Memes and neo-feudalism

You’ve probably heard of the “Hawk Tuah” girl—it’s broken through the noise of stupid digital media in a way that hasn’t happened in a while; and a way that was more common in the earlier days of viral internet videos. Think of that “I Like Turtles” kid, or dozens of other funny videos from the early 2010s—it’s sort of like that, but in the context of 2024’s “content creator” digital ecosystem, where people have to become influencers to capitalize on their viral success before it evaporates, and blah blah blah. But what’s actually interesting (well, sort of) about this is this weird effort that’s being made to make it seem like this short video interview of some random woman saying something stupid is somehow a major thing; as if there’s some kind of texture, substance, and almost self-contained world beyond just a random woman saying a dumb thing on a weird interview on the street. Where does this need come from, for millions of people to fill something so thin and meaningless in with so much extra substance and texture that doesn’t belong there? Why do people feel the need to add so much context to something that doesn’t deserve any context?

It seems to me that this is the peasant/beggar/serf/vassal psychodynamic that everyone lives with now—everyone is poor now (except a tiny elite); and people have nothing, so they have to make do; and when these stupid memes come along, they make do with it, make it seem like more than it is; it seems like this is part of the neo-feudalistic world we are descending into; serfs and vassals would have to come up with grand stories and tales to make their lives, their world, seem more interesting than it was.