I’ve said this many times before, but whenever big corporations try to traffic in memes, the end result is usually cringe. Memes are something that happen spontaneously, peak within a day and are typically entirely unpredictable. People share them on the internet without seeking credit, because why would they? It’s just something people do to pass the time, and it was pure before advertisers stepped in.
Nowadays, you have every fast food chain under the sun using memes/internet humor in order to market to younger crowds. Sometimes this works, but generally, corporate memes are low effort garbage that get astroturfed to relevance. Still think Burger King tweeting the sleepy eyes emoji at McDonalds is funny? Because I don’t. I’m also sick of the fucking Kool Aid man taking every layup opportunity out there to reply with an “oh yeah”, and don’t even get me started on Mr. Peanut…..
All that may be lame, but at least those companies are selling products. The absolute worst development of the meme era is when media companies try to “understand” memes. We’ve seen this with how Twitter pushes garbage memes to relevance and it’s only getting worse. Now, we’ve got actual segments on memes and the end result is some real “fellow kids” shit.
Just look at this cringe-worthy Kawhi segment.
“What it be baby”, I mean really? Young Hollywood is so lazy that they can’t even understand the memes they’re trying to cover. Everybody who this was marketed to knows that it’s “what it do baby“,which makes this whole thing a meme in and of itself. Maybe “what is be baby” is something the Kawhi impersonator says? Who knows man.
My favorite part is how they didn’t even correct the error in their segment here. I mean the meme crowd definitely loves self depreciation, so had they made fun of themselves a little, this could have been quality content. Sadly, I think they’re completely oblivious to this, which is hilarious.
Now don’t get the idea that I’m ranting here, because I’m totally not. I’m just pointing out how the whole boomer producer hiring a millennial to market memes to Gen Z strategy is cringe-worthy as hell. All this stuff does is lead to more material to make fun of, and I’m totally here for that.
Bring on the cringe!