The Grinch has knee surgery tomorrow
+ Krampus thirst traps, RFK nude sponcon, getting rich off ringtones, and the man ChatGPT refuses to name
For the past month, social media platforms have been flooded with thousands of posts featuring a smirking, blue-tinged Grinch accompanied by the text, “That Feeling When Knee Surgery Is Tomorrow.” The absurdist meme has become inescapable, especially on TikTok and Instagram, where the there are slews of accounts dedicated solely to posting the meme daily.
“‘Knee surgery’ is the hottest meme right now,” Katie Notopolous, the mother of online culture reporting, posted on Bluesky, “specifically the Grinch saying he has knee surgery tomorrow. There are dozens of blinch (blue grinch) knee surgery meme accounts. This is what your children are doing.”
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The Grinch knee surgery meme is kind of a meta joke. It’s the spiritual successor to the Instagram meme culture of 2018 that birthed The World Record Egg and same post every day accounts. Posting the blue Grinch knee surgery meme is a low pressure way to build community online, make connections with other young people who like absurdist humor, and potentially go viral if your meme account pops off. Sometimes people use the meme to allude to a dreaded event, but it’s mostly used ironically.
Since taking off, the meme has become ubiquitous in Gen Z and Gen Alpha online spaces. It has made it into classrooms, Discord servers, a dedicated Subreddit, the Liberal party of Australia has used the meme to advocate for economic policy, and the official Dr Seuss Instagram account even acknowledged the meme by posting an image of the blue Grinch with the caption “that feeling when knee surgery is tomorrow, IYKYK.”
The earliest iterations of the knee surgery meme date back to 2021, according to Know Your Meme. In April of that year, a user posted an image of a squirrel with the text “that feeling when knee surgery is tomorrow” in bold, white impact font, to an Instagram meme page with several thousand followers. People began taking the text and using it as copypasta (repeating the phrase but attaching it to other photos, like this picture of Drake).
Several months later, in March 2022, an Instagram user named blinch.feels, appended the text about knee surgery to a blue image of the Grinch and began posting it repeatedly. Those posts were shared to Reddit and to larger meme accounts, and the meme gained some initial traction in 2022 before fading to obscurity.
As the holidays began approaching this year, the blue Grinch knee surgery meme experienced a renaissance, in large part thanks to TikTok. People began posting it as ironic humor and it became a meta joke as hundreds of TikTok meme pages began using the blue Grinch as their profile photo.
The meme also spawned offshoots, including a red and yellow Grinch declaring that elbow surgery was yesterday.
Brain rot was just named Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year, and while it might seem strange to consider an image-based, impact font meme “brain rot,” because the format is from a distinctly non algorithmic early internet, I think that the irony and absurdism of the meme makes it appealing in the same way that a lot of meta content about brain rot is appealing. Also, the meme is Christmas related and provides easy content for meme pages run by 11 year olds in the lead up to the holidays.
Like all memes in 2024, the Grinch’s knee surgery is already being commodified, and so some social media users have a vested financial interest in boosting the meme. Crypto enthusiasts have been hyping “knee” coin on X and via a dedicated website and Telegram group.
Users on X are claiming that Knee coin will one day reach $100M market cap. “It’s one of those [memes] that most will only start seeing mentioned on their timeline once it’s 100M plus,” an account called The Crypto Guy posted last night.
In a Discord group, crypto meme coin collectors have been encouraging others to relentlessly spam the Grinch knee surgery meme across social media in hopes that mainstream media acknowledges it and the value of the coin shoots up.
“You don’t think this meme is a cult?” the primary booster of knee coin posted over the weekend, “Watch this.”
It’s become a sad fact that every light hearted absurdist meme will eventually devolve into a shitcoin. Thanks to the rise of meme coin marketplaces, every viral image, absurd one-liner, or niche online joke can now become a financial instrument. Memes have always had value— they spread ideas, build communities, shape culture— but that value is no longer measured in cultural impact or virality, it’s measured in cryptocurrency.
Not only does this new system reward a level of relentless, 24/7 internet engagement that most healthy adults can’t sustain, but the financialization of memes has created an alternative incentive structure where memes are now being evaluated for marketability, not just their humor or resonance.
The moment the internet’s attention shifts, these tokens plummet in value. So I am eager to check in on Knee coin come January. If the coin gains traction, we may see a lot of blue Grinches well past the holiday season.
What I’m reading
You might think the ringtone is dead. You’d be wrong.
Ringtones have proved to be an immortal business.
investigates “a small, strange corner of the music business, where the dream of the early aughts remains alive.” - SherwoodThe Myth of a Wilderness Without Humans
For over a century, conflicting views of wild nature created a rift between indigenous people and misguided conservationists. - MIT Press
Everything is Bravo
How the cable network’s brand of reality TV became a template for real life. - Ssense
My Life As a Homeless Man in America
We see right through the unshowered soul living in a car by the beach, or by the Walmart, or by the side of the road. But he’s there, and he used to be somebody. He still is. A firsthand account of homelessness in America. - Esquire (seriously, read this)
More fun stuff
ChatGPT refuses to say the name “David Mayer,” and no one knows why (try it yourself!). The most popular theory is that someone in Europe, which has stricter privacy laws, did a really good job of scrubbing their name from the internet, which forced ChatGPT to remove all mentions of their name. (I reached out to OpenAI for comment about this and will let you guys know if they respond.)
Krampus thirst traps are trending on BookTok.
President Zelenskyy of Ukraine is going on Lex Friedman.
Cheryl Hines did Thanksgiving sponcon with a naked RFK in the shower behind her.
Liberal TikTok users are posting about getting nail colors other than red for the holidays following Trump’s win.
More preschoolers are getting suspended and expelled.
Growing access to online price monitoring software is making people realize that Black Friday is a scam.
A recent study found that women consistently trust AI less than men do. Bloomberg dug into the AI gender gap.
TikTok it girl Alix Earle wore skinny jeans in one TikTok, which has set off an entire discourse cycle on whether or not they’re back.
Young people are going on Roblox dates within the game.
An online community of people who will roast you if your TV is hung too high.
YouTube video essayist Shanspeare investigated whether society’s obsession with girlhood is infantilizing us all.
LeBron James’ media company lost almost $30 million last year.
Creators on X are revealing how Musk arbitrarily pays out certain creators more, while others earn pennies.
Billboard posted a clip of nonconsensual fake porn of Taylor Swift to its TikTok, angering Swifties (the company later apologized).
Family Guy re-uploaders are using Minecraft gameplay to hide from copyright infringement.
The results of searching “Christmas 2024” on TikTok have somehow become dominated by a flood of Elon Musk and Trump Christmas fantasy AI slop.
Kai Cenat broke down in tears after live streaming for 30 days straight in a record breaking subathon.
Fed up with dating apps? Personal ads are thriving in Vermont.
Bodhi, the Menswear Dog, has died at age 15. RIP to a legend.
YouTuber J Aubrey’s deep dive into trad wife TikTok star Ballerina Farm is worth a watch.
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I tried. I really tried to stick with knee surgery Grinch discussion. I want to understand the lore. The lore is too deep/not deep enough for me. RIP last gasp of youth.