Sometimes cultural trends swoop in and pass us faster than one can fall out of a coconut tree. That’s why we’re going over the memes, viral moments and trend-setting sensations that dominated the cultural landscape of 2024:
-Our year started off strong with the disastrous Willy Wonka-themed immersive experience. The February event, which promised to magically portray the Roald Dahl tale, went viral for its uninspired decor and lame costuming, to put it mildly. Videos of its sad-looking Oompa Loompa and confusing ghost-like figure, called The Unknown, were inescapable.
-Who could forget the fully conscious baby who wanted to go to the Four Seasons Orlando? A TikTok that Stefanie O’Brien posted of her 13-month-old niece Kate Wise was viewed over 85 million times. In the clip, the child raises her hand and confidently answers, “Meeeeee!” when asked by her mother, “Who wants to go to the Four Seasons Orlando?”
-Vice President Kamala Harris ran for president of the United States this year, and during her campaign a clip from one of her 2023 speeches took on a brand-new life. “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you,” Harris says in the clip. The now-iconic phrase was repeated and remixed all over the internet, particularly in a certain viral TikTok, which combined it with one of Charli XCX‘s Brat tracks.
-Thailand’s very own Moo Deng became the cute baby animal of the year after the pygmy hippopotamus fought back by biting her handlers and chomping on practically everything that came her way. She was so influential, in fact, she was parodied by Bowen Yang on Saturday Night Live.
-As for popular phrases, we all became “very demure, very mindful” after TikTok user Jools Lebron coined the saying. We also found ourselves “holding space” for the lyrics of “Defying Gravity” after an interview with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande during their Wicked press junket took the world by storm.
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