You in all probability clicked this text to seek out out why I hate Moo Deng, the precise hippo. So to get this out of the way in which, no, I am not deranged sufficient to hate an animal. However I do hate Moo Deng the viral phenomenon. Should you do too, and also you’re unsure why, you’ve got come to the suitable place. You might be legitimate and you aren’t alone.
To grasp why this phenomenon prompts the buzzkill instincts of these of us within the hater group (or simply the hate-curious), we have now to briefly dissect the narrative that introduced Moo Deng, involuntarily, to our consideration. Lengthy story brief: Not everybody finds Moo Deng all that cute, however as a result of she’s a meme — and memes get seen by everybody — she’s overexposed.
Moo Deng exploded onto the web throughout the first two weeks of September, attaining Class 5 mega-virality, and worsening a few of us within the course of. However this was solely after a extra reasonable on-line fanbase was cultivated for her in early August by an astonishingly profitable naming contest placed on by the Thai zoo the place Moo Deng lives in an enclosure for the amusement of paying clients. (Pygmy hippos come from Liberia and elsewhere in western Africa, not Thailand.)
A lot of the fandom’s success appears to stem from a poster with the deal with @sighyam, an X person and rabid Moo Deng stan who apparently is aware of Thai and English, and helped carry Moo Deng to the Anglosphere when she was nonetheless only a anonymous child animal in a zoo.
If Moo Deng would not do it for you, or you’ve a basic perspective of “most cute stuff is not for me but go with God if it works for you,” none of this actually penetrated your social media timelines. That is good! Everybody was fortunately consuming the content material they loved.
One thing shifted, nevertheless, when two pictures of Moo Deng broke containment and Moo Deng legitimately grew to become a meme. Principally, it was the second of those two pictures:
The meme students at KnowYourMeme attribute Moo Deng’s success to this second photograph, saying in a single explainer video:
Images and movies of Moo immediately went viral, specifically this actually cute picture the place she’s being sprayed with a water hose whereas trying mortified. That is proper, the rationale this hippo is so viral is she appears visually perturbed, like she actually would not need to be sprayed with that beam of water.
As everybody is aware of, huge volumes of cutesy-poo stuff circulates endlessly on-line in a benign approach that does not actually benefit criticism. Fortunately, all this content material is corralled within the sections of social media the place folks take pleasure in it. A few of us largely prefer to scowl and rub our chins after we scroll, and the algorithms appear to largely perceive this, and never trouble us with issues like child animals. Within the occasion {that a} cute animal materializes that we do like, the algorithms will clue into our “revealed desire” and regulate accordingly.
Mashable High Tales
Actually meme-able pictures, then again, function in a different way. They mild up a distinct a part of the mind than cute pictures, and that is what occurred right here.
Moo Deng wasn’t simply cute. She was additionally intriguing.
Why have been folks meme-ing Moo Deng? Extra to the purpose, why have been they making her into artwork?
My very own guess is that the reply is rooted within the pseudoscientific idea of “unconscious priming,” or responding to some stimulus in a approach that’s “primed” by a earlier stimulus, with out the particular person being cognizant of the connection.
What connection do I imply? Regardless that you are not aware of it, Moo Deng appears weirdly like “Chubby Bubbles Girl,” an historical meme, in all probability from earlier than you, the particular person studying this, have been born.
Should you have been fortunately unaware of Moo Deng, after which the hose photograph crept into your life, I think it unconsciously tapped into your reminiscences of Chubby Bubbles Lady and her many meme adventures, including a layer of fascination to what was in any other case only a wide-eyed, moist hippopotamus. That is to not say a hippo really appears like a bit lady, however the leaning away, the stark white of the only vast eye, the splash of yellow within the Moo Deng photograph, and the movement blur all render the 2 images an identical pair, even when their topics should not.
Credit score: Meme picture posted for comparability
Credit score: Meme picture posted for comparability
Should you briefly raised an eyebrow at this picture, after which went on along with your day with out becoming a member of the Moo Deng cult, Chubby Bubbles Lady might have been the rationale. And even for those who suppose I am mistaken about this half, you should still be asking your self “why are we still somehow talking about this?” Memes have a mysterious type of cultural inertia.
The meme stage is the place the Moo Deng phenomenon went extremely proper from the attitude of Khao Kheow Open Zoo, and extremely mistaken from the attitude of people who find themselves resistant to Moo Deng’s particular model of cuteness. Moo Deng was all of a sudden a strong tempest of content material, and people of us who regard her the way in which Ben Wyatt on Parks and Recreation regards Li’l Sebastian all of a sudden needed to cope with the existence of, as an illustration, a Moo Deng SNL sketch.
Some haters have tried to morally high-road the Moo Deng phenomenon and argue that Khao Kheow Open Zoo is an exceptionally merciless zoo. That concept will not be at present supported by the information. Assuming you’ve a baseline tolerance for the animal prisons we name “zoos,” this one is neither right here nor there. Should you care about animal welfare, Moo Deng might be not the place it’s best to direct your power.
The reality is that Moo Deng is perceived by many to be a really cute animal, which is okay. The web has loads of opt-outs for cute animal content material. However because of an annoying accident of web psychology, Moo Deng has change into a meme, and there is no opt-out for memes.
That sucks, however it’ll move.
