What’s Hot?
This week, Kim Kardashian gave us déjà vu, we enjoyed fake news, and we found a Twitter account that offers quality content every hour.
Find all this, and our vote on Word of the Year, in this week’s blog.
Oh, and we also refuse to join Lucie Donlan’s book club…
The memes you need to see: Kim K turns 40
Occasionally when we write this blog, we think “huh, this seems familiar” and head back into the archives to find when we’ve last discussed a topic. This week, when we saw Kim Kardashian post about a private island and her inner circle, we were reminded of two previous blogs – one last week, and one the week before.
Last week, we told you to not be a snob and celebrate Kim K’s birthday. This week, we’re backtracking. Look, we’re fickle, okay? Kim took the p*** when she posted about feeling humbled and blessed. When we saw her 40th birthday party, we certainly felt humble, but the opposite of blessed.
It reminded us of our post from two weeks ago, when we were disappointed with Mollie Mae Hague for forgetting her privilege and alienating her fans. Don’t get us wrong – we’re not saying that Kim’s brand is the same as Molly Mae’s. Molly Mae has more of an attainable, PrettyLittleThing vibe. Kim is more diamond rings and Balmain.
But still. Kim should know her audience and know the uproar she would cause. Of course, Kim’s always going to come back – she’s Kim Kardashian. Let out your anger by checking out the flurry of memes that came out after – we particularly enjoyed these from The Sims and JurassicPark2Go.
The update you need: Woolworth’s was fake news…
Fake news feels like quite a heavy accusation for this, but it’s technically true. This week, a 17-year-old sixth former created a fake Woolworth’s account and duped the world into believing the chain was re-opening. Dozens of news sites shared the news based on one tweet from an account with under 1,000 followers.
You can’t help but laugh, can you? It’s not often that we enjoy fake news, but this is barely that – it’s just a prank with legs than ran and ran. Imagine how much they were laughing in the back of AS-Level Business Studies while the Daily Mirror ran the story.
The one you need to know: Who’s cancelled?
Each year, a “word of the year” dominates headlines for a day – for example, Oxford Language’s 2019 word was client emergency and 2018 was toxic. We’ve also seen selfie, post-truth, credit crunch and unfriend. There’s no doubt that 2020’s will be something pandemic-related – perhaps a simple ‘lockdown’? An unoriginal ‘coronavirus’? Or a slightly more niche ‘Zoom bomb’?
Had it not been for the pandemic, it feels likely that the word of the year, like so many years before, would be social media related – and probably ‘cancel culture’. We won’t go into depth on this – but this week we heard that cancel culture has spread beyond cancelling just people: Netflix has announced that subscription cancelations increased by 800% after audiences called to boycott the platform, following the release of hyper-sexualised film Cuties.
The account you need to follow: @PossumEveryHour
Does what it says on the tin. This account posts a picture of a possum, every hour. First launched in 2018, it recently “got out of hand” (according to the creator), and now has 269k Twitter followers. That’s the same as Cold War Steve, James Jordan, and Simon Rimmer. What a crowd!
The post you need to see: Lucie Donlan’s book club
You wouldn’t really associate Lucie Donlan’s Instagram with books. It’s mainly surf shots, bikini pics, Luke M, and paid trips to Thorpe Park. We actually went back through three years of Lucie’s content (didn’t hurt our self-esteem. Not one bit. We were cool cool cool cool) and found one other book, about surfing obvs. It just sort of appeared in the background, without being referenced or recommended by Lucie.
So, it was kind of surprising when Lucie’s latest post featured a book. Even more surprising when you realised it was Piers Morgan’s book, which was #gifted. In her caption, Lucie calls Piers a marmite character and states “fortunately I love marmite!” – ironic, considering the things that Piers has had to say about Love Island contestants in the past.
Her fans appear to be more on the “hate it” marmite scale, with 263 mostly negative comments, some of which have over 450 likes, pointing out the irony of it all. Might be best to stick to surfing, Lucie.
