2019 was the first year I was fully a part of the media world. That’s right, I’m talking journalism, magazines, fake news and all. And let me tell you, being on the inside of has been even more so surreal than watching it from afar. It felt like I was etching closer and closer to the embers that ignited a trend rather than see it blow up, unclear how it happened. Well, actually, seeing it start didn’t really provide any more sound logic.
As anyone who hasn’t lived under a rock since the 2000s know. Memes have become such a big thing that once, a 60-year-old family friend asked me to explain to her what exactly they are, which reminds me of how I feel when I ask anyone to explain what a bitcoin is to me. Nonetheless, memes capture the zeitgeist of the inexplicable trends that have placated the digital age. It also tends to reflect your personal feelings onto a more collective theme (think: #same #me).
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/12/11/20991671/memes-decade-doge-baby-yoda
But media memes seem to be in an even niche-r subcategory of memes. These are memes that originated from a corner of the internet, and was picked up by several media organizations who wrote MANY in depth articles about them. The elevation of a meme to a cultural phenomenon fascinates me. And let me tell you there are so many memes, but few that I take the time to go down the rabbithole to explore. Pardon my broken sense of humor, but here are just a few of the best that got me (and even though no one asked for it, I’ll continue to reblog off this when I find new candidates) :
- Hot Duck (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/nyregion/hot-duck-mandarin-central-park.html)
A more New York-centric meme in which everyone is obsessed with this really beautiful duck that randomly showed up in Central Park one day. Some may say that this duck was a beacon of light in the darkness, a wholesome spectacle that has by some act of magic united people near and far. I mean, you should see the crowd that turned out for him!
- Another avian, but cartoon, Untitled Goose Game (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-joy-of-untitled-goose-game-in-a-time-of-moral-crisis)
The premise really is simple. You play a game as a goose who wrecks havoc on a town and its townspeople. The New Yorker purports that in creating game world chaos within real-life chaos, we appear to find a little peace.
- Fish tube (https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-nihilistic-euphoria-of-the-fish-tube // https://www.wired.com/story/fish-tube-meme/)
As a New York Magazine hed and dek reads: Put me in the fish tube, shoot me over the dam of this life. We all want to go in the fish tube, which is actually a REALLY long contraption that sucks up a salmon and by some hydraulic force transports it up difficult-to-cross man made dams. But mostly, what people took away from this was that the salmon basically was given an easy pass through what is supposedly the hardest journey of their lives. I mean, they usually migrate up stream, lay eggs, then most likely die. Don’t we all want to skip past the hard parts?
- Call me a bedbug to my face (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/bedbug-tweet-bret-stephens-new-york-times-boss-gw-professor.html)
Ok, this last one is a little insider baseball. But this meme was due to the timely coincidence of a bedbug infestation at the New York Times headquarters last year. At which point, a professor on twitter quipped a wry joke implying that the bedbugs were a metaphor for a controversial opinion columnist at the Times. One thing led to another, and it devolved into an email involving presidents of universities and a playground insult of sorts, where the columnist invited the professor to “come have dinner with my wife and kids, then call me a bed bug to my face.” I now use this expression when I catch bitches talking shit about me behind my back also.
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