The Memes That Maybe Saved Us
Did...did a dog write this?
The truth is, amongst the poetic and near-biblical reflections about the waning 2020, no year-end retrospective is ever entirely kind. Rarely do any of us say, “Hey, this year was so great, what a bummer it is to watch it go!” No, taken in its totality, years are often measured by the amount of psychic damage that has been inflicted on us all.
Joys, even if numerous, tend to be personal and appreciated more fully in hindsight, as we look back and the edges of our memories become soft and rounded. Pain, however, presents itself clearly—and when it is encountered collectively, it seems overwhelming. And, it is true, this has been a year of tremendous collective pain.
Of course, that does not mean that, in profound distress, we cannot find sanctuary.
I believe that one of my favorite things about New York City is that the subway acts as a great equalizer: being the fastest mode of transportation, we all have to use it. New Yorker’s could live in Cobble Hill or Canarsie—but they all had to sustain the unique pain of public transport. Thus, I would even go so far as to say that the collective nature of the 2020 experience is its own type of pleasure; we are all doing awfully. The collective experience is not schadenfreude, but instead a balancing force. We are miserable and alone, together.
I guess.
With this in mind, I chatted a handful of people I personally admire for their thoughts and talents, as to how they have found a sort of messy grace in this time. It was a reminder that we have all suffered, but there are still bits of glee everywhere. Even—or especially—when they are absurd.
Below I asked some pretty simple questions and got some pretty simple (but really fascinating) answers from people who know the internet. I wanted to know what they saw and how it made them feel, what they read and what made them laugh. What they shared with me was wonderful, and hopefully it will delight you as well. Thank you to them all for giving me time. Happy, uh, New Year?
(Sorry this is so long, it won’t happen again, I mostly swear.)
Daniel Kibblesmith
Daniel Kibblesmith is a writer/author/funny person who writes in every medium—and that’s not hyperbole. (I bet he sky writes. He should sky write.) Aside from being a founding editor of comedy site Clickhole, he has written loads of comics, stories, and even a kid’s book. (His recent Loki run is extremely good). He also wrote for some late night show you may have heard of, maybe…I dunno what you know. He does good Tweets.
1. What is a platform/account/space you go to for unmitigated joy?
Daniel: This is an easy one — @simon.hanselmann on Instagram. I've been a big fan of his cartooning for a long time, but his daily 2020 series "Crisis Zone" strip on Instagram is running his characters in more or less real-time through every horror and wonder that the rest of us have faced this year from Covid and police brutality to Animal Crossing and Tiger King. Any future class about 2020 history that doesn't include this weird, gross, sad, beautiful, brilliant comic is an incomplete retrospective.
2. What was the last (online) thing you read that really made you think/feel something? How did it affect you?
Daniel: It was the HBO Max logo (a little purple circle) and the Roku logo (a different little purple circle) getting horny for each other on Twitter. It was sick.
3. Do you have a niche digital community you are currently obsessed with? Tell me about it.
Daniel: I don't know if this counts as a digital community, but I think my wife and I watch a lot of streaming shows that I never hear other people talking about. Rupert Grint is great in Servant. Pennyworth is also back, that's the show where Batman's butler has sex with the actual current Queen of England. An actress left Pennyworth to play Princess Diana on The Crown, so we think they might have done that storyline for revenge. Revenge on the Queen.
4. What’s one piece of content (tweet, post, etc.) that has just stuck with you recently? Why?
Daniel: I don't remember how recent it is, because time is meaningless, but the best thing I've ever seen on the Internet is this video of a frog stuck to a boy.
5. What is your meme of the year?
Daniel: I don't know that anything summed up 2020 for me quite as perfectly as my friend Nicole Conlan explaining Gritty to France.
Nicole Cliffe
Nicole Cliffe whispers to the internet. Not just because she co-founded the heavenly pub The Toast, but because her Twitter (when it is active) is known for being a space of compassion and humor. She writes a parental advice column for Slate that should be read religiously. She also tells great Horse Stories.
1. What is a platform/account/space you go to for unmitigated joy?
Nicole: I use a selection of SubReddits for that. r/WolvesAreBigYo, r/RarePuppers, r/PowerWashingPorn, r/Popping, r/PerfectFit. Oh, and r/DogsWithJobs. Also the new Chani astrology app. It is AMAZING.
2. What was the last (online) thing you read that really made you think/feel something? How did it affect you?
Nicole: The Vox piece about how our bodies are crumbling into dust because of solitude and depression. It made me feel better about feeling profoundly unattractive at the moment. My hair is greasy (no matter what shampoo protocol I attempt) AND falling out AND rapidly turning white. I feel like I smell weird. Just very validating, in general. We are not doing well on a cellular level.
3. Do you have a niche digital community you are currently obsessed with? Tell me about it.
Nicole: Oh, yes. It’s Reddit, again, but I spend at least an hour a day on r/AmITheAsshole. The entire sphere of human wildness at a glance. It’s very satisfying/infuriating/infuriatingly satisfying.
4. What’s one piece of content (tweet, post, etc.) that has just stuck with you recently? Why?
Nicole: I would like to go more highbrow but it’s the TikTok about the Danny Pudi/Larry King interview. I appreciate it on an absurdist level and as a piece of class commentary.
5. What is your meme of the year?
Nicole: It’s probably an older meme, but I will laugh at any “did a dog write this?” post. Like, today, for example:
It’s just delightful every time. A human so opinionated it must be a creature.
Also feel free to also mention YouTube compilations of Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani being in love. Got very deep into that this fall.
Me: Oh, when I was at NYLON, I wrote a piece debunking their relationship.
Nicole: You FOOL. They are ABSOLUTELY real.
Me: I feel bad about it now.
Nicole: the best song is “Go Ahead and Break My Heart.” I like to pretend Oliver Jackson-Cohen and I are doing it at karaoke. You can include that. All of this is on the record.
Demi Adejuyigbe
Bad news: Demi is actually as funny IRL as he is online, because LIFE ISN’T FAIR and some people are just GREAT. Demi has been on all sorts of great podcasts, writes and performs sweet jams, and you can now find him writing for television, as he should be. Bonus: Follow him for some insight into organizations to uplift, support, and share. Also, catch him on September 21, breaking the internet.
1. What is a platform/account/space you go to for unmitigated joy?
Demi: Unmitigated joy is so hard to come by online now, but the first thing i thought of was Branson Reese's Letterboxd account. He's such a good and funny writer, even when he's writing the most succinct barbs about movies or shorts I've truly never even heard of.
2. What was the last (online) thing you read that really made you think/feel something? How did it affect you?
Demi: I read things that will make me feel something small all the time, but I think about this piece written by @tonytula in which he illustrates a very specific but real type of radicalization of a "male feminist" in a way that shakes me to my core. Something about the sort of step-by-step explication of this guy is so bleak but so fascinating.
3. Do you have a niche digital community you are currently obsessed with? Tell me about it.
Demi: I don't really have a niche digital community I'm obsessed with because I spend every other waking moment trying to remind myself to get off the internet and throw my phone into the ocean!!
4. What’s one piece of content (tweet, post, etc.) that has just stuck with you recently? Why?
Demi: I have been laughing and using LeBron James's Instagram story post of him smiling in a pool as a response to everything because it's so funny to me. Entirely devoid of context, too—good news? Smiling through it all. Bad news? Smiling through it all. I posted a picture of myself replicating the picture on Instagram and too many people thought it was sincere, which weirded me out because even if we weren't in month 9 of a pandemic I'd never post something like that, but that's kind of what makes it even funnier to me!
5. What is your meme of the year?
Demi: Meme of the year has to be black people getting superpowers on December 21st. If that counts! It was just the most fun three days of black people describing the ways they'd use these superpowers and it all branched off of one tweet. So funny. If it doesn't count? "Me reaping/ me sowing." I know it wasn't this year but it's come in handy like, once a week this entire year.
Bakoon/Oliver Leach
Oliver is so darkly funny I was almost afraid to see his art. Luckily, it is haunting and exquisite, while his bizarro take on pop culture, horror, and influencers helped coin the term “weird Twitter”. Also, Oliver made my favorite meme of all time, one I think about probably weekly (this isn’t an exaggeration).
1. What is a platform/account/space you go to for unmitigated joy?
Oliver: I have been enjoying Japanese accounts that post new capsule toys when they become available: Like, https://twitter.com/GachaponA. There has been a boom in capsule toy stores due to covid emptying retail spaces apparently, and the array of tiny objects is comforting to me.
2. What was the last (online) thing you read that really made you think/feel something? How did it affect you?
Oliver: I just read an article about all the money that Joe Bob Briggs and the team raised for charity last weekend while showing ‘Christmas Evil’ and that shit warmed the hell out of my heart. Joe Bob can be a sour old cuss but he is a good man.
3. Do you have a niche digital community you are currently obsessed with? Tell me about it.
Oliver: People with pet river otters, on YouTube. Their lives getting destroyed by these insane water puppies, it’s amazing .
4. What’s one piece of content (tweet, post, etc.) that has just stuck with you recently? Why?
Oliver: The Martin Scorcese commentary for “Tales of Hoffman”, the 1951 Powell and Pressburger film. It was one of his favorite movies as a kid and you can tell it in his turbo voice. Pure joy.
5. What is your meme of the year?
Oliver: That lizard on a unicycle, from back before the world fell apart. “That boy.”
Stoya
On Google, Stoya has sex for a living. In practice, however, her experience with sexuality and sex work has made her a published author, a businesswoman and a film producer, a writer for the New York Times, an advocate, an activist, and a voice for sex workers on the internet. She is also a person I care about very deeply. She has two very good cats who love her very much.
1. What is a platform/account/space you go to for unmitigated joy?
Stoya: OnlyFans. I follow a few colleagues there and really enjoy seeing them express their sexualities and proudly show their bodies.
2. What was the last (online) thing you read that really made you think/feel something? How did it affect you?
Stoya: I don’t have one. I’ve been pretty paper-based with my reading this year.
3. Do you have a niche digital community you are currently obsessed with? Tell me about it.
Stoya: Does sex worker Twitter count? I’ve been understandably deep into sex worker Twitter for my whole time on the site. We tend to retweet each other a lot.
4. What’s one piece of content (tweet, post, etc.) that has just stuck with you recently? Why?
Stoya: I keep coming back to the penguins wandering loose at the zoo during the early pandemic. It’s so freaking heartwarming.
5. What is your meme of the year?
Stoya: Cats gracefully walking through makeup tubes.
John Paul Brammer
John Paul Brammer is, to me, a legend. He is the pure intersection of queer humor and cynical commentary paired with a wide-eyed optimism for unabashed geekery and the passions people have. He’s an incredible artist, and writes the heartwarming Hola Papi newsletter which has become…drum roll…a book! Preorder it now!
1. What is a platform/account/space you go to for unmitigated joy?
JP: I go to YouTube honestly. It might seem odd, because I know for a fact YouTube can be a really hostile place and has a major harassment problem. But a lot of our online experiences these days depend so heavily on what the algorithm makes of us, and the YouTube algorithm has figured out that I just want to watch hour-long video essays on DreamWorks' Shark Tale. In particular, I love Jenny Nicholson's videos. I actually watched her stuff the morning after the election before I checked any results. It was like six a.m. and I was like, I think Jenny's video about the grim dystopia of the Christmas Prince would soothe me right now. I was right!
2. What was the last (online) thing you read that really made you think/feel something? How did it affect you?
JP: My typical reading experience is bonkers so it's hard to say. I just sort of jump from piece to piece, book to book, essay to essay like a hummingbird poking at flowers. Oh dear, I'm really racking my brain right now trying to think of something, so I guess I'll just say how much I've enjoyed every single piece of writing from Hunter Harris' "Hung Up" Substack so far. It's hard to explain, but it's like every time I open up a piece from her I already know that she "gets it" and I'm in for a good time. Plus it's just really, really well written from, I don't know, a technical perspective? Whatever one would call that! She has her own voice so down.
3. Do you have a niche digital community you are currently obsessed with? Tell me about it.
JP: Same problem here in that I love, love, love jumping from one niche internet community to another. Right now, it's YouTube "reaction" videos. First, it was music critic YouTube. Like, watching people react to albums I loved. Then it was gamer "react" videos. I'm not even a gamer? I was so obsessed with watching people react to the Super Smash Bros. trailer where they added Sephiroth as a playable character. I was so hype for that and I just literally could not stop clicking on videos and watching people scream about it, the moment it dawned on them that, indeed, beloved silver-haired, long-sword man will be a part of this game. That led me to Smash YouTubers in general. There's this one guy called HungryBox that I subscribed to because I love his vibe. He plays as Jigglypuff and I think that's noble. So right now I'm just watching him fight people as Jigglypuff. This will work itself out of my system in about a week, if past trends hold, and I'll be on some other track.
4. What’s one piece of content (tweet, post, etc.) that has just stuck with you recently? Why?
JP: The entire "Museo Mexicano del Internet" account. It's an absolutely wild ride. I think Mexicans have our own type of funny bone in our skeletons and this account hits it every time. Mexican culture is beautiful and everything but it's also a shitpost. Like, the whole thing. The Catholic imagery is what kills me from the account especially. I'll link a tweet that lives in my head rent free.
5. The official White House faith person lady doing the "and strike and strike and strike and strike!!" monologue when Trump started losing the election. "Angelic reinforcement! ANGELIC reinforcement! From Africa right now! From AFRICA right now! ESKA OSSSAAA" etc. God, it's so good. Massive mood.
Jordan Uhl
Jordan Uhl is a journalist, podcaster, and Good Opinion Haver. Big whoop, you say, who isn’t? Fair, but Jordan acute read of politics actually scares the shit out of the right wing, so much so that if someone has over 100K followers and a bio that reads “facts don’t care about feelings,” Jordan has certainly executed an effortless, glossy, Olympic-level dunk on them. Catch him talking about politics, activism, and more on TYT Twitch, Twitter, or his Substack. (Sign up! Do it!)
1. What is a platform/account/space you go to for unmitigated joy?
Jordan: My library’s audiobook app, Hoopla. I guess it’s a platform. Audiobooks were a huge crutch for me this year.
2. What was the last (online) thing you read that really made you think/feel something? How did it affect you?
Jordan: Basically anything Chris Hedges writes fuels me to keep going, to stay angry and focused. He has a weekly-ish column at Robert Scheer’s blog, Scheerpost. The most recent one was about Biden’s cabinet picks, so I suppose that’s the answer.
3. Do you have a niche digital community you are currently obsessed with? Tell me about it.
Jordan: My friends and I have built up a nice Discord [Ed. note for Olds: Discord is like a chatroom meets Google Docs, but invite only and popularized by gamers] server this year of friends and acquaintances where we meet almost every night in voice chat. It’s been a really great lifeline this year and I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t have this community after this year.
4. What’s one piece of content (tweet, post, etc.) that has just stuck with you recently? Why?
Jordan: It’s probably Hedges again. His “Collective Suicide of the Liberal Class” essay. It serves as a brief update on his “Death of the Liberal Class” book which describes the ways Dem leaders have handed over the party to corporate interests and abandoned the working class. It highlights how Dems are continuing this trend. Sorry these answers are mostly just downers! Life sucks.
5. What is your meme of the year?
Jordan: Easy.
