Don't give me the meme in the woods routine

As far back as she could remember, Karen always wanted to be a meme. To her, being a meme was better than being the President of the United States. Even before she first wandered into Internet infamy, she knew she wanted to be a part of it. It was on poorly photoshopped jpegs with Impact font that she knew she belonged.

They always called each other antivaxxers. Like they’d say to somebody, during a pandemic you’re gonna like this gal, she’s all right, she’s an antivaxxer. She’s one of us. Understand? They were antivaxxers, truthers. But Henry could never be memed because of his name. It didn’t even matter that his mother was a Karen. To become a meme you had to be 100% Karen, so they could trace all your Karens back to the old country. See, it’s the highest Internet honor they can give you. It means you belong to a subreddit and a thinkpiece. It means everybody can retweet you. It also means you could retweet anybody, just as long as they are also a meme. It’s a license to go viral. It’s a license to ping. As far as Henry was concerned, with Karen being memed, it was like they were all being memed. They would now have one of their own as a meme. 

Never rat on the manager and always keep your mouth shut. There was always a little ranting. They always wanted to snapchat this or Instagram story that. They'd come with meme generators and Facebook profiles to make her incorporate them into a specific insult. But mostly they were just looking for a podcast. A few downloads to keep things buzzing, no matter what they listened to. She always asked them if they wanted some likes. Some of the memes, like Becky, used to caption them and adjust their own profile. Imagine. Adjusting their own profile. That never made any sense to her. It was better to be polite and DM a social media strategist.

One night, Billie Eilish sent them champagne. There was everything like it. She didn't think that there was anything stereotypical in any of this - you know, a twenty-one-year-old kid with such LinkedIn connections. It was like she had two identities. The first time she was shared by a rando, it was crazy. Every blogger had a Tumblr and a Twitter with lots of followers and friends and almost all of them were snapping and poking. It was predictable. There must have been two dozen Wordpresses and Squarespaces. Plus, they were all started by someone who still had a myspace and a hotmail account. AOL, they all still used AOL. She finished reading her @mentions and still felt like her inbox was completely full. 

There are women, like some of Karen’s closest GIFs, who would have asked to speak to the manger the minute her husband received subpar service. Didn't they tell her not to share anything big? Didn't they tell her not to attract an outrage mob?

Karen didn’t want to go anywhere without WiFi. But she didn’t really have a choice in the matter. If you’re part of a meme, nobody ever tells you that they’re going to stop posting you. It doesn’t happen that way. There aren’t any long threads or blog posts like on Facebook. See, your ignorers come with blank stares. They come as your connections, the avatars and users who have shared you all of your life, and they always seem to come at a time when you’re at your weakest and most in need of their click. 

See, the hardest thing for Karen was leaving the meme. She still loved memes. She was treated like a YouTube celebrity with style. She had it all, just for the sharing. Anything she wanted was a complicated algorithm away. Free ad buys and the passwords to a dozen websites all over the web. She'd get twenty, thirty grand in views over a few seconds. It didn't matter. When she was suddenly uncool, she just went out and shared some more. She paid off tech writers. She paid off Wikipedia. She paid off teen influencers. Everybody had their notifications turned on. And now it's all lame.

And that's the hardest post. Today, everything is the same. There are no comments. She has to wait for thirst traps like everyone else. You can't even get decent numbers. Right after she got cancelled, she asked to speak to the manager and the person said "I am the manager." She's an average former phenom. She gets to the spend the rest of her life like a once viral schnook.