Pop Culture Mondays/7.29.24
The TOO MANY MEMES Edition
Happy Monday, my darling pop culture junkies. How are we all doing? I cannot believe it has only been a week and a day since Biden announced he was not going to run for re-election. A week?? And in that week, an entire vibe shift. An entire meme explosion. And JUST LIKE THAT, we went from using “Twitter” for doomscrolling to HOPESCROLLING, and the only bad news about that is that it’s giving Space Karen more eyeballs on the platform. But I am definitely here for the positivity we are seeing vs. the hate:
But on top of all the different pop culture moments with the US elections (so many…) we ALSO have the Olympics. From the Opening Ceremony and the faux “Christian outrage” to surfing in Tahiti and more. But we also have TRAD WIFE drama-rama and some other things that dominated this week.
But I am going to be honest here. I cannot get to all of it. Honestly, not even because there is TOO much (and there is) but because I cannot track all of it. I KNOW. This is my like one superpower…tracking all the different trends and memes, and I have had to wave my white flag…
I will do my best, but if I tried to tackle every single viral moment, meme, and everything in between, I would write until Wednesday…and I probably still wouldn’t get to everything.
And if you missed my amazingly FUN pod last week, it is NOT too late to give it a try.
We have lots to tackle, so let’s go. Wish me luck.
We are TRUMP-free for those new readers. As much as we can be, but for the most part, we are. PCM started during the Trump administration as an escape…and who fucking thought we would still need this escape. But here we are.
Great job America.
BUT, sometimes we are Trump-adjacent. We have to be because we are given gifts like the beautifully eyelinered JD Vance. And boy, I could write an entire newsletter just about him and the memes this past week. I will not possibly get to all of them.
If you don't know about the eyeliner storyline, I got you:
This is JD Vance:
This is ALSO JD Vance:
And this is ALSO JD Vance:
HAHAHA kidding. But you get the idea. Look, I am all for men wearing eye makeup. I actually kind of dig it if we are going to be honest here. But there is irony here if you think about it. And you don't have to think that hard.
But we also have…the couch. DEAR LORD, this couch. I am sure you have ALL heard about the couch by now, but many of you might not know its origin. Frankly, I have spent so much time trying to figure it out myself, and I think I have sorted it out. it out, KIND of. But if you have any corrections, LMK.
The story that has come out is that JD Vance wrote about having sex with a couch in his book “HILLBILLY ELEGY.” Someone tweeted this and it took off on the socials.
BUT, from my understanding…there is no reference to sex with a couch in the book. BUT…as this rumor took off, the media only added to it. Specifically, the Associated Press (AP). They had researched the rumors about the said couch and determined it was, in fact…NOT true. So they published this article:
I mean…can you even?? THE AP. Too good. And for many who had never heard of this rumor, it was now mainstream. This is what is called:
THE STREISAND EFFECT.
And according to Wikipedia, this is:
The Streisand effect is an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information. The effect is named for American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, whose attorney’s attempt in 2003 to suppress the publication of a photograph showing her clifftop residence in Malibu, taken to document coastal erosion in California, inadvertently drew far greater attention to the previously obscure photograph. The effect exemplifies psychological reactance: where the desire to hide information instead makes its propagation more likely.
Here it is explained in a tweet:
The couch has taken on a life of its own. Think RICHARD GERE and the GERBIL. 🫣 (IYKYK)
OK, ok…if you have no idea what I am talking about, here you go:
BUT, I digress.
Let’s see some of the couch commentary on socials I loved:
And guys…THE HARRIS CAMPAIGN got in on it, and I am deceased:
And that brings us to the CAT LADY drama. I never thought I would be part of a group singled out as an evil pox on the fabric of society…yet here we are. Cats, dogs…same thing. AND truth be told, I was a cat lady before I got my first dog. SO it is in my CORE. But I am also childless, and the fact of the matter is, it is not impacting anyone that I didn't have children. There are SO many women who wanted children and could not have them, and how devastating for them to be singled out by the likes of JD Vance and Elon fucking Musk as dangers to society; it is really stunning to me. And also, DUMB. Because HELL HATH NO FURY….
Also, dumb? Going after AMERICA’S SWEETHEART, Jennifer Aniston. Like…how DUMB are you? Aniston had responded to JD Vance’s take on childless women with this post on her Instagram story:
And JD Vance did not like that. Because in the case of most bullies….they can dish it out all day long, but the SECOND you hit back…they are inconsolable. His response took place in the form of a rant on the Megyn Kelly Show (of course…):
“You’ve got Hollywood celebrities saying, ‘Oh, well, J.D. Vance, what if your daughter suffered fertility problems?’” he said. “Well, first of all, that’s disgusting because my daughter is 2 years old. And second of all, if she had fertility problems, as I said in that speech, I would try everything I could to try to help her because I believe families and babies are a good thing.”
Oh, and also, JD Vance apologized to the cats…not the women, in another disgusting take:
But the Internet responded:
And in a big surprise over the weekend, the largest retirement community in America known as a hotbed for Trumpers, The Villages, had a HUGE Kamala rally. Huge for them as normally it is mostly RED all the time. Of course, you have Democrats there, but they were silent over the years. BUT NO MORE.
And they had enough:
And finally, this amazing takedown by Chelsea Handler:
OH, yes…she mentioned the dolphin. So let’s end with that, shall we?
It started with this tweet back in February:
You will notice that in the screenshot he shared, “woman” and “dolphin” are in bold…meaning…MEANING, my lovely darling readers, that these were terms HE SEARCHED. LOLs. JD Vance was sitting at his computer and Googled “Woman and Dolphin,” and he got busted.
The funny thing is the tweet is still up. This was obviously brought back up again in the wake of everything else, and the reactions are amazing:
OK, that’s enough JD Vance for a lifetime, right? But before we move on, we have some Kamala moments that are breaking the socials.
Brooke Schofield is a very well-known content creator and podcaster. We LOVE a Brooke obviously. She has many viral videos, and one was this sound:
And the BRILLIANT team over at Harris HQ used the sound in a TikTok about how much money she was raising:
And her reaction:
And to give you an idea of how beloved Brooke is with her community, here are some of the responses:
So smart. Another smart thing was to not just hit the Gen Z crew,….but MILLENNIALS. How do you do that?
That’s correct. You hit up Lance Bass and get the NSYNC gen GOING.
Oh and also…DRAG RACE (again, IYKYK):
OK…I need to move on. There was a lot more, but this should get you up to speed on most of it.
OLYMPICS 2024: PARIS
Where do we even begin with this? There is a lot that has come out from the Olympics THUS far that has gone viral, and it will continue, but for our purposes this week, we will mainly focus on the opening ceremony. This was the FIRST OPENING CERMONY of an Olympics that did not take place IN a stadium. It encompassed many locations throughout Paris, and it was a spectacular spectacle. And it gave the uptight American Christians a heart attack. Some thought it was Satanic, likely due to the METAL aspect of this moment, which followed a Les Mis moment, naturally:
It is hard to share videos because the Olympics have shut a lot of sharing content down…but this is one of the scenes that got people upset. French Heavy Metal band Gojira was a choice…and frankly, it was hilarious to me. LOVED IT.
But that wasn’t all.
I mean, the French are weird. Love them for this.
THIS was the scene that got everyone hot and bothered. Why? because the Christians incorrectly thought this was a reenactment of the LAST SUPPER using drag queens and naked blue men. BUT it was not. This was a take on the FEAST OF DIONYSUS (Greek…you see?), which in the modern-day WOULD have basically been exactly what was depicted. IT WAS A CRAZY PARTY, you guys.
I love this creator’s take.
Also, The Olympics explained this:
But the outrage…and misunderstanding show how uninformed many of our citizens are. Including the SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE:
LOLS…and that tweet is STILL up. HIGH-larious.
Oh, also, the former child star super Christian Candace Cameron Bure really gave it her best:
SO FUNNY.
To be fair…there was a whole MENAGE A TROIS situation in the Opening Ceremony that I could see people getting all bent out of shape over…GOD, it was SO unhinged I loved it. But France GAVE US THE TERM, so they might as well own it!
Hard to find the video, but here you go:
But let’s talk about our QUEENS:
WHAT a moment.
And, of course, we had THIS:
This really probably upset a lot of people, too. JUST saying.
LOVED IT.
God, we have so much more, but I have a job to get back to…
But let’s quickly talk SURFING. Obviously, there is no surfing in Paris…so where is the surfing competition taking place?
TAHITI.
WHY did my parents not raise me in Southern CA and throw me on a surfboard as a kid?? Because this is the life I want.
And the Colin Jost commentary from Tahiti has been hilarious:
And let’s close with FLAVOR FLAV at the Olympics, who is the SPONSOR of the Women’s Water Polo Team. How wild is that??
So it all happened when the US Water Polo team posted about how the teams needed money to get to the Olympics. Many athletes have several jobs to chase their dreams, but they are always looking for sponsors. And this is where Flavor Flav chimed in on Instagram:
AND did he ever deliver on this promise!
I am the BIGGEST Flavor Flav stan now. I mean, are you crying??
OK, last Olympics content this week…
A LITTLE OF THIS & A LITTLE OF THAT
Ok, I am racing through this because this was a beast this week.
You guys remember the whole TRAD WIFE trend we have discussed many a time here? And one of the OGs of this is Ballerina Farm, which we have covered before. She is married to the son of the JetBlue founder and are Mormons (they all are Mormon) and has a million kids and makes everything from scratch and competed in a beauty pageant 2 weeks after giving birth. Ring a bell?
How about now?
Well, people are fascinated with them. And, of course, then, the media are fascinated by them. Also, a ton of red flags started showing up, which have all been taken down. For example, she posted a video showing her opening her birthday present from her billionaire husband. She had been hoping for a trip to Greece. She hoped it was somehow related to that. And she opened the present, which, by the way, was a UPS box he had not even opened and wrapped what was inside. And what was inside? An EGG APRON. An apron with little holders for her to collect eggs.
Well, the family decided to do an interview with the UK’s THE TIMES, and it did not turn out so well for them. Also, I say family…the profile was meant to be on Hannah, the TRAD-WIFE extraordinaire…but you have to read it…It is a MUST-READ:
It went BANANAS viral. So much so the writer has created more content explaining it:
Basically, it seems like the dude stalked her by getting a seat on her JetBlue flight next to her (daddy owns the airline, so all sorts of privacy laws seemed to have been broken, but I digress….) only to get her to leave her dreams and career as a Juilliard-trained dancer behind to go be a TRAD wife and birth his babies and make his food and it all seemed so sad. Especially the part about getting an epidural for one of her kids because her husband was not there seemingly to prevent it, and she recalled that being very nice. I MEAN.
TRAD WIVES are NOT BRAT.
Moving on….we have madness in the superhero movie universe, you guys!
Did you see this?
THIS MAN CAN DO ANYTHING.
He has created a massive bajillion-dollar franchise as HERO Iron Man in the Marvel universe. ONLY to now come back into the same universe as the VILLIAN Dr. Doom. INSANE.
And the memes have been great. Here is just one, as this is already too long:
And, of course, we have Tay Tay in PCM…we go a week without her, and it feels WRONG. But again, she made news as her concert in Munich was attended by MANY…including people who did not have tickets:
THAT IS IT, my darlings…
I couldn't get to everything, but I hope you enjoyed this monster of a PCM.
We are switching off of Medium SOON….so expect an update there. NOT SUBSTACK, so do NOT worry. IT IS COMING…
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Xx,
Brooke
