*deep sigh* A 19-Year-Old Twitter Stan May Have Married A 90-Year-Old Man

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OK, Let’s Talk About The BeansHype Thing

I’ve received a few messages from Garbage Day readers about this. I want to thank Kyle, in particular, for sending me over a couple huge threads. This story is, honestly, almost too dark for me to cover. But it’s beginning to show up in memes and this newsletter is meant to help you, the reader, understand what the heck it is people are talking about online. So now that I think I’ve gotten the gist of what happened here, I’m going to do my best to walk you through the bare minimum you’ll need to know to understand any jokes about this you might bump into. I will not be using real names for reasons that should become obvious here.

• A 19-year-old woman going by username BeansHype on Twitter was supposedly working at a senior living home where she met a 90-year-old man.

• The 90-year-old man had been widowed in 2018 and, per BeansHype’s tweets, may be suffering from the early stages of dementia.

• Around July, BeansHype started tweeting about how she wanted to marry the 90-year-old man.

• She also tweeted about having a sexual relationship with the 90 year old.

• BeansHype was also very active on Stan Twitter. A lot of her followers were very excited about her marrying 90 year old.

• Many of the comments from her mutuals were cheering her on and telling her to “get that bag.”

• This week, according to photos BeansHype tweeted out, she and the 90 year old were married.

Up until the photos hit Twitter, I think most people thought she was just tweeting outrageous nonsense for clout, which is fairly common on Stan Twitter. There’s also still a chance this is all made up, but a lot of users have been able to sadly corroborate a lot of the info she tweeted over the last six months and most of it adds up.

Alright, there you have it. That’s the whole BeansHype thing. It’s really bad and I’m sorry to be the one to explain it to you. She deactivated her account after posting the wedding photos because, obviously, people were horrified.

I’d say something like this happens every 18 months or so, though. I would put this in the same kind of internet story category as the Tumblr witch who stole bones from a graveyard, the woman on Twitter who butt-chugged cough medicine, the Taylor Swift stan who got arrested for refusing to join the Israeli Defense Force, or the guy who had sex with a turkey. What is it about the unlimited networking potential of the digital world that makes us want to use it to do the weirdest and darkest shit imaginable. Who knows! But now we have a new one for the canon, I guess.

Here’s A Good Meme

Some Data On Fandoms And Race

I was sent this thread by my friend Ellie. I feel like any chance to get a serious and substantial look at what online fandoms are and how they work and who is in them is really valuable. The thread, written by Twitter user @cara_messina collects data from Archive Of Our Own, one of the largest fan fiction websites on the internet. Messina graphed out shipping data, that is, which romantic pairings in the Game Of Thrones fandom are most and least popular.

As you can see, it reveals the overwhelming whiteness of the fandom. It also probably reveals the overwhelming whiteness of Game Of Thrones, as well. (The books are slightly better in this regard, but not by much.)

But it’s worth jumping over and reading Messina’s whole thread. It’s an interesting way to think about online communities. And it also provides more insight into how certain fandoms can become radicalized (*cough* Star Wars *cough*).

“As fans, which characters do we value,” Messina concludes. “Who do we ship and fantasize about? What systems of power may be entangled in our everyday fandom practices?”

A Very Important Question From Reddit

The comments underneath this are really lovely. One user, claiming to be a retired zookeeper, said, yes, you can give a gorilla hot chocolate, but you probably shouldn’t.

A few commenters pointed out that gorillas can probably process chocolate the same as humans, but they might have problems with the milk.

As for why this question was asked in the first place, well, the fact the original poster’s user name is u/Growingpothead20 might be a clue. But he also answered a question about it in the comments:

This New York Fed Tweet

When I first saw this, I felt like I was receiving a secret message from the 9th-dimensional beings that run our reality simulation. It has that really weird fever logic of truly great bad internet content. I tried googling what “LIBOR” is. It stands for the London Inter-bank Offered Rate and it is an interest-rate average, I think. And we — America? — are transferring away from it in 2021? And we’re switching to something called SOFR, which is stands for Secured Overnight Financing Rate? And it is a different kind of interest rate?

Anyways, that’s all nonsense words to me. But I do understand memes! And I was very curious why the New York Fed was under the impression that internet memes had decided that it takes 15 months to forget someone you love. So I googled that too. And, dear reader, what I discovered is honestly so wild that I’m actually losing my mind.

These are the memes that tweet is referencing. Like Pinterest/A Softer World-style heartbreak memes. I’m obsessed with this. The idea that the New York Fed social media manager was like, “oh yeah, you know those pics of people holding hands that say you forget people you were in love with after 15 months, that’s a great set up to warn people about the upcoming LIBOR transition.”

Although, I am now realizing that through the course of writing this, I have, in a small way, learned more about the LIBOR transition, so maybe this tweet sort of worked?

I Just Realized I Don’t Think I Ever Dropped Yorkshire Kylie Jenner In Here

Sorry. Please watch it. I love it.

Happy Birthday, “God I Wish That Were Me”

I celebrated this meme anniversary on Garbage Day last year too. Wow, reading that entry back, it sure seems like my writing sure was a lot more spunky and optimistic last year. I wonder what happened between then and now to make me so negative about the world. Oh well!!!

I love this meme. As I wrote last year, if I had to pick one specific internet thing to say is my favorite, it would probably be a dead tie between this DeviantArt screenshot and that one Vine of the dogs driving in a car.

If you don’t know the backstory between BigJB21’s “god i wish that were me” comment, it was posted underneath a fetish pic in 2012. Specifically, this fetish pic:

Why do I think this is so funny? Well, explaining why stuff on the internet is like trying to look at someone’s face in a dream. The harder you try, the weirder things get. But I do think there’s something both completely deranged and also totally innocent about it. Imagine logging on to DeviantArt, seeing this photo of a woman holding a miniaturized adult man in a diaper, and thinking, “god i wish that were me” and just leaving that as a comment? Imagine living your life with that sense of freedom. I feel like that’s the kind of energy we all need to have in 2021. Just open and honest communication about all of our bizarre desires.

Not Sure I’m Ready For This Kind Of Nostalgia, To Be Honest

P.S. here’s a truly awful Tumblr post.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***