~Swiftie Corner~
There were two Taylor Swift memes this week. One was set in place two years ago and went off without warning. It was going to happen no matter what. Like an alarm we forgot we set. The second was a PR crisis that Stan Twitter was delightfully equipped for. Let’s get into it.
Taylor Swift's Private Jet
Earlier this week, an article came out detailing which celebrities are destroying the environment with their Private Jet usage. Taylor Swift came in first with 8,293.54 tonnes (it’s metric) Of CO2 emissions from her almost constant 80 minute flights. Immediately, stan twitter was on her ass. They turned to their cache of reaction videos and unearthed what they had filed under P (plane) and J (jet) and unleashed their creativity on the world. I’ve never seen so many plane videos in a weekend. But that’s the beauty of stan twitter and their reaction videos. They keep them all because one never knows when they’ll need three fighter jets doing tricks to describe the movements of Taylor Swift. Stan twitter is never there when you call them, but they’re always right on time.
This meme was incredible. It was the strongest argument against Taylor anyone had all weekend. There were a couple groups trying to be the ultimate voice on this. The morally righteous decrying celebrity culture and its consequences. The swifties doing bad crisis PR for free. Her team doing bad crisis PR for a probably unbelievably high salary. But None of that could beat the videos. The videos were funny and to the point. Everyone was laughing at her. She may have been able to recover from the article but she’ll never be able to recover from the memes.
Memes are living documents and once they link two ideas it’s almost impossible to unlink them. Every time Taylor Swift, Planes, or the Environment are in the news, the memes will return. She can’t outrun this. She can’t recover. She has to sell the jet. She won’t. It doesn’t help that it’s in the middle of a record heat wave in the hottest summer of our lives so far. It appears we’ve reached the lowest point in the Taylor Swift likability cycle. If nothing else, this extends the release date of the next Taylor’s version by six months to a year.
Salt Air
Not so fast though!! Taylor Swift is slowly crawling her way back into our good graces. August 1st is now a Holy Day of Obligation for Swifties. They must post the words Salt Air on Twitter. They may post an unrelated picture that somehow illustrates the emotion behind “Salt Air”. Salt Air are the first words spoken on the song August from her album Folklore. Many Swifties listened to Folklore front to back on August 1st. This year, Salt Air was bigger than ever. We may hate her for killing the environment but you can’t deny she’s a talented songwriter. We’ll all be trying to grow crops on the scorched earth because of her but we’ll have to admit she’s a talented songwriter. It will be a slow crawl to redemption for her, but every August 1st we’ll kick her a little good will. We’ll check in next August, if we’re all still here.
~End of Swiftie Corner~
Christian Walker
Christian Walker, the homophobic gay conservative son of former NFL player and Republican state senate candidate in Georgia, Herschel Walker, is leaving LA! He even made a sign! A sign that the rest of us could easily manipulate to say various different things. In a different world, or two years ago, we would have had more fun with this but Christian Walker is a little bit old news. His moving to Florida is the end of an era. He is no longer terrorizing the denizens of Los Angeles and is moving to a state where he thinks he will probably have less to complain about. The battle is over and Los Angeles won.
Me vs My Husband
We can’t ascribe structural societal issues to your husband's laziness, if you're not willing to talk to him about it first. Many middle aged women come on the internet complaining about the laziness of husbands as a political ill and all the work they do for them. Time and time again we reply with the same solutions, you need to talk to him and then you need to stop doing that for him. Everyone wants to complain about all the work that comes with being a housewife, no one wants to talk to their husbands about it. This woman is different from the weaponized incompetence wives of tiktok. This woman makes her living complaining about her husband with comics the rest of us can manipulate. The husband in our edits has become this oafish figure who the audience relates to. His actions are irrational and insane and he acts only on impulse. In a way we’re on her side. Thinking of the worst thing her husband can do in any situation and illustrating for it. But we love husband for his flaw are our flaws. This woman gave us a new character to work with . For that we have to be grateful.
TikTok
Not Much is going on TikTok this week. I’m assuming everyone with the free time to post constantly is on vacation of some kind. They are either in a lake house with no service or resorts with bad wifi or maybe even just actually enjoying themselves. Everyone else is probably working. We’re all waiting for summer to end and the weather to change. It’s too hot to go on camera and think at the same time. So the consumers are just waiting. Waiting for some good drama to happen or a good funny meme. Something new. Something different.
#BamaRushTok
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Well…. It’s that time of year again. The time when we become armchair experts on sororities. I believe I am well qualified to speak on sororities from a purely armchair expert standpoint. I’ve been observing sororities and their practices without participating since 2015. I did it at the University of Southern California, which is one of the best places to do it. It’s not Bama or Ole Miss, but it’s the closest you can get to that kind of experience outside the Southeastern Conference. I never rushed because I’ve always known myself enough to know that I would not thrive in that environment. Instead I was nosy. I was always asking questions about what went on in the world of greek life. This is not my first time at the rodeo and this is not my first rush week seen through the eyes of a casual observer.
We’re 3 days out from rush. The content right now is mostly about excitement and anticipation. It is coming from girls already in sororities and people completely unaffiliated with the University of Alabama in any way, shape, or form. I’m pretty sure we’ve known since last year that PNMs would be heavily limited in posting about rush. I don’t think we’re going to get OOTDs and girls saying what houses they want this year. I think girls run the risk of getting blacklisted. Remember when our star from last year Makayla whatwouldjimmybuffetdo was blacklisted after the second or third day and still had to carry on with the charade until bid day? Nobody wants that to happen again, especially not the sororities.
Sororities are heavily secretive organizations that are trying their best to always avoid liability. They want to keep scandals at a minimum and #BamaRushTok does not help them in this field. Bringing new people into the organization is supposed to selective and exclusive. The organizations are judging these girls on a variety of factors. Factors that are both outright stated and better left unsaid. At the end of the day, all they can admit to faulting someone for is bad vibes. Whatever that may mean subtextually. Having a bunch of unaffiliated girls trying to join an organization who have no built in loyalty to that organization is a liability nightmare. Girls who gain fame or notoriety for joining the organization without predetermined loyalty to the organization is a risk many houses probably aren’t willing to take.
It was fun to watch last year but that magic will not be recreated. It will not be spontaneous and electric like it was before. It will be controlled and sanctioned by the organizations the girls are trying to join. It will not be the same kind of event as last year. It will not be the same kind of fun. I don’t have high hopes but you also never when scandal is going to break or what kind of shit show is going to ensue.
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Fine. We’re so bored. Why not set the self checkout sounds to music. Nothing else is going on. Not good but not evil. Just something to do.