how plastic water and mulch memes reflect our toxic reality
sooo yummy soooo deep
We're not even a month into 2024, and scientists are already telling us we're doomed. A new study says plastic water bottles have up to 100 times more microplastics than we previously thought. Some scientists are even swearing off these beverage vessels from their lives altogether. While the health implications are unclear, it is still another reminder of the manmade horrors we've gotten ourselves into!
And with that news, it's now more important than ever to understand a new genre of internet meme that is weird as hell and addicting. Say hiiii to "Mulch Memes", a format that seemed to have started towards the back half of 2023.
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The memes have a surreal style that features light pink glowing filters and glittery heart graphics on videos of toy dog poodles (another manmade horror, no matter how much I want one.) They're topped off with a high pitched baby AI voice chanting about how, presumably, the dog wants to eat mulch and how good mulch is.
They're super random and users always comment to ask what they mean. Followers of this genre usually reply and or comment with "sisters of the loam" or "mulch gang" without providing any other information. Tbh, the pointlessness is the point. It’s not supposed to make sense.
Ok, now that you have the "Mulch Meme" context, we have to move on to its malignant evolution into "Microplastic Cat" memes. (Note: Before this clear cut diversion, an artistic transition period occurred within “Mulch Memes,” where we saw more unhinged remarks and editing techniques, including demonic slowing down of the voiceovers, claiming they’d die without mulch, and the consumption of microplastics. This then led us to the new era of “Microplastic Cat.”)
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The same whimsical visual and auditory elements used in "Mulch Memes" are used here to represent the overpowering presence of microplastics in our daily lives. Instead of a dog wanting mulch, it's a cat, and the AI voiceover talks about how delicious microplastics are.
This meme transformation shows us our desensitization to the consequences of our species' actions, which manifest before our eyes and bodies.
Many people call this content "brain rotting." However, I like to compare these memes to the Impressionists, who created rebellious work against their time's aesthetic expectations.
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The Impressionists were misunderstood and labeled as amateur. Their work juxtaposed nature alongside the developments of the Industrial Revolution, similar to how mulch and microplastic memes combine living beings (domesticated animals) with the theme of an unnatural world.
The Impressionists took advantage of the technological advancements of their time, such as the development of paint tubes and portable easels to create art outside. Today, meme creators are taking advantage of the rise of new digital advancements like CapCut and its templates to make these cursed videos. In both eras, the creators use innovative creation tools to contextually depict the horrors that accompany modern conveniences. So before anyone judges a meme by its surface, I invite you to think of its context, time, and the craft method that brought it to life.
OK! That was a lot of chronically online info to digest in a single sitting. But before I sign off, I leave you with this parting question...
While we live in a time where our exponentially evolving relationship with manufactured materials literally melts ourselves and the earth, will you still reach for that plastic water bottle? Or has the reality seen in the absurdity of "Mulch Memes" and "Microplastic Cat" changed your mind?
I probably will still use plastic water bottles because I am a Fiji water stan. But to comfort myself as I take a sip from my plastic bottle right now, I have conjured a conspiracy... I'd like to think that the recent study mentioned at the start of this piece and birth of the "Microplastic Cat" has been orchestrated by Stanley Cup, capitalizing on our fear of living on a contaminated planet, all to drive the masses away from bottles and towards their cult favorite tumblers.
Oh! BTW, If you’re in the camp of finding these two meme genres dumb (that’s totally fine!) and want a more high brow way of understanding their sentiment, you can just throw on David Cronenberg’s 2022 film “Crimes of the Future.”