I just spent my lunch break reading this BuzzFeed News piece, which breaks down how the internet warped our sense of time in the 2010s. It’s really quite good. Reporter Katherine Miller argues the way we interact with apps, the news, and with each other has blurred our experiences into a kind of timeless slurry. Events previously locked into a set chronology now blast into our consciousness hours, days, or months after the fact. Algorithms now tell us what we want to see and when we want to see it; meanwhile, we present an endless carousel of content for each other on Instagram, TikTok or Twitter. Miller posits the cumulative effect of all that shit might be why every year since 2016 has felt like part of one big smudge. The walls of time have fallen.
… Except when it comes to this one dude’s Baby Yoda and White Claw tattoo, which is as indisputably late 2019 as any piece of art we can imagine. Cop this:
Christ have mercy.
That is the arm of Brock McLaughlin, a Toronto digital marketing strategist (obviously), who decided his arm was the perfect place to commemorate a character from new Disney+ show The Mandalorian slamming a can of alcoholic seltzer.
The tattoo itself cribs from a meme of Baby Yoda drinking soup, which only snuck into the public conscience in the past week, while White Claw itself only gained prominence in the US over the past eight months or so.
All in all, it’s a time capsule of a time and place that many of us would like to forget. McLaughlin seems quite chuffed with his decision though, and has hit back at the folks who’ve shared his photos to disparage the artwork.
Weird flex how many dudes are taking credit for my tattoo. Here’s some BTS pic.twitter.com/1yrOCrhNBP
— Brock 182 (@brockmclaughlin) December 5, 2019
“Twitter [turned] into an ever-escalating, ever-nesting series of warring comments, dunks, and owns,” Miller writes in her piece.
“Memes take hold, then disappear.”
For McLaughlin, the first part of that assessment holds. The idea of memes disappearing, though? Well:
I have one of those too pic.twitter.com/3KIUbevTVh
— Brock 182 (@brockmclaughlin) December 5, 2019
