Post 7 (16 July 2024): The Age of Ex-Memes, 2005-2014-ish

JabGPT

Pardon the lateness. Got sidetracked by a ton of things—watch this space for some AI screenwriting coverage. Also, I might have ADHD, I don’t know. I want to announce that I’m going to try to make these posts more frequent, though certainly not regular, nor well-structured. Onwards.

17 months ago, a streamer I was watching poked fun at viewers who were blabbering about deepfake films of a prurient nature. He trotted out this video as a way of mocking the idea of deepfakes, with the intended humor coming from the video’s cruder character forms:

It’s a funny comparison. (You can look at the VOD here below:)

Observe that many in his chat were not just jokingly refusing the streamer’s admonitions to stop looking at JibJab, or complaining that it was just listing things that happened without being mordant or intelligent about them, but during the course of the song, they were coming to realizations that some of the worst parts of 2005 paralleled some of 2023, and that the years in between didn’t feel better for them. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

While he continued to play his game, my attention span being shot, I latched onto this marvel of animation, rhyme and satire, a weird nugget from my childhood years that I somehow missed out on. I’d been on a nostalgia bender for quite some time, and this was as good an object of intrigue as any.

And then, when I was recommended the 2006 year in review video, I seized upon it. I binged the whole series, coming away from it very impressed overall at first, but upon reflection I found it getting shallower and shallower, due to 1) not really having anything pointed or novel or insightful to say about each event covered, and 2) finding its choice of events increasingly popular culture-oriented. (The technical term for it is “trashy”.)

I went through it again for this post, wondering if it would still leave me the impression of high-mindedly serving as a trek through American history at the time, which was an interesting contrast with the above. Bridging these ideas was a sociological/historical fact: it captured the vibes of the supermarket magazines of the era, the stuff that filled the Inside Edition episodes six-year-old me ate up.

I humbly offer this collection of capsule reviews, in chronological order, as a questionable insight for future historians picking through America’s digital ruins, into what our shallowest people cared about.

“The last thing I need now is the avian flu”

The first video (already embedded above), from 2005, is a bit different from the rest. Unlike them, it is from the point of view of one character, namely, the 43rd President of the United States during a presser, and it lightly touches on a few things that have bubbled up in relevance recently. I say “lightly” because as noted previously, it doesn’t make points about them, simply trying to invoke our pity for the Good Ol’ Boy who definitely is nothing more than just the happy-go-lucky owner of the Texas Rangers, no siree!

Form-wise, it’s the best of the review videos, mostly due to its folksy, rip-roaring banjo and fiddle instrumental, and its mashup of “Turkey in the Straw” and “Auld Lang Syne” is seamless. It’s breezy and stomping at the same time. And yet, it manages to get me noticing some unnerving parallels to today, from the avian flu outbreak and the decline in American manufacturing, to the concerns over ethics in the Supreme Court and the Category 5 hurricanes devastating the Gulf Coast, to the dysfunctional housing market and Boeing spacecraft, to the lack of sane fuel prices in light of record oil and gas profits, and to global poverty…

It’s not entirely realistic as to the public expectations of a president versus his actual job (to be more of a cheerleader for the economy, for example). But it’s efficient, if not insightful, in getting across the awesome responsibilities of the presidency, and moreover, summarizing the (in hindsight) not-so-wackiness of 2005 for as broad an Internet audience as it could aim for.

“Armageddon won’t be long”

One can sense the datedness increasing hugely with this video, as there are proper nouns-a-plenty. Many of the names mentioned, to put it bluntly, just aren’t as relevant anymore. There’s a glance at Brangelina but that’s the only Hollywood celeb reference I can remember. There are a brief setup for Israel-Lebanon tensions and mention of Google’s monopolistic behavior that are relevant to today’s news, but that’s about it. As for the vocals, it’s a bit grating using a kids’ recital of “Jingle Bells” as the premise, though I can see they were going for a juxtaposition with the unnerving subject matter. The video is not endearing, to say the least.

“Good among the bad”

Three things stuck out at me in this video: first, it’s aping the ultimate “corny list of historical events” song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel, in a way that evokes the phrase “full circle”. Second, it’s more noticeably invested in trashy gossip magazine topics, and I anticipate it won’t get better about this. Third, it’s also invested in the “good things” from 2007. Even if it’s a little misguided and shallow on a few of them such as who “invented iPhone” (side note: I’m typing this on an iPhone), the video is ultimately appreciated for this. But it doesn’t pull it off with class.

“What the hell happened?” “Humanity”

What to make of the 2008 video? Its graphics style has changed to be…stylized, and it’s taken pages from comic books flat-out. Its premise is certainly a better one than previous—the idea of Babies New Year comparing their troubles is fairly novel. The other two things that get it going are the tune, “Miss Susie”, which I bet most of my generation doesn’t know and which makes the video jauntier compared to the more hurried previous two, and the greater weight it gives to the hard news side, from the presidential election and the economy to Putin and brutal hurricanes. This was probably the best one since the 2005 video.

“For what? Nobody was really quite sure”

This one’s set to “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin, which kept it well-paced, but not as much as 2008. It’s fine. The conceit here was that the year was quite unique and novel compared to the rest of history (well, duh), and it’s a serviceable one. There isn’t much coverage of the reactionary forces sweeping the country that resulted in the Tea Party, nor the forces that led to the Occupy movement, though, which was a sore spot for me. I notice its mood has perked up, and it ends on a less dour note. There was a bit more focus on popular culture and gossip, which dismayed me a little. For the first time, there was an in memoriam section, which is a double-edged sword—it’s meaningful for those who want one, but it drags down the pacing with which events are introduced. But, as JibJab’s writers acknowledge, they can’t fit more events into a song this short. One other thing I noticed was that the video featured more physical artifacts in live action rather than graphics, which is a twist enabled by the onset of HD cameras. It felt a little contrived, but I didn’t mind it a lot.

“Just give me a damn cigarette”

Oh, great, a puppet one.

It’s severed its ties to the previous five videos’ visual style, which is disappointing. The music sounds less identifiable. The video reeks of proto-Corporate Memphis, and the caricatures are steered towards the Gerald Scarfe end, but in a way that doesn’t live up to the grotesque uncanny valley bite of Spitting Image. It’s trying to tread a line between cutesy and creepy and failing at both. At base, this video is conceptually a return to 2005, with a president lamenting the issues of the year, from the poor economy to the troubleshooting in Iraq, to his party’s lackluster performance in Congress. Not much coverage of extreme weather this time. I also forget what exactly happened with JetBlue in real life. And I don’t recognize the tune, even if Obama’s impersonator does carry it. Overall, it’s not as trashy as ‘07 given one can spot the many disappointments with Obama progressives have today cropping up, but it’s more grating, I think because they gave Biden a Harvey Fierstein-esque voice that was still too lively to be accurate or comforting enough.

“Loose lions and tigers and bears!” “Oh my!”

This one’s quite nice. It tries to get back to the original visual style but it’s not reaching that high of 2005. Its tune, “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean” made it too frenetic, but the video overall did well with its folk instruments and somewhat cleverer lyricism, even if it dabbled more in trashy celebrity gossip again. The in memoriam section was paced well too, but now this video had an uncertain premise, with the vocalists now singing the song at you, and yet without direction.

“Apocalypse is trending”

Inevitably, JibJab used the Mayan calendar prediction as a setup here, and in hindsight it’s obvious they could have done more research on what Maya people looked like than their stereotypes suggest. Their visual style, however, felt like a natural evolution of the 2005 style, except for the more cartoonish chalk pastels. Aside from that, it felt like there were more shallow stuff crammed in there, and just more events overall. The Neil Armstrong quote was a nice touch. The tune, however, is unidentifiable. Overall, it’s on par with 2008’s video.

“They filled us all with dread and fear”

What a year. Still had a good framing device, a Broadway musical this time. The visual style was the same as before. Big whoop. Couldn’t make out the tune’s origin, but it was still too frenzied even with the poorly paced in memoriam section. They acknowledged there was too much to cover, too. At least they had plenty more Easter eggs this time.

“Crazy as could be”

This one’s easily the shortest of the series, I think. The tune was “Ode to Joy”, but it went by too fast. JibJab’s writers also had the conceit of it taking place in an art gallery for some reason, though the character design definitely improved. It had more coverage of Internet memes and controversies. It went far into the shallows of pop culture, though. The only takeaway is that it sucked. It was probably the worst of the series...

“The time is up”

…except for this. 2020 was a sad year, to put it mildly. And with the extended lockdowns, it was an off year creatively too, even if they managed to not note that there was more ground they couldn’t cover, despite 2020 actually being wilder than the video suggests. The tune was annoying, being of a generic pop punk extraction. This was a whimper for the series to end with, wasn’t it?

Conclusion

I’m glad I got to finish this seventeen months late, even if on a whim. Anyway, this series is as I remembered it. It’s middling, and a flawed bit of nostalgia for the Millennials and older Zoomers of Middle America. It’s not for me, as much as I appreciate its occasional dourness. Future historians are recommended to use an orbitoclast on themselves afterwards. And anyway, here’s hoping the year 2025 brings a few more brighter days.