Greta Thunberg and the Meme that Won the Culture War

#OWNED

It’s crazy to me that people still talk about the Culture War as if it’s something that’s still happening when it was conclusively won, and consequently ended, in 2019. 

The ultimate winner of the Culture War was not, surprisingly, a controversial, transformative figure like Donald Trump or a movement like Black Lives Matter. 

No, the Culture War was won by a meme so powerful and so profound that even people inclined to violently disagree with it are forced to concede its fundamental truth. 

#WAKEUP!!!!!!!!

The meme in question features an image of teen activist Greta Thunberg looking very angry and un-feminine (would it kill her to put on some make-up and a pretty dress?) speaking into a microphone above the words “My generation will start a revolution!” 

Below Thunberg’s infernal lady-screeching about the need to prevent an imminent environmental apocalypse or some such nonsense (kids today really care about the most trivial bullshit, with the Tiktok and the Youtube and the Instagrams) is a PRETTY COOL image from the 1970 war movie Kelly’s Heroes of Clint Eastwood and the late Telly Savalas responding, “My ass. Your generation can’t work 40 hours in a week, can’t decide whether or not you’re a boy, a girl or “other” or can’t eat meat without crying.” 

Oh shit! Thunberg and every other silly, stupid, eminently mockable child who professes to care about the future of our planet or social justice instead of finding themselves a hubby who is a good provider and a good job in corporate America might want a little ice to handle that sick burn! 

Oh snap! Now you could argue, wrongly, that the meme doesn’t actually say anything at all, that all it does is repeat a series of lazy, borderline nonsensical generational stereotypes that don’t have anything to do with the substance of Thunberg’s argument. 

You could similarly argue that it’s not that young people can’t, or won’t, work forty hours a week but rather that the good, secure jobs that they were told would be waiting for them when they graduated from college don’t exist anymore and that the job market has fractured to the point where young people are often forced to work a bunch of different jobs and continually reinvent themselves just to survive. 

I suppose it could also be argued that the kind of factory jobs that once provided solid employment for decades for less educated Americans similarly do not exist anymore, or have gone overseas. 

They’re having a laff!

But no, it can’t be that, can it? Obviously it’s not a matter of society failing young people, or throwing unnecessary obstacles in their way but rather young people being lazy assholes who should be mocked for wanting anything. 

It could also be argued that people who do not fit into the conventional binary of male and female because they are trans or non-binary by definition have to think about gender and identity and the complexities of each more than people who are cisgender, and consequently are inclined to be more sure about how they identify than people whose gender identity matches the sex assigned to them at birth. 

But no, that obviously can’t be true, can it? The smirking ghost of Telly Savalas wouldn’t mislead us that way. So it must simply be a matter of dumb millennials not knowing if they’re a boy or a girl. 

Lastly, I’m not even sure what the part about people like Thunberg not being able to consume beef without weeping uncontrollably is even about but it must be true or it wouldn’t be put in the mouth of a macho tough guy from the distant past. 

If someone is a vegetarian, they don’t eat meat at all, let alone weepily, and if someone does eat meat, they’re probably able to do so without making with the waterworks but the “eat meat without crying” part of the meme makes an excellent larger point about how young people are dumb and all of their ideas and desires should be ignored and dismissed. 

I’m honestly a little surprised that Thunberg is even able to show her face in public after being so thoroughly owned by this meme, and many just like it, many involving lawnmowers, for some reason. 

I guess that just speaks to the depths of the poor girl’s self-delusion, that she still thinks it’s worthwhile to try to save the planet and its inhabitants despite getting destroyed by the most effective meme of all time. 

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ClickbaitDecember 30, 2022