Before we all begin the long, excruciating march through the holidays, let’s take one last look back at Halloween, the lowest-expectation holiday of all, by checking out the most meme-tactic costumes of 2023 and melting all our Halloween candy together into one super-bar. Also: Taylor Swift implies she’s straight (gasp) and we all learn a new dance called the Jubi Slide.
Q: Is Taylor Swift gay? A: no (if you believe Taylor Swift)
There has been a long-running theory online that America’s favorite singer Taylor Swift is secretly gay or bisexual. Proponents of the idea call themselves “Gaylors,” and they share close-readings of her song lyrics, photographic evidence, and endless theories that “prove” that Swift enjoys the romantic company of other women and consciously leaves clues to her real orientation in her social media posts, album covers, hairstyle and clothing choices, song lyrics, and more. This week, Swift herself seems to have quashed the theories and sounded off on the Gaylors themselves.
Images of the liner notes for the upcoming “Taylor’s Version” of her album 1989 that supposedly leaked on Twitter read: “I swore off dating and decided to focus only on myself, my music, my growth, and my female friendships. If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn’t sensationalize or sexualize that right? I would learn later on that people could and people would.”
The Gaylor community’s reaction is interesting. There’s little “maybe we got it wrong.” Instead, many posters on Reddit’s r/Gaylor_Swift seem angry at the singer for denying the “truth” of her sexuality and her seeming willingness to throw them under the bus to stay in the closet (that they think she’s in). A sample comment reads, “I just don’t understand queer flagging and then telling people to mind their business. If you’re not apart of the community, or you don’t want people to question if you are, don’t queer flag. It makes us seem actually delusional when we aren’t, she HAS queer flagged. There’s no denying that.”
Swift, it should be noted, has actually denied that. When asked about her activism in support of the LGBTQ community in 2019, Swift told Vogue, “I didn’t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of.”
What is the Jubi Slide?: TikTok’s new dance explained
The Jubi Slide is a dance move taking over. It was invented by dancer and TikToker jubi2fye who’s been sliding for a couple years, but the Jubi Slide has been reaching critical mass lately as people share videos of it. Like a 2023 version of Michael Jackson’s moonwalk, the Jubi Slide (or Jubislide) looks supernatural when it’s done well—it’s one of those “how is that even possible?” dances. Also like the moonwalk, the step isn’t difficult to learn, but Jubisliding right is a different matter entirely. If you do it correctly, it looks like you’re flying, but you have to be able to dance or it will look stupid. And if you’re over 30, it will look stupid anyway, so just enjoy your rocking chair or doing the Hustle instead, Gramps.
Young Republicans give Twitter a precious gift
Their number is so small, it’s easy to forget that young Republicans even exist, but this week, the GOP’s kiddie table reminded the world of its presence by giving Twitter a new picture to dunk on. Conservative activist GOPJosh posted a snap of him hanging out with fellow young Republicans and captioned it: “The female mind, the beta mind, and the liberal mind are all the same. None of them can comprehend the levels of alpha male in this one photo.” Twitter teed off, either responding with zingers like “That’s a long winded way of saying virgin,” and “So, you’re all buggy, riddled with errors, and generally not fit for the general public?” or attaching the slogan to other photos, like this, or this.
I think GOP Josh might be a satire account. Yeah, he apparently worked on Trump’s 2020 campaign and has been consistently posting for awhile, but it could still be an Andy Kaufman-level long comedy con. It’s that tone deaf.
Meme-tactic Halloween costume wrap-up
The good people over at knowyourmeme.com have put together an awesome collection of the best meme-centric Halloween costumes in 2023, including such soon-to-be-forgotten favorites as Paris Bedbugs, the fake “alien” from Mexico, and Kevin James with big knockers. Check out the entire list here, and see how many you recognize. I hit 50% and I’m proud of that.
Does “sticking out your gyatt for the rizzler” have a secret meaning?
A few weeks ago, I (begrudgingly) learned what “sticking out your gyatt for the rizzler” is. I dismissed the viral video as “dumb” and said its lyrics were a collection of tween-speak gibberish. But today I learned that there may be a secret, deeper level to the song.
It turns out that the song’s lyrics may be referencing the names of three United States Navy ships: The USS Gyatt, the USS Rizzi, and the USS Ohio. And there’s an entire class of ships called SIGMA. These vessels weren’t named based on an online poll like Boaty McBoatface, either. They were all sailing the seas long before the Internet itself even existed. So is the Gyatt for the Rizzler song actually a sly commentary on mid 20th Century American imperialism? No. But still, it’s a funny coincidence.
Viral video: “I Melted Every Halloween Candy Together”
YouTuber Safiya Nygaard posted the perfect post-Halloween video. In I Melted Every Halloween Candy Together she, you guessed it, melts 233 of the most common Halloween candies together to create “one candy to rule them all.” The unholy confection contains a layer of dozens of hard candies, another layer made of 94 chewy candies like Laffy Taffy and candy corn, and a final layer of 56 kinds of chocolate bars melted together. Check it out to see if “all of the candy” tastes better than “one of the candy.”
