Taika, Rita, Tessa
This is the perfect amount of salacious to post on Instagram. This was one of those memes where people wanted to add things to it, change it, spice it up, but nothing was better than the original. A valiant effort but some things should be left as is, because they are already perfect. Like the Mona Lisa.
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Weekend
Someone said the second SNL gets a hold of this meme it will stop being funny. They’re right but SNL is off for the summer so we have a long three months ahead of us. There’s no better text or twitter DM to receive than a good old fashioned Ladies and Gentleman….. The Weekend. Daniel Craig gives us his all and his exasperated sigh of happiness feels like leaving your apartment to get drinks on the patio while the sun sets. Every time I watch this I feel both a release and build up of anticipation. It’s incredible. It’s art.
This one is more short lived but is still fun. It pops up every couple of weeks. As bars are opening this meme captures the feeling of making friends with strangers and making your friends be friends with those strangers. It’s on the heels of Ladies and Gentleman… The Weekend and not as good. It does give us a meme for the moment when a woman you just met needs an introduction and it gives the chance for the voice of Adele to speak through you.
As I write this it is the first day of pride, and we’re hungry. What would you do? A show that seems to only come on after event television and does not have a regular schedule that I’m aware of finally tackled Bi Erasure. It is performance art. We’ll be seeing the “He’s Bi” and “I’m pan” screenshots for weeks. In the running for Pride Meme of the year but we’ll see how mean people get with it. Right now we’re toeing the line of bullying but give us couple more days and we might go straight to it.
Matt Leblanc Irish Uncle
When it comes to cultures that greatly affect the Internet we never really think about Ireland. They don’t hold a candle to Brazil or Russia as far as affecting American meme culture or even English speaking meme culture but when they speak up they really hit it out of the park. What was it about this old man that had everyone in ireland go “that reminds me of my uncle” and write the most irish specific thing an uncle could say. As we all know, there’s universality in the specific but here we learn, that things can be fundamentally the same but so very different. Americans often learn when faced with other English speakers that if you’re an ocean away you might as well be speaking another language. We can understand the gist of what the Irish are saying here but it's written in dialect and every noun needs to be translated. A meme that is great both for the Irish people I’m sure and for us as a mystery to figure out what they’re saying and why Joey struck such a chord with them.
Tiktok
She Lived, She Served Cunt, Then She Died
Listen, I have a lot of thoughts on how Drag Race has affected the world for the worse and we don’t have time to get into it now but talking like a drag queen about fictional characters is one of my least favorite things I have to endure in my corner of the Internet. Words cannot describe how unfunny I find this. The first person to say Fairy Godmother from Shrek 2 served cunt is probably mildly funny but the person currently scouring the internet for a picture of Meredith from The Parent Trap so they can make their Tiktok that is a repost of a tweet that is a repost of a Tumblr post is reaching to be relevant let alone funny. It can barely be considered a joke at this point. I feel nothing when I watch these. No joy, no anger, no recognition that something was done or effort was given. Just scrolling away in the hopes that the next thing I see is better, or at least interesting.
A classic. Word play always goes over well. A nice break, a fun joke. A meme like this goes around once every three months just to prove we can. Flexing the muscles of being silly with a little bit of old fashioned joke writing.
Finally some gatekeeping! The internet and the world would be a much better place if more often we could get through to people about things not being real. This meme gets at a central frustration we all feel. Ten times a day I want to scream that things that everyone is so upset about are not real. Finally a meme for people like me. It’s all fake. It’s never been more fake.
Tipped off by intrepid reporter Jack Dailey Barnes, the teens are up in arms about people faking the glitch in the Versailles filter. Every day there are more things to fight about and it is things like this that make me happy to be 24. I can’t even begin to guess why these kids care that people are faking (?) a glitch (?) for clout (???). If anyone has any insight at all as to why anyone would care please let me know. Otherwise I’m going to chalk it up to Tiktok moralization gone horribly wrong.
How Far Would You Drive For The Girl of Your Dreams?
The original version of this sound is made by my fake little brother, Corey Winn. We have the same last name, we both have red hair, and he looks like my mom. There’s a world where we’re distant cousins but I think it’s more fun to lie and say I have a viral little brother. The meme itself is good. Fun, honest, simple, make me laugh every time. Of course I’m biased by sisterly affection.
Are You A Part of The LGBT Community?
A classic genre on tiktok. We see a bizarre video and everyone does the exact same thing but a little bit exaggerated. A good rule of thumb for tiktok is if something seems very off but has a lot of views it is either someone making fun of a video or the original version. You will know it is the original if you look at the comments and people say “omg this is the original”. Unfortunately in this case, the original is private. We are going to see variations on this one all month. It’s in the running for the pride meme of the year, but only in terms of potential popularity. It will probably overstay its welcome.
The third backyardigans song to go viral in as many weeks. This one is my favorite. It’s fast and dynamic in a way the others weren’t and it showcases Pablo, who was objectively the best backyardigan. Finally a real meme for a Backyardigans original as well. Castaways was just everyone talking about how good it was. Into the thick of it was a blind counting meme which I never care about and I will never cover. This one is great, when Pablo says “I’m an international superspy” you reveal something people might not guess about you from your most prominent descriptors. It’s very telling of people’s perceptions of themselves. They think that the world we live in is not as complex as it is and that there are more types of people than we often acknowledge. Most of the time we know all the multitudes a person contains. As someone who wishes I had a hidden talent or could in any way cultivate an air of mystery around myself, I see what a lot of you are trying to do and you’re failing. Everyone on the Internet can tell you are bisexual, or a band kid, or both. We all want good secrets but these are not them. When done well these Tiktoks show you a new kind of person. When done poorly these Tiktoks show you a type of person you are well aware of, thinking they are new or interesting. Everybody wants to be a new type of guy, but very rarely we are. However every version lets you listen to another banger from the Backyardigans, so it can never be that bad.