Opinion: The ruin of becoming a meme

Spain has exported a handful of powerful memes, some of which have become classics. For example, eccehomo: the failed restoration of a painting in a church in Borja (Zaragoza), by Cecilia Giménez, appeared in newspapers and media around the world. Or the subtitled videos of Risitas, who even starred in a pizza advertisement in Finland. And my favorite, the distracted boyfriend meme.

In case anyone doesn't remember, it is an image bank photo, one of those used to illustrate articles, brochures or whatever is needed. In it, a young woman looks with extreme astonishment at her partner, who has turned around when he sees another woman passing by. The photo has been used to talk about our preference for new things, whether cats, books, politics or food, to name just a few examples.

In 2017, when it became fashionable, my colleague Emilio Sánchez Hidalgo interviewed the author of the original photograph, Antonio Guillem, who told him that the image comes from one of the many sessions he did with the same models in Girona. He also told her that, until then, he didn't even know what a meme was.

For a few days now we have known a little more about the photo thanks to La Ruina, the podcast by Ignasi Taltavull and Tomàs Fuentes, in which, as its name suggests, some lucky people in the audience share their most embarrassing and fun moments at the same time. Needless to say, the podcast is hilarious and deserves every Ondas award between now and 2050.

Well, in the last installment, last Thursday, it was the turn of a girl, Clara, who had already been through the program before and who this time came with an internet ruin: she is the model who plays the jealous girlfriend in the distracted boyfriend meme. Most memes are forgotten in a matter of days, even hours, but in some cases they become classics. This is one of them, as shown by the reaction of the public and the presenters of La Ruina (on the verge of a heart attack) when they found out that they were facing one of the protagonists of one of the best-known images in the history of the internet. The fragment that the podcast account has shared on Twitter has almost 800,000 views in less than 24 hours.

This meme is also a good example of how attention has changed over the last two decades. With the Internet and social networks, we are a few thousand retweets away from a very rare fame, because of which we can end up on cell phones all over the world without anyone even knowing our name.

At least, a meme is not like a lynching for a mistake, the kind that can end with firings and lawsuits. But they can also be very cruel, as the example of eccehomo shows: we take an image, we modify it, we laugh... And we forget that behind those jokes there is someone who did not expect anything from all of that. Giménez, the amateur restaurateur, said a few years ago in an interview published in Heraldo de Aragón that at that moment she felt that “she was being ridiculed throughout the world.” Although at least she added that she was happy for “the love and respect” that she ended up getting.

But even when it is a nice example, as in the case of the distracted boyfriend, becoming a meme can be a burden because it is neither sought after nor, almost never, profitable: in La Ruina, Carla tells how she deleted her accounts on networks and didn't mention it for years. In fact, my colleague Emilio contacted her at the time, but (understandably) he preferred not to speak.

Memes are part of our vocabulary on the internet and we use them as a comic reaction or summary of what we think about any situation. And when we use them we do not wish any harm to any of their protagonists. In fact, it is normal that we do not even think about them. And that is the problem, although in the long run it leads to a good ruin.