that they actually end up learning less. With no true north to guide, all they have are their words. And what a combination of words they can put together, and to think one can still do it on Twitter dot com.
TikTok
Damn I’m on My Britney Shit
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Scooped! By The New York Times! The problem with this meme is that I don’t care about it. I don’t have room in my heart for a bad XXL freshman freestyle verse. People want this to be funnier than it is. It has all the right beats to be a favorite of the internet. A white man making a fool of himself, a digital exclusive from a magazine, a beat that can be remixed with an indie rock song, but it’s too clean. It’s not bad enough. No one’s take has made me laugh, and now we have sorority girls using the sound to talk about how their favorite part of recruitment is when a PNM mentions the bible. Clearly, this sound has mass appeal, so it’s not the embarrassment we all thought it was.
And Now I’m Bashful
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Ashby, the girl who started the Hamilton trend, is really letting her freak flag fly, as it were. Now she gets on TikTok live and dresses up as The Lorax. I don’t know exactly how I feel about her, but I’m leaning towards admiration. I don’t tend to gravitate towards streamers and performers whose main stage is before a ring light in their bedroom, but I think Ashby taking her fame and immediately pivoting to hours-long livestreams dressed as The Lorax is worth following. If nothing else, it’s brave. I also think her voice lends itself well to comedy. The way she changes her key, pitch, and frequency in this clip is kind of a Star-Is-Born moment for me. There is something there, more than just silliness and make-up.
A Barbershop Haircut that Costs a Quarter
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A meme that attempts to grapple with and control a universal feeling of anyone who regularly attends amateur theater. What these people have on their hands is a star. A minor chorus boy who eats up that stage and reveals the lack of talent of those beside him. It’s actually embarrassing that he has to share the stage with people who mumble over their words or can’t hit a basic step ball change. The meme is about how he overpowers the stage, but perhaps that is the fault of the stage. The audience should be kissing the ground he walks on. Basking in his glow, knowing that for one second in this high school production of Newsies, real talent was present.
Fake Crying
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A classic. The thing that I'm supposed to be sad about actually made me happy. What’s important here is the performance. You have to sell it. Whatever the situation, those present must never know that this is, in fact, a performance. A taste of breaking the fourth wall.