“This Salad right here, this is a meme” — the phenomenal social media power of CallMeCarson
“If I see this on my Twitter timeline, there will be hell to pay” — CSCoop (1)
CallMeCarson has amassed over 2.9 million YouTube subscribers (2) through his videos filled with obscure, nonsensical humour, some of which is quite frankly, un-explainable. But what is it that Carson has done right to get to this point?
“His comedy is so good, hes a walking shit-post, it’s amazing… the bit never ends with Carson” SwaggerSouls and Fitz (3)
Carson’s humour is incredibly niche. Just yesterday (at time of writing), Carson reached 32.8k likes on Twitter with the above image of a McDonald’s salad, captioned “this is a warning and an omen”. This is a reference to a bit in his latest video ‘These quizzes actually sent us insane…” (1.1 million views) (1), which, as I attempted to explain to my mother, is funny for absolutely no reason other than how stupid it is.
But how stupid really is it?
Surely, when we look at the stats and the consistency of these meaningless jokes, we can see a pattern which exhibits the deliberate nature of these posts. Carson has garnered a following, and as mentioned in that video, he has a “power” built from the back of such jokes. This brings into mind the theory of Phenomenology, and when we approach Carson with that in mind, it suddenly shines him in the light of a marketing genius.
Phenomenology
Heidegger describes Phenomenology as “the process of letting things manifest themselves.” (4). Artist Shepard Fairey frequently uses the idea of phenomenology in his “obey giant” work, explaining that it “has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning”, which itself could potentially be exactly what Carson is adopting to build his following.
Internet meme culture consists entirely of ‘inside jokes’, when something is presented with no context, therefore, people want to be ‘in on the joke’. A key example of this is the ‘loss’ meme (seen below). To those who aren’t ‘in’ on the joke, the below image is just a series of lines, however, these lines are widely recognised, the shapes they represent have been shown in many forms, all to refer back to one simple comic.
“The meta-ironic movement has utilised many techniques pioneered by Bauhaus, such as the use of extremely minimised subject matters expressed through shapes, lines and blocks of colour.” — Kandinsky and Loss
Within this field of “wanting to be in on the joke”, exists Carson. Not as the one desiring to be part of the joke, but as the creator of incredibly niche and inside jokes. When these jokes are shared on social media by his direct fans, more people are exposed to it, they may trawl the comments and find a link to the video it refers to, more people watch his video, and therefore, Carson’s reach grows.
And so, when Carson posts a picture of a McDonald’s salad, he is doing far more than we realise, he is, perhaps unknowingly, adopting the theories of great artists and philosophers, he is creating a phenomenon within himself.
Citations
(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIII8Tu9dBU&t=16s
(2) https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/thebluecrewpros
(3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDrzPJvqjzw&t=79s
(4) https://obeygiant.com/propaganda/manifesto/
(5) Kadinsky and Loss — https://thephilosophersmeme.com/2017/12/04/kandinsky-and-loss/
