Tearing Apart Society Through Middle-Aged Mom Memes

June 25, 2015 5:51 AM

How Minions Destroyed the Internet
posted by almostmanda (139 comments total)

Terminator was wrong. Skynet became self aware as a pithy meme generator.

WHY CANT CAKE BE A VEGETABLE? SHARE IF YOU AGREE!!
posted by dr_dank at 5:56 AM on June 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

This is one of those memes that's allegedly omnipresent, yet I don't think I've ever seen an example in the wild—I'm only aware of it because I've heard people complain about it (always in connection with middle-aged moms). Much like "YOLO", which I've never heard used unironically. I guess I don't get out much.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:01 AM on June 25, 2015 [12 favorites]

Baby cake with Minion hat is creepy. Super creepy.
posted by Roger Dodger at 6:01 AM on June 25, 2015 [21 favorites]

Wait,... Minion Tattoos? No Way.... are all these #miniontattoo posts on instagram real or those temporary tattoos that you put on with a bit of water?
https://instagram.com/explore/tags/miniontattoo/ ?
Some look distinctly fake but others have that redness as though they are real? Seriously why?

Having never seen the despicable me films I feel I have been somewhat insulated from this obsession.
posted by mary8nne at 6:06 AM on June 25, 2015

Stop doing this. Go outside!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:08 AM on June 25, 2015 [13 favorites]

Not gonna lie, this is my wallpaper on my work PC. I love me some Minions and can't wait to take my son the see the movie.
posted by MikeMc at 6:10 AM on June 25, 2015 [9 favorites]

After an essay about the hollow meaninglessness of a phenomenon, it's especially jarring seeing an author bio refer to "generat[ing] content" — have we all been trolled? Is irony dead? Was the essay supposed to be as ultimately lacking in a point as its topic? Is anything real?
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:10 AM on June 25, 2015 [16 favorites]

Good. I love dank memes as much as the next pasty white dude who spends too much time on the Internet, but maybe if meme culture finally eats itself alive we can all move on to bigger and better things.
posted by Itaxpica at 6:11 AM on June 25, 2015 [12 favorites]

Am I the only one who found that article to be completely incoherent?

Pop culture is popular?
posted by schmod at 6:17 AM on June 25, 2015 [26 favorites]

Minion memes: Evil opposite of "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows."
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:21 AM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

So they're the spiritual successor of Big Dogs, bootleg Calvin stuff, those ridiculous Tweety "attitude" tees from the 90s, all of MySpace. Plus ça change.

ETA: hee
posted by Metroid Baby at 6:23 AM on June 25, 2015 [37 favorites]

The popularity with middle-aged mom memes is entirely explained by the fact that if you squint, they look exactly like Tweety Bird. Somebody had to take over that job.
posted by penduluum at 6:23 AM on June 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

I am a middle aged mom. I enjoyed the Despicable Me movies. And I am here to tell you that it is my children's grandparents who are repeatedly LOLing and hitting the share buttons on anything Minion.

I sort of want to make an outrageously inappropriate Minion meme and see how long it takes before it shows up on my FB feed with a "Lol so true"
posted by romakimmy at 6:23 AM on June 25, 2015 [24 favorites]

My mom's friends share these on Facebook (leading me to hide their posts completely) and it's terrible. I'm honestly surprised some cease and desist letters haven't come out of it since I saw two movies this weekend and The Minions previews practically made me dry heave with disgust because all I could think about with the terrible memes. After the first Dispicable Me you knew that dollar signs lit up in some marketer's eyes. They're the new Ewoks.

When I see one show up in my feed I usually share something from Laughapalooza, but nobody's gotten the joke yet. Or they're silently annoyed.
posted by mikesch at 6:24 AM on June 25, 2015 [14 favorites]

Jinx, Metroid Baby.
posted by penduluum at 6:29 AM on June 25, 2015

These are super pithy and kind of aggressive in their blandness, but I love how angry teenagers get over parents doing memes "wrong" and hope at least some of it is deliberate trolling.
posted by almostmanda at 6:29 AM on June 25, 2015 [28 favorites]

The author doesn't seem to get it either. At least I'm not alone?
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 6:33 AM on June 25, 2015

I can't even poke fun at someone with a "Minion Cheese-Head" tattoo.

Seriously- I want to send money to some sort of organization that would help them.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:34 AM on June 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Seriously- I want to send money to some sort of organization that would help them.

Sadly, in Wisconsin, being a Packers fan isn't recognized as the mental illness it is.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:35 AM on June 25, 2015 [8 favorites]

So minions are basically the new Purple Ronnie?

I sort of want to make an outrageously inappropriate Minion meme and see how long it takes before it shows up on my FB feed with a "Lol so true"

It should be a complaint about Obamacare.
posted by Artw at 6:38 AM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

the victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused ;) share if u agree
posted by theodolite at 6:41 AM on June 25, 2015 [13 favorites]

I sort of want to make an outrageously inappropriate Minion meme and see how long it takes before it shows up on my FB feed with a "Lol so true"

It should be a complaint about Obamacare.

With Confederate flag overalls, likely?
posted by leotrotsky at 6:42 AM on June 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

> I'm only aware of it because I've heard people complain about it (always in connection with middle-aged moms

You don't get more middle-aged mom than me, I like silly memes, and I'm on Facebook much of the day -- and I've never seen these before.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:44 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Minions are the non-sequitur of the meme-world.
posted by blue_beetle at 6:46 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: Let's start with canonical Minions
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:47 AM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I have never, ever seen a minion meme and I'm a middle-aged mom. I guess I'm glad?

"Minions stand for nothing."

Minions stand for cheerful, busy chaos. They are toddlers. This is why small children love them. They're pure toddler id -- work, work, work, screw up, hit the guy next to you over the head, laugh hysterically, explain yourself in gibberish.

(In fact my 3-year-old is wearing a minion shirt right now that says "I'm definitely up to something." At this point his wardrobe consists almost entirely of shirts with minions on them and shirts with trains on them, as those are the two things he loves most. When he watches the minions he narrates what they're doing the whole time at the top of his lungs in an excited shriek: "HE IS HITTING HIM! NOW HE IS FALLING! OH NO, HE DROPPED A BOMB AND IT WILL EXPLODE! HE SPILLED ON GRU! GRU IS MAD!")
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:48 AM on June 25, 2015 [48 favorites]

My grandmother shares these minion things. She's 91, has no idea what a "meme" is, and has never seen Despicable Me. She probably hits the share button 20-30 times a day on facebook.

These are just a few from a quick scroll down her page.

Usually when I see these my first thought is simply "why is there a minion on this?"
posted by phunniemee at 6:48 AM on June 25, 2015 [21 favorites]

The issue isn't Minions themselves, or even Minions doing Miniony things. The issue is pairing pithy or "profound" or "kids these days amiritelol?!?!?" blurbs with Minions, for no other reason than they are Minions.

But I just don't know about it being the exclusive territory of middle-aged moms. Anecdata for sure, but the only person I notice doing this in my Facebook feed is a middle-aged, child free, gay woman. I myself am a middle-aged mom and I have tons of middle-aged mom friends. None of us do this.
posted by cooker girl at 6:50 AM on June 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

One of the Facebook fan groups that participate in has gone to the length of banning Minion meme threads (or in our case, sarcastic reposts of the lamest Minion memes collected from friends and family) on the grounds that they were off-topic and crapping up the group.
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:51 AM on June 25, 2015

I'm a middle-aged mom, my FB is full of middle-aged moms, but the people I see posting these are almost always women OUR moms' age: in other words, grandmoms. Sometimes we'll "like" them because we want to be polite.

There are lots of people of all ages still posting those data-sniffing "what X are you?" (rockstar, gemstone, type of fairy, etc.) quizzes. That shit needs to die.
posted by emjaybee at 6:51 AM on June 25, 2015 [11 favorites]

Hey, at least this shit is on Facebook where I can ignore it now, rather than in my email.
posted by Happy Dave at 6:51 AM on June 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

Pretty sure I've seen one on Obamacare, complete with some racist dog whistle. I figure completely inappropriate would mean outright racism/LGTBphobia or something involving NAMBLA, beastiality or necrophilia. I just can't bring myself to fake that level of ick, though.
posted by romakimmy at 6:52 AM on June 25, 2015

That "learn some respect" minion meme made my skin crawl more than it had any right to.
posted by schmod at 6:53 AM on June 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Stop doing this. Go outside!

I tried, but some glampers took my campsite.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:58 AM on June 25, 2015 [20 favorites]

Clearly the problem here is how much hyperbole and over-the-top ridiculous headlines are actually much of what's ruining the internet. (and mass surveillance, and data collection andandand)
posted by nevercalm at 6:58 AM on June 25, 2015

The person most guilty of sharing these is my cousin, who is in her early thirties and childless (although my sisters, more firmly in the middle-aged-mom territory, do occasionally share the looney toons/maxine/Disney equivalents)

I guess I don't know *how* I want other people to use Facebook except negatively (STOP SHARING THAT SHIT). I don't want to hide my non-racist relatives' posts but the best I've come up with is sequestering them to a particular group that I can check every so often to make sure I'm not missing anything crucial (i.e. actual life news, pictures of their kids or whatever). Oh and also I don't care about every local weather/traffic development in the town you live in but I realize that's petty.
posted by dismas at 6:59 AM on June 25, 2015

There are lots of people of all ages still posting those data-sniffing "what X are you?" (rockstar, gemstone, type of fairy, etc.) quizzes. That shit needs to die.

Yeah ok I hear what you're saying, but this is kind of hilarious.
posted by phunniemee at 7:00 AM on June 25, 2015 [8 favorites]

Sadly, in Wisconsin, being a Packers fan isn't recognized as the mental illness it is.

Are you sure you don't want to walk that back a bit? I mean those are some nice kneecaps you have there, it would be a shame if something were to happen to them.
posted by MikeMc at 7:01 AM on June 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I see this meme a lot from certain corners of my facebook feed.
posted by surazal at 7:03 AM on June 25, 2015

I don't think I've ever seen an example in the wild

I scroll past at least three of them daily. Which is down from when I stopped following friends (even actual friends) who do nothing on Facebook but repost memes.
posted by Foosnark at 7:03 AM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

> She's 91, has no idea what a "meme" is

... but she sure knows one when she sees one.
posted by scruss at 7:04 AM on June 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

BENGHAZI
posted by Artw at 7:10 AM on June 25, 2015 [8 favorites]

I scroll past at least three of them daily. Which is down from when I stopped following friends (even actual friends) who do nothing on Facebook but repost memes

QFT. I have become an infrequent FB user, but if your sole FB output is memes"inspirational" whatevs/what kind of gaseous being are you? quizzes, you get muted. I want to hear about your life not that.
posted by Kitteh at 7:10 AM on June 25, 2015

Oh man, nobody tell this guy how many "memes" (=any text on a jpeg I guess) there are with cats on them for no apparent reason.
posted by straight at 7:13 AM on June 25, 2015 [9 favorites]

I occasionally work at Universal Studios Florida, so I honestly never thought much about the prevalence of the meme since I am inundated with Minion stuff any time I am in the parks. It just sorta became a background hum.

That being said, I do find the minions themselves entertaining. Yes, it is generally very innocent, stupid, slapstick. That usually isn't my thing, but for some reason, the minions make me laugh. Not really a fan of the Despicable Me movies, except for the minions. After watching Despicable Me 2, my wife said that they should just do a movie on the Minions. Cue the extra scene in the DM2 credits which mentions about the minions movie.

I guess I filter out the ones on facebook, because they generally aren't funny.
posted by Badgermann at 7:17 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm Called Meme Because I am way too cool to be called Grandmother
posted by griphus at 7:18 AM on June 25, 2015

*"In the Arms of an Angel" plays in background*

Caption: "Every single hour in Wisconsin, someone gets a Minion Packers tattoo."


Sarah McLachlan: "Hi, I'm Sarah McLachlan- every day across the state of Wisconsin, and even in parts of Illinois and Michigan, Packers Fans are getting tattoos of Minions or other popular memes wearing cheese-head gear, and they are crying out for help. Please- call the number on your screen and join the WCHPA right now. For just eighteen dollars a month, only sixty cents a day, you'll help protect these troubled individuals from themselves; and provide laser treatments, life-skills training, and a sense of dignity. Call the Wisconsin Cheese-Head Protection Association now, or join online."
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:18 AM on June 25, 2015 [12 favorites]

"In closing, here is a cake shaped like a baby, and the cake-baby is wearing a Minion hat."

You know how Borges' Library of Babel contains every possible sentence? I'm pretty sure this isn't one of them.
posted by signal at 7:20 AM on June 25, 2015 [24 favorites]

Oh, come on people, if you're going to destroy the internet, do it right.

All Despicable Me fanfiction which include minions
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:21 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Good morning, Kozad! This is your god, The Internet. I see I have your full attention. Good. Let me introduce you to a new, well, meme, as some call it, having forgot the precise definition of meme and lazily using the term to refer to a new(ish) dumbed-down Hollywood cartoon character, brought to us by my cousin, Pixar. The character, given the moronic name "Minion," is an excuse for a very expensive new summer blockbuster for youngsters, a movie which traffics in the usual evanescent cultural chum strewn on the surface of your default collective consciousness.

I also see that you have never heard of Minions. Kozad, you are clearly failing at your job: keeping up with my endless gifts to you. Minions have thirty million likes on my Facebook, and yet this is the first you have heard of them?! Wake up! Look on my works, Kozad, and despair!
posted by kozad at 7:21 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

if your sole FB output is memes"inspirational" whatevs/what kind of gaseous being are you?

My theory is that there are three kinds of social media users:

-content creators
-reposters
-narcissists

Content creators post their own pictures, say original thoughts, etc, for the purpose of entertaining themselves and others.

Reposters do just that, they repost other people's content. This runs the gamut from inane memes to interesting articles.

Narcissists post pictures and status updates for the purpose of getting attention. Selfies, this is what I ate for breakfast, vaguebooking.

Most social media users are a pretty balanced combination of the three. Personally I'm probably more a split of CC/narcissist than a reposter.

In my experience, the subcategory of "people who annoy you on facebook" are people who fall strictly into one and only one type. People who ONLY share other people's stuff. Or people who ONLY post statuses complaining about other people. Or people who post interesting stuff but never interact with anyone else so it seems like they're using it as some bizarre performance art piece. Etc.

tl;dr Not gaseous beings, just 100% reposter sub-type.
posted by phunniemee at 7:22 AM on June 25, 2015 [15 favorites]

You could get pretty far if you wrote a script to pair minions with the output of some of those .txt Twitter acounts, in terms of wildly inappropriate image macros.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:23 AM on June 25, 2015

It should be a complaint about Obamacare.
With Confederate flag overalls, likely?

Ideally it should use a quote that turns out to be from Pol Pot or NAMBLA.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:29 AM on June 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I enjoyed Despicable Me 1, including the Minions. I thought DM2 was too minion-heavy and not enough actual fun.

I have no interest in the Minions movie and find the constant barrage of Minions on Facebook annoying (and those two items are probably related).

It's like if George Lucas had noticed after Ep. 4 that people liked R2, then made 3/4 of Ep. 5 about the exploits of R2, and replaced Ep 6. with "R2: The Movie".
posted by Foosnark at 7:30 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I often see Minion posts on Facebook, and I wonder about the phenomenon every time. Why is there a Minion there? Minions can't speak comprehensible English, so why are you implying that the Minion is expressing this concept, whatever it may be? Have you even seen the movies that Minions come from? Do Minions actually possess any connotative or denotative meaning for you at all?
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:34 AM on June 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

image macros

Thank you! They're not "memes" they're image macros!
posted by MikeMc at 7:34 AM on June 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

As a thought experiment, I just tried to imagine explaining Laughapalooza to a time-traveller from 1995, and now my recursive layers of irony and I need a strong drink.
posted by Zeinab Badawi's Twenty Hotels at 7:34 AM on June 25, 2015 [15 favorites]

brought to us by my cousin, Pixar

I was about to correct you and say Minions are Dreamworks characters, but apparently they're actually animated by Illumination Entertainment. Even my snarky correcting-people-on-the-internet powers are fading in the Minion onslaught.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:37 AM on June 25, 2015

I sort of want to make an outrageously inappropriate Minion meme and see how long it takes before it shows up on my FB feed with a "Lol so true"

It should be a complaint about Obamacare

Death Panel Minions! :D
posted by sexyrobot at 7:40 AM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've never seen these minion memes, but my nephew got this minion toy for Christmas, and let me tell you, the description does not do justice to how awesome that toy is.
posted by dirigibleman at 7:40 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a Tweety Bird glaring at a Minion - forever."

can sum1 plz post this with the 1eyed minin lookin tuff?????
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:45 AM on June 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

Wow, these are actually a thing in y'all's social media feeds? Mine is mostly someecards about women drinking too much wine, which I just kind of figured to be my generation's version of Cathy.
posted by 7segment at 7:50 AM on June 25, 2015 [21 favorites]

I see these posted on Facebook daily, by all different kinds of demographics, find them kind of irritating (as I do with most memes except Doge) and am looking forward to the day when we stop slapping the "middle-aged mom" descriptor onto anything that is bland/cheesy/hokey.
posted by triggerfinger at 7:52 AM on June 25, 2015 [10 favorites]

Facebook accepts forwarded Word docs as an input, right?
posted by Artw at 7:55 AM on June 25, 2015

I've not seen any Minion memes on my FB timeline. Perhaps it's an American thing (most of my FB friends are either British or expats).

I'm hoping, but will not check, that Rule 34 does not apply. Because I still have some love left for my fellow man.
posted by Devonian at 7:59 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a Tweety Bird glaring at a Minion - forever."

can sum1 plz post this with the 1eyed minin lookin tuff?????

I have a present for you.
posted by Metroid Baby at 8:02 AM on June 25, 2015 [16 favorites]

I've not seen any Minion memes on my FB timeline. Perhaps it's an American thing (most of my FB friends are either British or expats).

I dunno, I'm an American with probably a 95% American facebook friend presence and...I'm also Minion free. There must be some kind of center of a Venn Diagram you have to fall into to find yourself tormented by their presence.

And yeah, I didn't really like Despicable Me and I couldn't finish the sequel. [drops mic and walks away.]
posted by Atreides at 8:05 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think it will be pretty cool when language as we know it today is completely replaced by memes and emojis. Once we start formalizing things for consistency of reference it'll be like living on sigma tama iv.
posted by Poldo at 8:06 AM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think the minion memes have this kind of ubiquity that snuck up on these older generations. So many other memes are based around things "younger people" do. Good Guy Greg is smoking a joint. Bachelor frog is about being a College age shut-in. There are plenty of universal memes, but they circulate in an altogether different internet.

Of course, most mid-age memes are co-opting parts of their childhood culture, someone above did mention Calvin, and I've seen Charlie Brown memes. I guess that says something about the Minions.
posted by shenkerism at 8:09 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think it will be pretty cool when language as we know it today is completely replaced by memes and emojis. Once we start formalizing things for consistency of reference it'll be like living on sigma tama iv.

You might enjoy Chevrolet's recent press release...
posted by Atreides at 8:11 AM on June 25, 2015

Somewhere out there is a Ziggy cartoon that perfectly expresses how I feel about this
posted by prize bull octorok at 8:11 AM on June 25, 2015 [7 favorites]

The first time I saw The Minions, I thought "somebody took the stereotypical Dr. Frankenstein's Igor (or Young Frankenstein's Eyegore), made him cute and multiplied him. Genius for marketing. We will never see the end of this." And so far, I am pretty much right. But one of the most striking things about them is their yellow color, because my second thought was "pre-evolved Simpson/Springfieldians", which was also part of the Evil Genius of their creation. (So maybe a vision of the future would be a Minion glaring at Homer Simpson - forever)

But one of the most offputting things about the "Minions Memes" is the typography... not your usual All-Caps Impact, but a dual-case serif allowing much more wordiness and a less 'loud' effect (likely one big reason they are considered 'mom memes'). But the font chosen more often than any other is Albertus or more likely the 'free version', Village Font as used by the signage in Patrick McGoohan's 1960's dystopian The Prisoner* which just makes it all very creepy for me. (I'd think Minion Memes should use something like FF DIN which has similarly pill-shaped letters)

*and since adopted by signage in Real Life London, which is even creepier, and a whole other issue
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:12 AM on June 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Minions are a tad invasive now, but they's still the brainchildren of Pierre Coffin, who's been obsessed with small, yellow, big-eyed, giggling creatures since Pings, his first short made in 1997 (those proto-Minions later played tennis). Some of Coffin's commercials attained cult status in France in the early 2000s . Unfortunately his test for the scratchcard Morpion (crab louse) lottery game wasn't picked up (yes, the French National Lottery used to run a scratchcard game called Crab Louse).
posted by elgilito at 8:12 AM on June 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

One of the billions of questions about Minion memes is: why is there a Minion on this???? What does the Minion add?

In my experience of that general sort of "text statement with a picture of a person (or in this case a Minion)" stuff online, the image NEVER enhances the text. The combination is invariably completely random and pointless, and it bugs me more that it ought to.

I have no interest in the Minions movie

I agree about that and DM2; Minions are fun comic-relief minor characters, but they're not really leading characters that can convincingly carry a decent plot. But they're "cute", so they're "popular", which leads directly to massive over-merchandizing.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:19 AM on June 25, 2015

I was blissfully ignorant of Laughapalooza until this morning. Now that innocence has been lost and cannot be regained.

I get that some people have ideologies that I don't share, but for god's sake, at least learn to spell. My hateful grandparents probably love this stuff.
posted by chatongriffes at 8:23 AM on June 25, 2015

Though Minions do have butts, it is less clear whether or not they have sexual organs
Pierre Coffin is on record as saying that Minions have a tiny and yellow penis. However, it is necessary to press on the Minion to make it appear.
posted by elgilito at 8:24 AM on June 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

It's unfortunate that the minions are the ones who get the most attention since clearly Agnes is the most relatable character.
posted by phunniemee at 8:27 AM on June 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

However, it is necessary to press on the Minion to make it appear.

I could have lived the rest of my life without knowing that.
posted by Foosnark at 8:29 AM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's all so fluffy I'm gonna die.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:29 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've not seen any Minion memes on my FB timeline. Perhaps it's an American thing (most of my FB friends are either British or expats).

I'm British and they turn up on my timeline all the time (I just checked and one got posted literally one minute ago by a friend of my mother's, sigh).

The good news is that they're getting fewer, but the bad news is that they're getting replaced with oh-so-hilarious Aunty Acid pictures instead. "Marriage should be like a WORKSHOP, where the husband WORKS and the wife SHOPS!" Ha. Ha. Ha.
posted by Catseye at 8:50 AM on June 25, 2015

Somewhere, Tim Berners-Lee is weeping.
posted by Happy Dave at 8:53 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I enjoyed this article but didn't enjoy the highlighting of the brief "mom" part of this analysis. I am, technically, a middle aged mom, however I enjoy Nina Hagen, Jean-Luc Godard, and kinky homosexual sex. I have rioted against the WTO and taken boxing lessons, not to mention pushed a living human being out of my vagina and kept her alive for 6 months solely on food produced from my own breast ducts. You could call me the anti-minion. So yeah, fuck anything that IDs moms with bland tedium, but also, if moms are relegated to bland tedium, that's because society makes us waste our days in meaningless jobs, endless commutes, and never-ending house cleaning for our children, and denigrating the things that bring moms pleasure in light of social constraints is pretty weak.
posted by latkes at 8:55 AM on June 25, 2015 [29 favorites]

oh-so-hilarious Aunty Acid pictures

This is some sort of digital-native version of Maxine?
posted by almostmanda at 8:57 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Fear not latkes, I'm sure there's a minion meme for that sentiment too.
posted by dr_dank at 8:59 AM on June 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

I have a present for you.

DISLIKE
posted by poffin boffin at 9:16 AM on June 25, 2015

I have a present for you.

I put this on facebook and, fittingly, my grandma liked it.
posted by phunniemee at 9:32 AM on June 25, 2015 [9 favorites]

The article never explained how the mem supposedly "broke the internet".
This annoys me way more than daily random minions.
posted by Omnomnom at 9:39 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't get a lot of minions on my FB feed, but my older friends like to post a lot of Jimmy Fallon Tonight Show clips, so I guess he's a Minion in human form?
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 9:41 AM on June 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

escape from the potato planet: Much like "YOLO", which I've never heard used unironically.

I can testify that the kids I teach were using YOLO a few years back, both unironically and ironically as circumstances dictated. It was deeply weird when I started hearing it because I'm from Yolo County, California.

My favorite (ironic) YOLO moment came when a student was shading in part of a diagram with a dry-erase marker. Student's friend, heckling him: "You're going to use up all the ink." Student: "YOLO..."
posted by aws17576 at 9:43 AM on June 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

Here is Aunty Acid, a syndicated single-panel comic featured on gocomics.
(Abandon all hope, ye who click that link)
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:44 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

image macros

Thank you! They're not "memes" they're image macros!

They are pictures with text on them. An "image macro" would be a predefined image that's easily accessible to users of a web forum by entering some short text.

I might be the only person insufferable enough to hew to this particular prescriptivist point.
posted by cardioid at 9:48 AM on June 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

Must be odd to write one of these pieces and feel that nagging sense that you'd better damn well finish it and publish it quickly or the TERRIBLE THING WHICH IS KILLING THE INTERNET will be as dim a memory as "all your base are belong to us" or the dancing baby.
posted by yoink at 9:50 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

My FB friends post minions and old pin-up photos with snarky text ("CHASE YOU? HONEY, I DON'T EVEN CHASE MY LIQUOR" being the most recent.)

I'm thoroughly sick of both.
posted by Lucinda at 9:50 AM on June 25, 2015

The article never explained how the mem supposedly "broke the internet".

Apparently Facebook is the Internet.
posted by Ratio at 10:01 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was just at the grocery store with my granddaughter an hour ago, and she was pointing at the balloons. There was one I couldn't tell what it was... a squash??
Turns out if I had read this post when it was posted I would have known.
The 3-year-old I was with may have been saying 'Minion', but that would have meant nothing to me. Never heard of them before.

Everything is illuminated!!
posted by MtDewd at 10:04 AM on June 25, 2015

WHAT KIND OF MEME SHARER ARE YOU?

a) judgmental scorn memes softened with cute licensed cartoon characters
b) sassy pseudo-transgressive memes about how you enjoy alcohol and sexual intercourse
c) dank memes
d) not applicable, but I have a lot of feelings about the etymology and proper usage of "meme"

TAKE THIS QUIZ AND FIND OUT. CLICK HERE TO SHARE
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:06 AM on June 25, 2015 [12 favorites]

Minions stand for cheerful, busy chaos. They are toddlers. This is why small children love them.

My 4-year old came across a yellow fire hydrant yesterday and said "Tu le bella con la papaya!"
posted by Kabanos at 10:08 AM on June 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

I just popped in to express my profound horror and revulsion at the Laughapalooza link mikesch shared. God help me if any of my family finds that page.
posted by biddeford at 10:17 AM on June 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

"Screaming cornpops." Hahahahahaha! That's the best bit of the whole piece!

I've never seen any of the Despicable Me movies, and I only have one friend who is dying to see the Minion movie. She is over 30. At least she hasn't loused up my FB feed with that stuff.
posted by droplet at 10:17 AM on June 25, 2015

Eh, the movies are okay kids movies.
posted by Artw at 10:23 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I hadn't actually seen a minion meme in the wild until now either.

The author's argues that Moms are sharing memes that have nothing to do with minions, and that's wrong somehow. I'm not sure why it's wrong, but Moms have been sharing completely pointless memes since before there was such a thing.

"Hang in there!"
posted by Fleeno at 10:25 AM on June 25, 2015

The Laughapalooza thing is the best thing I've seen on Facebook in years.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:30 AM on June 25, 2015

Laughapalooza FPP just in case uh
posted by griphus at 10:31 AM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

WHAT KIND OF MEME SHARER ARE YOU?

a) judgmental scorn memes softened with cute licensed cartoon characters
b) sassy pseudo-transgressive memes about how you enjoy alcohol and sexual intercourse
c) dank memes
d) not applicable, but I have a lot of feelings about the etymology and proper usage of "meme"

Uh, D for "Duh"! Also, I should live in Rode Island, my Star Wars Character is Jar Jar Binks, I am the Classic Rock Band "Jar Jar Binks"(?!), I am the Classic Car 1963 Ford Falcon and my Spirit Animal is a Gungan(?!).
posted by MikeMc at 10:42 AM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

My only contact with Minion Memes is people notching about them. Obviously my filter bubble is in fine shape.

On a whim, I googled for "minion porn". The first image hit was this lovely picture of two minions tarted up in leather and studs, one chained up with a ball gag in her* mouth, one with a flogger in his hands. It appeared to be professionally made; this may be an official image from whichever corporate entity owns them.

The Minios, truly, are intended to be all things to all people.

* she was wearing a studded bikini top and a black-and-pink bow on her leather hood; I am pretty sure that whatever the situation via-a-vis the genital and gender arrangements of actual Minions, this one was performing a female role at the moment.
posted by egypturnash at 10:48 AM on June 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I take it back!! I LOVE YOU LAUGHAPALOOZA
posted by biddeford at 10:49 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Am I the only one who found that article to be completely incoherent?

Pop culture is popular?

I thought the article was written like one side of a drug-addled conversation, probably pot and cocaine, but as those might affect someone who's incurably dull: obsessively, overly detailed blathering about something far too trivial to care about, yet also somehow consistently lacking context, perspective or any real thought.
posted by clockzero at 10:52 AM on June 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I was blissfully ignorant of Laughapalooza until this morning. Now that innocence has been lost and cannot be regained.


Just as a side note, Laughapalooza is an ironic page (and a great one at that). Yes, it took me a while to recognize that too, because Poes Law.

Also Laughapalooza is the one exception to the "don't read the comments" rule; Laughapalooza comments tend to be as funny as the posts themselves.
posted by Itaxpica at 11:02 AM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I enjoy lurking at r/forwardsfromgrandma (no racism or sexism to speak of in that neighborhood at reddit). That's how I found out about these. I actually, unironically enjoy the Minions. Physical comedy, cuteness, a pan-European babble -- it's pretty lovable. Once I was behind a bubbly little girl on a sidewalk who said, "I just want, like, my own Minion!"

Although I too wish I had no knowledge of the Minions' penis situation, I am not surprised that Coffin addressed the issue. He's French. They don't get the horrors as easy as we do.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:18 AM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

so I found a Minion "meme generator"
posted by exogenous at 11:38 AM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

cool
posted by griphus at 12:31 PM on June 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

Minions are cool and I am excited to share a picture of the arclight dome in Hollywood this weekend since there are currently giant minions on top of it.
posted by dogwalker at 12:38 PM on June 25, 2015

prize bull octorok: WHAT KIND OF MEME SHARER ARE YOU?

a) judgmental scorn memes softened with cute licensed cartoon characters
b) sassy pseudo-transgressive memes about how you enjoy alcohol and sexual intercourse
c) dank memes
d) not applicable, but I have a lot of feelings about the etymology and proper usage of "meme"

TAKE THIS QUIZ AND FIND OUT. CLICK HERE TO SHARE

You expect me to choose "C", right?
posted by dr_dank at 12:52 PM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Am I the only one who found that article to be completely incoherent?

Welcome to the Advertising Industrial Complex. You are experiencing an Advertising Blitz due to an incoming Pop Culture Event.
posted by Celsius1414 at 1:00 PM on June 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

The thing that I can't get over is how often terrible memes have the "Instagram haze" on them. Meaning they've been shared a lot in whatever weird way Instagram users share things that degrades the picture. Like a photocopy of a photocopy. I thought I had read an article about the haze, but I can't find it now, of course.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:08 PM on June 25, 2015

I would bet good money there's a meme/macro/whatever out there of a minion defending the Confederate Flag. Which really is despicable, come to think of it.
posted by DrAmerica at 1:12 PM on June 25, 2015

So what have we learned from all this? Nothing? Probably nothing.
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:56 PM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

ob1quixote: The Triumphant Rise of the Shitpic
posted by mayhap at 2:06 PM on June 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

The thing that I can't get over is how often terrible memes have the "Instagram haze" on them. Meaning they've been shared a lot in whatever weird way Instagram users share things that degrades the picture. Like a photocopy of a photocopy. I thought I had read an article about the haze, but I can't find it now, of course.

this might interest you.
posted by emptythought at 2:56 PM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also anyone who thinks the minions with two eyes don't look like creepy twinkies well... i don't even know what to say to you, you're an alien.
posted by emptythought at 2:56 PM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I tried to follow these to their source once, and I ended up at a Minion site run by a Phillipino college student.

In general the memes strike me as passive aggressive. The picture is all cute and funny, but the text is like "PEOPLE WHO LOVE THERE MOMS ARE THE BEST. I LOVE MY MOM IN HEAVEN IF YOU DON'T LOVE YOU'RE MOM I FEEL SORRY FOR YOU. REPOST FOR YOUR MOM."

Uh, ok?
posted by Biblio at 3:33 PM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

23 Times Minions Perfectly Captured Your Life
posted by kirkaracha at 3:57 PM on June 25, 2015

Quiz: Antonin Scalia or Minions Meme?
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 4:44 PM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Synthesizing what we've learned from this thread:

"Middle-aged" actually means "30 years older than me". And "mom" means "person who has children who is old enough to be my mother". So when a teenager talks about "middle-aged moms" he's talking about women in their 40s with kids. When a guy at the Awl, likely in his early 30s, talks about "middle-aged moms", he's talking about women in their 60s with kids and grandkids.

In another 30 years we'll be reading articles about "middle-aged moms" in nursing homes Facebooking their great-grandchildren.
posted by Bugbread at 4:50 PM on June 25, 2015 [10 favorites]

Quiz: Antonin Scalia or Minions Meme?

I somehow managed to get every one of those wrong. I need to spend more time on my mom's facebook page.
posted by MikeMc at 7:57 PM on June 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

All I can say is that I totally and unironically love the Minions and want to be one when I grow up.

And I will be there on opening night in a couple weeks stoned out of my gourd and giggling.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:16 PM on June 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've been bombarded with the awful pics on Facebook and am as mystified/annoyed as the rest of you.

However.

This is a dachshund in a Minion costume with Minion sound effects and it's pretty funny.
posted by harriet vane at 4:31 AM on June 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

I procrastinated about FPP-ing this at the time but it seems somewhat relevant here: The rise of the hashgag, which touches on the Minions midway through:

The Minions themselves are basically the epitome of hashgag. They are cute nonsensical character designs that make zero sense, bolted onto the rest of the movie in ridiculous vignettes. These vignettes can be mass-produced across the globe without concern for continuity or artistry. To me, they reek of the cynical influence of marketing. They are far more popular than any other character in the movie (can you name any of Gru’s daughters? the villain? his wife?), to the point where they are the primary focus of the advertising and merchandising.

posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:33 AM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

Agnes, Edith, Margot. Lucy Wild. El Macho.

The minions are just funnier than every character is all
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:50 PM on June 28, 2015

We had a deal, Kyle: "can you name any of Gru’s daughters? the villain? his wife?"

Wife: No idea. Daughters: Margot, and then two more, about whom I have no idea. I'm horrible at names, so that's no surprise.
But c'mon, he's arguing that people can't name EL MACHO?! (Not yelling, it's just that EL MACHO is not a name you can say quietly). Or Vector? Or (not quite a villain) Dr. Nefario? Despicable Me's names don't stand out any more or any less than those of the other movies I've seen an equal number of times due to having children. The original Jurassic Park (zero hashgags), featuring unnamed scientists, an unnamed UNIX hacker, and an unnamed boy. Or the Incredibles (apparently pre-hashgags), none of whom have names, versus Syndrome.

I really don't get what that guy is upset about. "People are putting jokes into movies, and that's bad, because...people in other countries also enjoy them? ...it can be done when studios aren't confident about their products? ...putting a joke into a movie causes people to forget about Ghibli? (I mean, for christ's sake, what does he think the Kodama from Mononoke-Hime are if not cute characters that are put in expressly for their marketability?)
posted by Bugbread at 7:18 PM on June 28, 2015

I procrastinated about FPP-ing this at the time but it seems somewhat relevant here: The rise of the hashgag, which touches on the Minions midway through

This is a fantastic article, despite being kind of a hatey opinion piece. I hadn't really connected the dots on this becoming a stylistic must-have item for a movie like this to get made now, and didn't realize that it was something making a resurgence of what i just... didn't like once i wasn't in the single-digit age range about old cartoons.

What a garbage trend.
posted by emptythought at 8:14 PM on June 28, 2015

guys
guys guys
i found
the WORST minion meme
are you ready
are you

here it is

-- Josh Fruhlinger
posted by Countess Elena at 8:18 PM on June 28, 2015 [9 favorites]

DO NOT CLICK
posted by Artw at 12:09 PM on July 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

God Tier: Facebook moms run the meme game is a much more thoughtful discussion of the subject.
posted by schmod at 1:25 PM on July 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

God Tier: Facebook moms run the meme game is a much more thoughtful discussion of the subject.

So we see a trend: Post-memes seem targeted at parents, Christians, and conservatives. Again, this is just the core audience. But many expressions are unexplored in post-memes. A Minion — or Garfield or Tweety or Snoopy — never means “I’m cooler than you.” It never supports the young against the old. It never seeks to upset the status quo. It is never sexual. And it is never truly weird.

Until it is.

That was a good read. Thanks, schmod.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:31 PM on July 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I liked that -- you could even do an FPP --
posted by Countess Elena at 5:58 PM on July 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

schmod: “God Tier: Facebook moms run the meme game is a much more thoughtful discussion of the subject.”

Seeing one of the illustrations in that article with a bunch of them together made me realize that the "mom memes" share a design aesthetic with the kinds of "funny" t-shirts one would find on the boardwalk on the Jersey shore or in the kinds of catalogs that my Mom used to get. That put it in perspective for me.
posted by ob1quixote at 6:56 PM on July 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Which, if I had read past the illustration that inspired the comment before posting, I would have seen the author drew the same conclusion and I wouldn't feel like such an idiot right now.

Mondays, am I right? It's Wednesday? Hump Daaaaaaay!
posted by ob1quixote at 7:17 PM on July 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

I should add that the "God Tier" article did pull the one insightful quote out of the earlier article:

But Minions are not tied to any central emotion. They occupy an odd middle ground as a specific piece of intellectual property unbound from a specific feeling or worldview. Minions are sarcastic, honest, smarmy, snarky, playful, mean, and downright sour depending on the need… Minions are basically emoji.

It's a shame that the earlier article never managed to properly expand on this point, because I think that it's fascinating to discuss how we use pop culture as a proxy for our personalities. Minions seem to be a superficially-harmless, lowest-common-denominator that is causing these memes to manifest in really weird ways.
posted by schmod at 8:55 AM on July 9, 2015