You Cant Beat Me I Know but He Can Template

Dear Sugars presents: The painful, untold story behind the 'Adult female Yelling at a Cat' meme 42:40

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(Rory Panagatopolis for WBUR)

This week, we're sharing an episode of another WBUR podcast,Endless Thread.The proveis in the middle of a series all about net memes, and they recently featured the woman at the heart of the pop "Woman Yelling at a Cat" meme, Taylor Armstrong from the original cast ofThe Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. The story behind the image featured in this meme is surprising and painful, so please take care when listening.

Sense of humour is a central ingredient of any unit of measurement of culture that morphs and spreads over fourth dimension. But sense of humour isn't always there at the beginning. For "Real Housewife" Taylor Armstrong, the meme that made her even more famous on the internet has bitter roots: concrete domestic corruption exposed on television receiver.

In this episode, we hear the fiddling-known origin story of the "Woman Yelling at a Cat" meme — straight from the Woman herself — that might brand you recollect twice about ever using the meme once again. We besides explore why a loss of context is crucial for the spread of memes, but oftentimes problematic.

Show notes:

• Resources for concrete and emotional abuse
• Resources for suicide prevention
• The first photo of Taylor Armstrong adjacent to Smudge, the cat
• TIME article on Smudge
• Taylor Armstrong's memoir, "Hiding from Reality"
• Taylor Armstrong on "The Wendy Williams Evidence"
• The "Malibu Beach Political party from Hell" episode ofThe Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
• Russell Armstrong's expiry

Total Transcript:

This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.eastward. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode mentions suicide, and emotional and physical abuse. We've linked some resources in the bear witness notes if you or someone yous know is looking for support.

Amory Sivertson: Howdy, can y'all hear me OK?

Julia: Yeah, I tin can hear ya.

Amory: Do you recognize this voice, Ben?

Ben: isn't it "Real Housewives?" Isn't it a existent housewife?

Amory: unless it'south the Real Housewife Sivertson edition? Because that'southward my sister.

Ben: Oh man. You actually pulled a fast one on me.

Amory: Well, I called her up considering a few years ago, Julia made a meme. This was 1 of the multi paneled ones featuring a father and son, and I'll let her describe it.

Julia: The dad is like a gray haired guy in a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He's got a bunch of tattoos and a huge handlebar mustache. He'south sitting at a desk chair yelling. And so the next console is the son in a ball cap yelling back, and like pointing, and then the dad yells more. And then the son throws a chair and then the dad continues to yell, pointing. Then it'south a back and forth argument.

Ben: Love this meme, cracking meme. Skillful job, Julia.

Amory: That's the template, I'grand glad you can pic it. So Julia, inspired by a depression stakes kitchen-implement related statement she'due south had with her husband, she captained the meme like so.

Julia: So the dad yells, "You can't apply the microplane for cheese," the son says, "yes, I can." The dad yells, "It is for citrus zest and spices only." The son throws the chair. "Cheese is literally one of the examples on the blade cover." The dad says, "so please wash information technology right later y'all use it."

Ben: OK, and so outset of all, I definitely utilise my microplane for cheese, similar, come on.

Amory: You're not solitary. You're not alone. So Julia in this example, was the dad in the meme, the handlebar mustache guy, and her husband was the son who in this scenario used the microplane to grate cheese.

Ben: You mean the ane who's correct?

Amory: Well, correct or not, at that place were some results from this meme that Julia made.

Julia: I've got to say, me posting this did lead to him non using the microplane for cheese.

Ben: Congratulations, Julia, you lot've used a meme to browbeat your husband into doing the wrong thing.

Amory: A pocket-sized marital victory with a meme to thank. But anyway, this is from a show called "American Chopper." It was a reality evidence on Discovery and then TLC — doesn't exist anymore. Information technology followed a family-run custom motorcycle manufacturing company, and this scene is from an episode in 2008 featuring the father and son who run the visitor – Paul Teutul, senior and inferior --

Ben: Yep, Mr. Handlebar Mustache and the male child.

Amory: Exactly. And in this scene, Paul Senior is against Paul Jr. well-nigh how he's similar tardily and lazy. And things get heated. Paul Jr. throws a chair...

Amory: So that's what's actually going on in the scene that got memed, but Julia had never seen "American Chopper." She just saw this meme template and thought, oh aye, I got something for this.

Julia: It was a proficient representation of how we communicate almost things that we disagree about, I call up. And 1 of his friends, his comment on information technology was, "this is so romantic." And I thought, yeah, that was the intention.

Ben: I hateful, hey, if you think the meme version of "Whatever, Dad!" is romantic, and then I agree. This does get at the heart of something, though… which is that we encounter ourselves and our own relationships in these caricature-ish meme templates. Memes are and so powerful because they get at reality in this manner. And they really - they hit us in the feels. And when we do, information technology's kind of impossible to resist joining in on the fun, often without really thinking too deeply about who the real people--who are condign our avatars--in these memes and what the original real scenario was.

Amory: Fortunately for Julia, this quote-unquote real, reality Idiot box scenario on American Chopper had relatively low stakes, and it'due south even thought to have been staged or planned to some extent. But, imposing our own story on a scenario without knowing the actual backstory can get catchy.

Sarah Laiola: You know the ane that's popular now that's like the woman screaming at the cat?

Ben: That'due south meme chorus member Sarah Laiola, assistant professor of digital culture and design at Coastal Carolina University.

Sarah: I think she's like blonde and she's at dinner and she'south, information technology'due south ever it's a two panel i where she's yelling and then in that location'due south always a true cat on the other side that'southward similar, "Errr."

Amory: For the outset time in the history of this meme series, this was a meme that I was really more familiar with than Ben, who sorta fancies himself the meme lord of the ET squad.

Amory: I recall I tin picture the adult female you lot're talking about. I don't think the cat. Is the woman, does she, similar, take her mouth open and she's pointing.

Sarah: Yeah. And in that location's a girl like a friend behind her, like either belongings her.

Amory: Yes. Holding her back.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah I take. Yes.

Sarah: I'm sure that you see that. Yes.

Ben: This meme — that I definitely Take seen — is very ridiculous. Cool, fifty-fifty. A adult female on one side, screaming and pointing. And she'due south of course pointing a moving-picture show of a white cat, totally unrelated to the woman, sitting at a table. With a plate of salad in forepart of him? Making a kind of derpy cat confront. Like, "Errrrrmmmmm, I did NOT lodge salad..."

Amory: And and then, when the two pictures were put side-past-side in a Tweet in May of 2019, the cyberspace went to town. One person put a little Santa hat on the true cat and captioned information technology, "Merry Christmas," while the woman yells, "IT'S November!" Another version has the woman screaming "Target!" and the true cat responds, "Tar-JAY." And then on and then on.

Ben: And the cat is named Smudge, and the picture of the cat giving salad some attitude was starting time posted on Tumblr past his human, who says he really does like sitting at the dinner table and he really doesn't like vegetables… or vegetals, in the parlance of the cyberspace.

Amory: Just who is the woman in the meme? And what is she yelling about? Look more closely at the picture, and you'll see that she has tears in her optics. Her face up is red with rage or pain… or both. The friend behind her is gripping her just under her outstretched arm. She's property the crying woman. Or maybe, belongings her back. But from whom? And why is she crying?

Ben: Thousands upon thousands of versions of this meme accept been made by people who likely didn't know the answers to any of these questions. And fifty-fifty more people have seen — and had a good laugh at — those thousands of memes without knowing either.

Amory: Merely we do know, at present. And the answers will brand you never look at the meme the aforementioned mode again.

Sarah: So she was trying to, like, stand up for herself. And it'due south become this like — no, I know — another dark, possibly origin story of that meme.

Ben and Amory: Whoaaaaa.

Ben: I'm Ben Brock Johnson.

Amory: I'm Amory Sivertson, and this is Endless Thread.

Ben: We're coming to yous from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. And we're taking a closer look at memes that accept been seen, shared, and remixed countless times… before they've been fully understood.

Taylor Armstrong: When the meme first came out, it just was called women yelling at Cat.

Amory: We typically don't become looking for the backstory of a meme before putting our ain spin on information technology, right? Merely for the one we at present know as "Adult female Yelling at a Cat," maybe we all should have. Because in the very moment that's been freeze-framed and meme-ified... this woman was going through one of the darkest experiences of her life.

Taylor: I was trying to explain in a very dramatic way that this could become me killed.

Taylor: You know what, um, this is interesting. Let me only shut my telephone completely off, because Robyn from Bravo, coincidentally right in that exact moment, only sent me a text bulletin and information technology just pinged onto my figurer…

Amory: It'due south non every day Ben and I become to talk to a reality Television star.

Ben: so my my married woman watches and I watch with her sometimes.

Taylor: That's always everyone'due south excuse.

Ben: Aaaaaaand it's not every mean solar day we get Chosen OUT by a reality Telly star. A reality star who says, at first, she wasn't trying to exist one.

Taylor: Well, in the beginning, I I didn't even leave for the show and a lot of my friends around Beverly Hills had gone out for it and my name came upward, I guess, in a few dissimilar circles, and--

Amory: And that proper noun?

Taylor: This is Taylor Armstrong from the original " Housewives of Beverly Hills ."

Taylor: It may expect like I have it all, but I want more.

Amory: But Taylor's as well the original — and only — woman yelling at a true cat.

Ben: Except, of course, she wasn't yelling at a true cat. She was yelling at a cast fellow member of the show, "The Existent Housewives of Beverly Hills."

Amory: That'south Taylor, yelling "You have no thought what she'south washed to me. No you lot don't." And this is the scene the screen cap was taken from — the screen cap that became... Woman Yelling at a Cat. Just in order to sympathize what the hell is going on here, we have to go back several episodes. Actually, we have to empathize a little more about the bear witness itself. And Ben, since you scout it--

Ben: My married woman watches it!

Amory: Oh yes I'chiliad sorry, since your wife watches the prove and you've kept her company for an episode or two — why don't y'all do the honors…

Ben: Ok. So "The Existent Housewives of Beverly Hills" debuted on Bravo in 2010, and information technology followed vi wealthy socialites equally they just lived their lives. Running errands, traveling, planning parties, attending parties. You know, kiiiinda like what we do all 24-hour interval, Amory, correct? Except, possibly like with fewer parties. And much nicer clothes. And bigger houses and nicer cars. And costless-flowing wine and that Southern California sunshine.

Amory: At the beginning, this is exactly what Taylor thought the show was going to be.

Ben: Simply of course if a reality Tv show is any good, at least by standard definitions, it's not just fun stuff. Let solitary reality. Production crews manufacture drama in how the video is edited. Only they're also behind the scenes manufacturing meetups between characters. Developing whole storylines before filming even starts. They're calculation booze to tense situations. They're dialing everything up. Even if you know this...yous forget information technology, which is part of the magic, and role of the problem for the reality TV viewer andthe reality Television receiver subject.

Taylor: And in the terminate, we had a divorce in season one divorce in flavour two divorce and season three. And but 5 of us were married to begin with. So that kind of tells you where the odds lie on keeping things under wraps.

Ben: And Taylor, in particular, had a big something she was trying to go along under wraps, from the other women on the testify and its millions of viewers.

Taylor: information technology was a definitely a different experience for me than it was for some of the girls who had a big support system at domicile, like Kyle and Lisa.

Amory: Kyle Richards, Lisa Vanderpump — two of her bandage-mates.

Taylor: They had an awesome support organization in their family home to get home to afterwards the stress of filming some really trying moments on the show. Simply for me, it was like chaos on the evidence and chaos at dwelling house.

Taylor: The physical abuse started when I was significant with my girl. That was the starting time fourth dimension he high-strung me.

Taylor: So that particular twenty-four hour period, I was getting ready to go to a charity outcome and my stepsons were visiting and I had made them I ordered them a pizza and we were going to he was just going to come home. We were going to exit right away. Then I was kind of rushing around and he came into our sleeping accommodation and he just grabbed me and had me past the throat and pushed me up confronting the wall. And he said, "If you ever feed my children a pizza without a vegetable once more, I'll kill yous."

Amory: Taylor is talking virtually her former husband, Russell Armstrong. She says he was emotionally abusive from their very commencement appointment, when he accused her of having a relationship with the waiter at the restaurant — simply based on the friendly way she'd greeted him when they got in that location.

Taylor: He was and so insanely jealous, and those things came out very early on in our relationship.

Amory: Crying on a first appointment.

Taylor: Correct? I know, I should take walked away. Information technology's ridiculous.

Ben: Hard to fathom in retrospect, maybe. Just Taylor says Russell's jealousy felt flattering sometimes. Other times, it was an exhausting avalanche of exact attacks as Russell spiraled out of control.

Taylor: Sometimes it was hours of me having to listen to him yell and scream and call me every name in the volume earlier he would get physical with me. And I call up one time I finally said to him, "Will you just hit me and then we tin get this over with?" I carry the emotional scars far more than the physical ones.

Amory: While information technology was happening, though, the physical scars were actually the easier ones for Taylor to muffle from her Real Housewives cast-mates.

Taylor: Abusers are actually good at hiding the types of abuse that they inflict. For instance, one of my onetime married man'southward favorite things to do was banging my head confronting the car, and he would grab me by one side of my hair and then bang my caput against the window. If I were sitting in the passenger seat or if we were outside of the car, he might grab my one side of my pilus and then hit my head confronting the outside of the car.

Ben: Taylor was able to hibernate the bumps and bruises from these incidents under her pilus. Others, she couldn't hide. Similar on Super Bowl Dominicus, 2011, Russell and Taylor were in Texas for the game, and when they went dorsum to their hotel room that night, Russell accused Taylor of cheating on him. He hit her beyond the face, hard.

Taylor: It just popped my jaw out and I was laying over the toilet with just saliva running out of my mouth. And I couldn't I couldn't get any help or annihilation. So finally, I simply had to maneuver my jaw plenty to go information technology dorsum in place. And it even so pops out now.

Ben: Russell wouldn't let Taylor call for help that nighttime. Other times, Taylor wouldn't let herself call for assist. Mostly out of fear that information technology would somehow backfire and have a negative impact on her 5-year-onetime daughter, Kennedy.

Taylor: He would say to me, "become ahead, call the police force, I'll get to prison and yous will. I won't be working. Yous'll exist destitute. They'll find yous an unfit mother. They'll accept Kennedy away from you." And then on other days that were good days after something bad would have happened, he would say, "I'1000 afraid I'chiliad going to kill you one of these days."

Amory: Good days and bad days didn't matter on the set of "Real Housewives," where none were supposed to be the wiser. Merely Taylor'south attempts to hide the abuse weren't working, because the show was supposed to capture her real life. And Russell was her real married man. And despite thinking that the cameras would encourage him to be on his all-time behavior, he stayed on his real behavior.

Russell: So what'due south the latest with your piddling visitor?

Taylor: I would love it if yous wouldn't phone call my company little.

Taylor: We just need to accept some time out to have fun together.

Russell I need to get to the office.

Taylor: Alrighty.

Kyle: Does he non similar to see you have fun?

Taylor: I just don't… I don't know.

Ben: And audiences took notice. Outspoken Goggle box talk show host Wendy Williams had Taylor and one of her cast-mates, Adrienne, on her evidence during season i of "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills." And Wendy kept it as real as it gets.

Wendy: The part I didn't like, Taylor, about your story is we're getting to see your husband who is, with all due respect, a disgusting man to y'all.

Taylor: Ohhh!

Wendy: He's disgusting, he's disgusting to y'all. It'southward like abuse without I don't like the style he treats her.

Adrienne: No, I don't either.

Taylor: Well I think a lot of it… that's a hard one for me because nosotros're really doing a lot of work right now and we're both taking fourth dimension to reexamine what we need in our spousal relationship.

Wendy: How did you feel watching that back? Considering while you're in the moment taping the show, you lot're not watching what we were watching. You know what I'm maxim, Adrienne.

Wendy: How did you lot feel watching that? Y'all don't feel remotely abused by--

Taylor: I don't experience abused. I feel, you know, I deal with people who are abused and I know what that looks like. I feel like nosotros have been disconnected for some time

Amory: Taylor clearly wasn't gear up to confirm publicly what Wendy Williams — and probably many others — suspected. Merely while filming season 2 of "Real Housewives," she opened up to a cast-mate, Camille Grammer.

Taylor: She had been going through her divorce with Kelsey…

Amory: Kelsey Grammer, the actor from Frasier.

Taylor: ...and I asked her to meet me for lunch and I wanted to get some insight from her every bit to what it was like to get in a custody boxing and to go divorced with someone who had and so much more than economic advantages

Ben: And during this off-photographic camera lunch coming together, Taylor told Camille about Russell's abuse, including the time at the Superbowl when he dislocated her jaw. And she thought she was doing and so in confidence.

Amory: Fast-forward to the filming of an episode that ended upward being called "Tempest in a Tea Party." Taylor had been emotionally unravelling over the class of the season, but at a tearful, truth-slinging tea political party at Lisa Vanderpump'south house, Camille confronted Taylor in front of the other women about the corruption that seemed to exist bubbling upward to the surface more than and more, and she even questioned the abuse.

Camille: Be conscientious what you say, because we're all protecting you.

Taylor: Nearly my spousal relationship?

Camille: Almost what you told us near your matrimony. What you told usa virtually your matrimony. We've been protecting you. Because we don't say that he hits you. Because nosotros don't say that he bankrupt your jaw or that he shell you up. And he hits y'all. We don't say information technology but now nosotros've said it, OK? We're supposed to walk around saying, "Yay, we can't wait to see Russell!" But we don't know if it's true because you come over and you don't accept whatsoever signs of physical abuse on your body.

Taylor: That'south really uncool.

Taylor: I don't even recall I spoke. I simply was in shock because I knew in that moment something was going to change drastically and information technology could have gone in a lot of different directions. He we could get divorced, he could kill me. Things could get better. I didn't. I didn't I had no thought what the outcome of that moment was going to be like.

Amory: Taylor at to the lowest degree knew that the episode wouldn't be coming out for months. That gave her some time to make a programme for dealing with the fallout from Russell. But she was terrified for her condom and her girl's. And she felt deeply betrayed and exposed.

Taylor: I thought I probably could, in some respect, hide what was really going on in my real life from the cameras. And I call up we all know how that turned out.

Ben: Taylor wasn't able to hibernate whatever of this from the audience or her cast-mates. But things were nigh to take some other big turn.

Amory: More in a infinitesimal.

[Pause]

Ben: It's a pic-perfect evening in Malibu in 2011, and a friend of the housewives is hosting a party at a house overlooking the ocean.

Amory: As is oftentimes the instance at a "Real Housewives" party, the guests' cups runneth over. Literally.

Taylor Armstrong arrives with cast-mate Kyle Richards, hoping that Camille — the woman who outed Taylor's corruption on the show a couple episodes agone — isn't there.

Ben: But… she is. And between the unlimited wine and the limited corporeality of space at this party, things get testy between Taylor and a friend of Camille's named D.D.

Amory: Taylor isn't having it. And the more D.D. talks, the more on edge Taylor becomes.

D.D.: Taylor! That'southward not that way to conduct a discussion

Ben: And from at that place, the political party devolves into truthful anarchy.

Amory: Taylor's suddenly surrounded by women basically yelling "calm down," which of grade has the contrary effect. D.D. persists. Several of the women start physically jumping in between the two of them equally Taylor shoves a pointed finger closer and closer to D.D., crying out about how Camille's indiscretion has hurt her.

Taylor: All the words that were coming from me were based in pure fear. I was terrified for my life at that point and not knowing what my futurity was going to hold. And just   this isn't merely reality TV forage. This is my real life. You accept no idea the repercussions that I'k going to suffer from this.

Ben: Were you conscious when this was happening that the cameras were in that location, I mean, like by then you're and then far into this experience of existence on the show that I imagine office of the process is them trying to make you guys forget about the cameras. Right.

Taylor: That'due south a good question. I experience like when yous are I feel like when I would become so amped upwards, information technology wasn't like the cameras were even a I thought it was just I was so upset and and so scared and afraid of what this consequence was going to look like, that in those moments, I was just going to express myself regardless. And at that signal, the cat was out of the pocketbook. So at that place was actually nothing more than. I couldn't brand it any worse.

Amory: Kyle Richards wraps an arm around Taylor — comforting at first, simply then forceful. And information technology's at some signal in this moment, that someone watching this episode, somewhere in the world, went…

[SCREENSHOT SOUND Consequence]

Ben: This episode of Existent Housewives of Beverly Hills, known as "Malibu Beach Party from Hell," would go Enough of tabloid attention in the days after information technology aired. It would go downwardly in Real Housewives history. But information technology wouldn't go down in internet history until years later. Which we'll get to.

Amory: Merely first, to the weeks and months immediately later on the episode was filmed. It was a tumultuous time. Taylor told her husband that he'd soon be outed on the show as an abuser. Simply she did then with her psychiatrist present.

Ben: Russell wrote a letter to the show'due south producers and to Camille… threatening to sue if the footage was released. Simply that was still a lilliputian ways away. And in the meantime, Russell gave Taylor glimmers of hope that things would turn around. Including a birthday card saying that he knew he hadn't been a good husband, simply he wanted to exist.

Amory: Simply later that night, on her altogether, in yet another jealous rage, Taylor says Russell punched her in the centre. Her orbital floor, the bone structure under her right eye, was fractured. She had to have reconstructive surgery.

Taylor: Believe it or non, information technology took me that happening to be able to say I'one thousand in an abusive human relationship, like, I can't sugarcoat this anymore. I can't sweep it under the rug. I can't rely on the practiced times. This is dangerous. And I take to get out of this. And when I went in to get my orbital flooring reconstructed, I was in my in my room in recovery and he walked in the door with roses and. I just it makes me cringe to say this, simply in that moment, I wanted him to crawl in bed with me and lay at that place.

Ben: Why?

Taylor: Because that'southward the roller coaster of abuse, I mean, I wanted him to come and protect me and make me remember everything's going to be OK, and that my family isn't but crumbling effectually me and in that moment, I idea, wow, this is really what it's like to be in a horribly abusive human relationship. The fact that equally y'all're laying here, just coming out of surgery considering of what this person did to you, that yous would really want him to stay with you.

Amory: Taylor stepped back from filming "Real Housewives." She filed for divorce. Russell moved out of the firm. But the mode forwards from there wasn't clear. Peculiarly because, season 2 of the show — including the footage that outed the corruption — would commencement rolling out in a couple of months. At that place was also talk that the DA might press charges confronting Russell for the incident on Taylor's altogether.

Taylor: My promise was that he would take the opportunity and come up out and make a statement and say, "I have anger management problems. I'one thousand getting handling," you know, become an advocate for other people. And I thought with our platform, that was his all-time out.

Ben: August 15th, 2011. It was a Monday, and Taylor was supposed to take a meeting with Russell at this part to talk virtually the divorce — which hadn't been finalized at this point — and about custody of their daughter. Just Russell didn't evidence. And no 1 at his function had seen him that day.

Taylor: I just started getting this really weird gut feeling that something had gone wrong. And I went to the residence where he was staying and the gate was airtight, but his car was in that location.

Ben: A neighbor said he hadn't seen Russell all weekend. The neighbor helped Taylor and a friend pry open Russell'due south bathroom window so they could become in and wait around.

Taylor: And nosotros started in and and so we found him hanging. There were then many emotions going on in that moment, of course, stupor and disbelief, fearfulness, you know, just complete and utter sadness to think that anyone, regardless of what they put me through, would make that determination.

Amory: 3 weeks later Russell's decease, and only eleven days after his funeral… flavour 2 of "The Existent Housewives of Beverly Hills" premiered.

Taylor: So one of the most traumatic experiences is that nosotros get the episodes in advance considering nosotros web log on Bravo Dotcom and so nosotros have to sentinel them in advance and then that we can tell our side of a story or blog about the events that occur.

Ben: That's a lot of reliving of trauma.

Taylor: Isn't it, though?

Ben: Taylor tried to move forrad in this new, REAL reality… the one where everything was on the tabular array. She published a memoir the following year titled "Hiding from Reality." She gave talks about domestic corruption effectually the country. And…  she starred in a third season of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills."

Taylor: I wanted people to see in hindsight, you know, that that didn't define who I was going to be going forwards and, I do a lot of public speaking and I visit a lot of shelters. And I retrieve information technology'south important for people to see me out and see that in that location'due south life after.

Amory: And there actually was for Taylor. She got remarried in 2014 to a man that she says celebrates everything well-nigh her. She was moving on, and putting the darkest days of her relationship with Russell — and of "Real Housewives" — behind her.

Ben: But then. V years subsequently… and a full EIGHT years afterwards the infamous "Malibu Beach Party from Hell" episode of "Real Housewives"… through the weird, mysterious forces of the internet… Taylor establish herself in another yelling lucifer. With a cat… named Smudge. Thanks to Twitter user MissingEGirl, who seems to take created this meme.

Taylor: So when did you lot first run across this meme and what was your immediate reaction?

Taylor: I would say confusion and humor, I mean, at that signal, it was just laughable, I couldn't effigy out why I was yelling at this cat, you know, who the cat was.

Amory: Considering the circumstances that led up to the moment in the meme'd screenshot, yous'd recollect she'd want to disassemble herself from the image however possible. But instead, she shouted it from the social media mountaintops...

Taylor: And then I tweeted something along the lines of "Woman Yelling at Cat is me," and I just found it humorous because I didn't get information technology and Kyle and I were messaging each other back and forth and she was similar, I don't get it. I don't get it either. Where does this cat come up from? I idea the cat was maybe on a reality television bear witness or something, merely then they but kept coming. I've only seen I experience like thousands of them. It'due south unbelievable.

Ben: But pretty quickly, it became VERY easy to get, and very easy to explanation. And a lot of the captions Taylor saw were surprisingly clever. And timely.

Taylor: There would exist a big sporting effect and the adjacent mean solar day in that location would be a meme of the true cat and myself in the office of the baseball director and the umpire. And information technology was just like their creativity was so quick. It was fascinating to me.

Amory: Fascinating... Not devastating, even though the internet is collectively laughing at her pain — albeit, mostly unknowingly. And not re-traumatizing. At least not in the way that watching the advance episodes of "Real Housewives" was for Taylor. And as glad as we were to hear this, we were surprised.

Amory: Wow, well then allow me to just project some of my own shit. Aye, a little bit, because if you know, that motion picture captures a very real raw moment of human emotion. And then to have it juxtaposed with something humorous and have information technology go turned into this large Internet joke, especially viii years after the result itself happened, so that it'southward got this extra layer of like, old wound being uncovered, that is but not the reaction I was expecting to hear. I have to say.

Taylor: Well, maybe at first when I saw it, I idea it perhaps it brought up some by retentivity of that time, but. Information technology isn't similar whenever I see information technology, I don't cringe or feel upset or wish it wasn't out there, I guess a lot of information technology is just accepting when you put your life on reality TV, not as much life as I put on reality TV, but that it's going to all the same exist. You know, I am reminded of what that time in my life was like, only non information technology doesn't hurt me anymore.

Ben: A big part of that, she says, is time. A lot of therapy and healing happened in the viii years between the top of her ex-husband's abuse and his suicide and the nascency of Woman Yelling at True cat. Taylor says she inappreciably recognizes the woman in the meme.

Amory: And it's quite possible — likely, even — that virtually of the people spreading the meme don't recognize her either. Or if they do recognize Taylor or the show the prototype is from, the context has been lost to time. This episode of "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" came out 10 years ago. A decade later on, this probably looks like a moment from whatever of the many other alcohol-fueled spats on the show. Why not plow this i into a spat with a cat?

Ben: And Taylor tin can appreciate that on some level. Considering this was just 1 moment out of many for her, too.

Taylor: When I await at the whole experience as a whole and what my life was like during that time, it almost simply feels similar that exact moment was a bleep on the radar of something so much bigger.

Amory: A year later the meme first appeared online, it was named meme of the year by the net-focused Shorty Awards. And Taylor accepted the award in a video with grace… and a piffling humor.

Amory: On the other side of the phone is the famed feline, looking like a pretty normal cat — a black rotary phone in front of him this time instead of a salad.

Ben: Taylor proceeds to apologize to a disinterested Smudge, who'due south merely doing cat things. And the whole thing is a scrap, obviously. But it's also, yet again, a woman having to apologize for something she should admittedly non apologize for. Just Taylor says in that location's a reason she plays brawl with this kind of stuff.

Taylor: My non letting the meme get to me and even at times tweeting out or simply saying people are so artistic, I practise call up that it helps other people to see that you tin put all of this behind you and have a completely new salubrious relationship built on equality and all of the things that we deserve and dream about. They do be regardless of what our past looks similar.

Ben: Taylor clearly wasn't the get-go reality star to become meme-ified…

Ben: And she won't be the terminal. Reality Idiot box's brand of absurdity and alcohol infused, engineered drama and disengagement from actual reality is exactly what makes its stars easy — and, some would say, willing — targets of mockery.

Amory: But equally y'all've heard, Taylor is both a real housewife and a real person. Who was experiencing existent terror in the moment that became a meme. And in one case you know that… what do yous do with it? Do you tell everyone you know? Do you take downwards iterations of the meme that you personally take shared? Or do y'all continue forward with the new life and context the internet has given this paradigm?

Ben: This is an idea we'll be revisiting later in the serial, and it's 1 Taylor herself is still grappling with.

Amory: Is it OK for me to have a express mirth at this or should I exist? Should I be request more questions before laughing potentially at someone else's expense or at someone else'southward hurting?

Taylor: I think my meme is a little unusual based on some of the other memes that are out at that place, considering that was such a terrifying moment I had 1 friend stopped me in a restaurant one day and he said, I experience and then bad. I sent you all those names and I had no idea what you were going through in that moment. And I just experience horrible. And, you know, it was really heartfelt. And I of form, just similar, don't worry, it doesn't have an effect on me. And of course, y'all didn't know. And merely I think some people who've come to the realization that that was such a traumatic time in my life, they feel a little guilty about laughing about it. Merely I don't want people to feel guilty most it. But that that was a whole different lifetime for me.

Ben: And as Taylor said, sometimes owning a joke is the best mode to ensure it can't ain you.

Ben: if you lot were to caption your own meme...

Taylor: Oh, my gosh.

Ben: ... And connect information technology to your like your life, the life that you've lived so far and play any role in the meme that you desire, whether it'due south yourself or the cat.

Taylor: That'southward how good question. I don't know what I would exercise if I were having a meme. Maybe would I let the cat yell at me for a change.

Amory: ENDLESS THREAD is a production of WBUR in Boston.

Ben: Want early tickets to events, swag, bonus content, pictures of Amory's home studio or my domicile fashion? Join our electronic mail list! You lot'll find it at wbur.org/endlessthread.

Amory: ALSO. Nosotros want to know what YOU retrieve is the near underrated meme. So Phone call us! 857-244-0338. Or better yet, record a voice memo and email it to endlessthread@wbur.org. Nosotros just might characteristic your phonation memo — and your meme suggestion — on the testify!

Ben: Large thanks to our "meme chorus":

Sarah Laiola teaches about digital culture and pattern at Littoral Carolina University.

Joan Donovan is Research Director at the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center.

Gianluca Stringhini studies online security disinformation and hate spoken language at Boston University.

Amanda Brennan has the extremely cool title of Internet/Meme Librarian.

Kenyatta Cheese co-founded the site Know Your Meme, and Don Caldwell is Editor in Principal.

Please get find their work and benefit from their meme genius.

Amory: Our serial and our bear witness is made past producers Nora Saks and Dean Russell. We are co-hosted by us, Amory Sivertson

Ben: And Ben Brock Johnson. This episode was edited by Maureen McMurray.

Amory: Mixing and Sound Design by Paul Vaitkus. Original music in this episode too by Paul Vaitkus.

Ben: Special thanks to, and additional production work from Josh Crane, Frank Hernandez, Kristin Torres, Sofie Kodner, and Rachel Carlson.

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Source: https://www.wbur.org/dearsugar/2021/11/20/woman-yelling-at-a-cat-meme

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