We're Ending The 'Covfefe' Thing Right Now. You're Welcome.
On Tuesday night, a beautiful new meme came into this world. At 12:06 a.m. EST, President Trump twote:
And that was it. There was no follow-up, no explanation, no blaming Hillary Clinton for using witchcraft to make him tweet something to distract from her losing the election over six months ago. There was just the unintelligible tweet and the unfathomably long period of time before it was deleted.
Like that, a glorious new meme was born. Twitter had a field day playing with its brand-new toy, like a bunch of five-year-olds getting their first NERF guns after snorting mountains of cocaine. But a sad fact about the world is that memes get old and die, and sometimes the LED displays that burn brightest burn out fastest. Covfefe won't last forever. In fact, it's already starting to show some serious signs of age. Rather than drag out the inevitable, I suggest we live out its entire meme cycle with the precious little time it has left, kind of like a reverse Benjamin Buttons.
Actually Funny Shit On Twitter
This already happened, and it was glorious. Watching Twitter was like watching children, in the middle of a cold and dark winter, going out to play on a sunny snow day. After months of being chilled to the bone, people got to frolic in the pure, unadulterated nonsense. Scrolling through #covfefe was a joy, as twitterists joked about everything from Russia ties ...
... to other recent political memes ...
... to Trump's most recent spat with a celebrity ...
... to just the plain old assurance that everything The Donald does is right:
If you could put the feeling of those first few hours into a pill, you'd have a drug problem worse than the opioid epidemic that the Trump administration is currently exacerbating. Sorry to be a downer there. Back to the covfefes.
People Hawking Merch
And what good is a cultural phenomenon without a way to monetize it? Within 94 seconds of the meme taking off, people were posting covfefe-branded merch. It's incredibly easy to do with sites that print and ship your designs for you, so all you need to do is come up with an object to slap "covfefe" on. Obviously, there was a covfefe mug:
Someone made a hat that says "Covfefe AF" which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but maybe that's not the most relevant criticism when you're starting with "covfefe."
And of course there were T-shirts in every lettering and design you could ask for, so that your chest may proudly proclaim, "Bow to me, for I am aware of this thing that was an international media sensation. And you shall know it by the letters on my shirt."
The low-hanging fruit has already been plucked, but to really drive this thing into the ground, we need to put it on every conceivable piece of joke merchandise. I haven't yet seen "Kveep Coflm and Covfefe Onv" posters, so someone should get on that. You could make red T-shirts that say "#Covfefe2012" and become an overnight millionaire. The point is, we've just scratched the surface here. The sooner we get a beer koozie that says "I'm not drunk, I can spell 'covfefe'" on it, the sooner we can put this sweet, sweet meme out of its misery.
"Hot Takes"
Among all the joking, there will be people who are pissed that we're putting this much energy into a meme, rather than things that actually matter.
And they absolutely have a point. There are far more serious and important things going on. Trump is rumored to be pulling out of the Paris climate accords, saber-rattling with North Korea continues, and we continue to learn that high-ranking members of our government lied about ... No. We have to stop this. The actually important issues are the distraction here. A distraction from running this meme into the ground so hard that it's buried under a mile of solid Pets.com sock puppets. All that matters is covfefe.
'Shop Jokes
As the (completely justified) haters squawk on about "things that could literally kill us all" or whatevs, the rest of us are still hard at work squeezing every drop of comedy from covfefe that we possibly can. Kicking it up a notch from the text-based jokes, people made some dope photoshops. Because liking pictures more than words is what got us into this, and liking pictures more than words is what's going to get us out.
KISS 92.5 retweeted the one I couldn't get out of my head but didn't have the photoshop skills to make:
Those photoshops are a great start, but they aren't nearly enough. We aren't done until we get to stretches like "Tina Covfefe." If that was painful to read, good. That means it's working and we'll all be sick of it soon enough. I'm sorry and you're welcome.
Novelty Accounts
So far, there only have been a couple of novelty accounts worth mentioning, and they're both nicely summed up in a single screengrab:
And if you don't think that's a problem, then you're the problem. We don't want to see replies from @Carsvfefe when Cars 3 comes out in a couple weeks, so we have to be making @AlienCovfefanent accounts now. We want to reach a level of saturation well past the point of people just rolling their eyes, where more covfefe gets an angry response of "Enough already!" Like when someone makes a parody account of a 1992 animated feature called @CovfefesKids. If that just made you roll your eyes, we still have work to do.
Roundup Articles
Naturally, following anything actually creative happening, some talentless, brain-dead writer will publish a roundup article of the best examples of it. We've already seen dozens of pieces about the funniest covfefe tweets, shamelessly republishing other people's clever jokes because the writer lacks the imagination to do anything comparable on their own. Sure, they might try to embed them into a larger framework that is making some other point, but don't be fooled; what's actually entertaining about the article is just the collection of the work of other, better writers. I'm so glad I'm not a total piece of shit like that.
Anyways, these are surely the death knell for anything creative. With no fresh takes to feed the meme, it will slowly start to eat itself and waste away. It's important that we don't let up now, because the most difficult stages are still to come.
An Annoying Guy Named Geoff Using It At Work
As wonderful a gift as covfefe was, if we don't stop it now, it will become a "my wife"-sized annoyance. It could be repeated for months to come by everyone in your office who thinks he's funny and is almost certainly named Geoff. To stop this, it's important that for the next few days, you exhaust every possible reference to covfefe in casual conversation. Any time someone can't think of a word for something, helpfully offer up, "Covfefe?" If something in the printer is broken, tell your office manager to order a new covfefe. When your sales numbers are down, tell your boss, "Despite the constant negative growth, covfefe."
As you pack up your cubicle and everyone wonders why you threw your career away for a bunch of annoying, played-out jokes, shake your head and say to yourself, "No. I'm doing the Lord's covfefe."
Your Parents Telling You About It As Though You Might Not Have Heard About It
Finally, as covfefe is on its last legs, begging to be put out of its misery, it will suffer one last indignity: being completely mangled or misused by one of or both your parents. On the one hand, it will break your heart to see something so beloved be so misunderstood. On the other hand, it will be a merciful end to a beautiful meme. On the third hand, a video of your parents misusing covfefe could get you a few more likes, because misusing covfefe should literally be impossible and yet they're doing it. And on the fourth hand, I'm bad at metaphors.
So smile when your dad asks, "Do you like your fefe warm? Or do you prefer ... coldfefe." Not because it will be funny. It really very much won't. Smile because it's being released from this world and you can remember it for the beautiful meme it was. Because despite the constant negative overuse, covfefe.
Wait, never mind, it already happened:
Aaron Kheifets is a nice young man with a Twitter he wishes you'd follow.
For more, check out 7 Memes That Went Viral Before The Internet Existed and The 9 Most Obnoxious Memes to Ever Escape the Web.
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