Edvard Munch, Summer Night By the Beach

a quick “why is my life so bad” checklist

how’s your sleep schedule

have you eaten or drank anything besides sugar and caffeine

how long have you been sitting in one spot

have you gone out in public recently

have you taken a shower/brushed your teeth/groomed yourself properly

have you spent time doing an activity that doesn’t involve a screen

etc

Trail cam catching a deer fawn with the zoomies

Everyone wanted to be thicc but nobody wanted to be fat. Everyone wanted the dad bod but nobody wanted to be fat. Everyone wants fat mommy milkers but nobody wants mommy to be fat. Everyone wants to be a bear but not like, an actual fat bear. You get what i’m saying

you know indie sleaze is back when this does numbers

you’re going to love again, find a job again, create art again, do what you love again, feel powerful again. you’re going to be back on track. i don’t know when, but you are going to feel like yourself again, eventually. this isn’t the end. hang in there.

The rat just wants to make some friends

sex is cool but have you ever had someone give you so much emotional safety that you were able to break down & process trauma right in front of them without fear of being judged or ridiculed?

“do you think you fell out of a coconut tree? you exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you”

these words recently became a meme through going viral on x/twitter and then becoming a popularized sound snippet on tiktok and the meme taking off on other platforms as well.

the context of this phrase is kamala harris giving a speech at the  swearing-in ceremony of commissioners for the white house initiative on “advancing educational equity, excellence, and economic opportunity for hispanics.”

the full phrase being:

“part of the extension of the work you will do is, yes, focused on our young leaders and our young people, but understanding we also then have to be clear about the needs of their parents and their grandparents and their teachers and their communities because none of us just live in a silo. everything is in context.

continuing she added: “my mother used to — she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, ‘i don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?' you exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you."

these words have been echoing in my ears for reasons beyond the meme’s popularity. for one, the context itself is interesting. after reading up on it on knowyourmeme.com i learned the origin of it started through being posted by a far right platform on youtube. from there mostly far right white nationalists used the video on x/twitter until eventually it was posted by larger humor accounts on x/twitter and then used de-contextualized from it’s original space by the general population. i had started using the meme, and thinking about it, because the phrase itself is pretty grave and wise and humorous. however realizing how it originated forced me to draw comparisons to wojaks, meme characters that originated from alt right 4chan users, or the “reject modernity, embrace tradition” meme which also originated with fascists and then got picked up out of context after increased popularity and use. 

thinking back to the meme in question, do memes exist in the context of all in which they live and what came before them? 

i question the severity of the impact of fascist memes on popular culture, seeing as much of the election was also influenced by his meme-ing, and twitter(since being bought by loser technofascist elon musk and becoming x on july 23, 2023) has become even more openly overrun by white supremacist fascists. considering this, memes created by fascists seem to tend to serve as propaganda, infiltrating the sub-conscious of popular culture. 

i wonder how long before the state itself picks up this meme, as a way to try to feed into celebrity-dom and infantilize itself with  perceived lightheartedness to cover for directly being  involved with upholding ongoing genocides and slavery. there are implied respectability politics involved in the phrasing of the event, of “equity, excellence, and economic opportunity for “hispanics”” what does the state mean by “excellence”? what does economic opportunity mean, at who’s expense it ? for what? “hispanics” ? another ambiguous term which says nothing about the positionality of someone outside of having been geographically been born in so-called “latin america”. representation politics within representation politics. 

when reflecting on cultural shifts since the uprisings in 2020, there are many ways in which representation politics shape and inform the political landscape under a liberal fascist president like genocide joe. what does it mean for kamala harris to bring up her mother’s phrase in this setting ? it means everything and nothing in the context of destruction, co-optation and decay by the empire, changing very little only because it is now at the hands of a woman of color. the world we hope to build shouldn’t mean diversified oppressors, but rather complete liberation and release from oppression, hierarchy, and the death cult that is white supremacy.

A fragile limpet (Atalacmea fragilis) in Southland, Aotearoa

by Tony Jewell

Traditional Country Style, 1991

Light projections in Forest by Javier Riera

Terrace, New York  -    Matteo Massagrande , 2019.

Italian,b.1959-

Oil and mixed media on board,  90 x 60 cm.  35.4 x 23.6 in.

-Snowballs-