🧤mittens? for winter? groundbreaking
Bernie, Ben Affleck & Belle Delphine
You are cordially invited to this week’s brew of High Tea, your dispatch of 🔥 internet culture served piping hot. This week: its mitts off for Bernie, Taco Bell’s Mark King proves he’s not your average spud, and JoJo Siwa does it for the girls, gays & theys. 🌈
Drink up 🐸☕
p.s. if you’re not a paid subscriber, here’s what you missed from this week’s Buck’s Fizz: 🥂Bridgerton the Musical, carolesdaughter & WRENN
what we’ve been sipping on:
We did it Joe...you’re g̶o̶n̶n̶a̶ ̶b̶e̶ the n̶e̶x̶t̶ President of the United States 🎉. While TikTok was popping off with inauguration garms; Miu Miu fit for a stepdaughter-elect (we’re officially Ella Emhoff stans now) and Maisy Biden x Jordan mid fancams, a whole storm in a teacup was brewing on Twitter. We are, of course, talking about the mittens that launched a thousand memes and a renewed 2021 yearning for Vermont-grandpa-core.
We’ve rounded up our top picks for the Very Online™ this week, satisfying a seemingly universal thirst to feel the Bern while exploring what this means for the ever decreasing lifespan of collective internet consciousness. TL;DR we are once again asking you to appreciate the meme as the message.
how it started:
how it’s going (some of our faves):
And that’s not all. Unlike other meme-ified moments, Bernie stans were quick to not only make the memes themselves, but also the tools for others to get in on the action (all in < 12 hours 💅). Lens Creator Ali Jackson made the unofficial Snap offering (AR Bernie in your living room anyone?), while NYU’s Masters student Nich Sawhney created the ultimate Google Maps x BS collab: a tool to add a mitten-clad Bernie to any street worldwide. So popular was the latter that the site now boasts a total of 9,849,938 Bernie memes created – not bad for capturing an internet moment in time.
Even Bernie himself got in on the action. Not to be outdone by his fellow compatriots, our favorite Senator quickly capitalized on his own cultural moment, and had us reaching deep into our pocket$ to support. In a move not totally dissimilar from Kylie Jenner’s “Rise and Shine” meme merch, though with decidedly more wholesome intentions (lol), Bernie launched his own official “Chairman Sanders Sweatshirt” retailing at $45 with 100% of the proceeds going to Meals on Wheels Vermont, a non-profit organization providing hot meals to those with chronic conditions or disabilities.
Oh, and if you wanted to get your mitts on some BS apparel, sorry pals – they’re 100% sold out. Bernie works hard, but the 10M Bernie meme-rs work harder.
what does it all meme?
Memes ain’t nothing new, they're tried and tested exhibits-in-time that provide social topography to illustrate the stories we’re telling as they happen, across digital and virtual landscapes. Memes are the internet’s version of ‘milk, flour and eggs’, staples that have the ability both narrate and translate human experience and form the basis for most of our social goodies – never half-baked. But, in the current landscape of collectively navigating the URL with reduced IRL interactions, the shelf life of emerging user generated culture, accelerated by creating in social isolation, is truly “today’s news; tomorrow’s chip paper”.
With Bernie, the mitten memes represent a community chain reaction of taking up digital space, encouraging mass participation with relatable, multifaceted entry points, becoming increasingly satirical and nonsensical in nature as each hour passes. The jury is still out on whether we’re moving towards meme fatigue or 21st century Dadaism, but if there’s one thing we know for sure it’s that pandemic memes continue to serve as the vessel through which the discourse is incubated and carried, albeit to social irrelevance at increasing speed.
“new affleck just dropped”
It wouldn’t be a simmering dispatch on the power of memes without a lil love letter to the format that keeps on giving: Ben Affleck. Pls also read: HE CAN’T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT 😩. Since 2016, we’ve been blessed with “Sad Affleck”, “Smoking Affleck”, “Back Tattoo Affleck”, and then “Smoking Affleck pt. 2” (aka the 2020 updated version, complete with mask 😷). We’re positively spoiled. But the latest addition to the Affleck canon? It hits different. 2021’s “Iced-Coffee-Amazon-Packages Affleck”, buoyed by the reframing and repurposing of individual creators and retweeted en masse, is the perfect format to illustrate the collective weariness we feel as we enter the second year of the pandemic. If manners maketh the man, then Twitter maketh the meme.
🎶 We’re listening to: Billie Eilish, ROSALÍA - Lo Vas A Olvidar (c’mon now, you already know).
📰 We’re reading: Belle Delphine is a next-generation porn star, trolling followers for clicks and controversy for Insider by the brilliant Kat Tenbarg
kettle’s on: ones to watch
Maybe “blonde” was the only rhyme. Whether piping hot love-triangle-zoomer-scandal or brilliantly executed PR stunt, Sabrina Carpenter’s latest release “Skin” has TikTok tongues wagging following the double whammy of back-to-back releases with Joshua Bassett’s “Lie Lie Lie” and Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license”. It’s clear that Rodrigo’s debut shows no signs of slowing down, selling over 1 million units in the US and going platinum in *checks notes* two weeks. Read our deep dive on the path to Olivia’s virality here.
Taco Bell gets roasted. In a move that cannot be deemed small fry, Taco Bell’s CEO Mark King showed up to work dressed as an AR potato to publicly announce the return of the humble spud to their infamous menu. Even though the video has since been removed from the internet, it garnered a staggering 1.5M views on Twitter, which whatever way you slice it, ain’t half bad for a new menu feature announcement.
“Do you listen to g̶i̶r̶l̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶r̶e̶d̶ JoJo Siwa?” As the true Gen Alpha and Z queen, this week JoJo Siwa came out on TikTok (such a zoomer move we have no choice but to stan) bopping to Gaga’s “Born this Way”, complete with signature bow. In true Z style, JoJo opted not to be defined by any label, but rather to signal to the world that she’s going to love who she wants, and host the biggest internet party while doing it. In a recent IG live JoJo stated “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, that’s what matters”. JoJo, we love you! 💜
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ttyl,