“Honestly, some of the memes and comments felt a little off sometimes, but there was nothing that really warned about how bad it was about to get.” Sometime last year, Jones, who uses they/ them pronouns, started seeing memes and comments that were a lot off. “I joined because, at first, it seemed like a fairly fun, wholesome group,” Lyra Jones, a 31-year-old parent from Green Bay, Wisconsin, told me. But among the largest of them all is “Bluey Memes□,” a community of more than 300,000 Facebook users that has in recent months become a partisan free-for-all. “Adult Bluey Fans” comprises about 250,000 members, some of whom are childless. “Bandits: The Bluey Group for Dads” hosts 78,000 members of a special fathers’ fandom for the show. Some are for discussing episodes or sharing tips on where to find the latest merch and toys. “It was the picture of Bandit in the MAGA hat that made me quit,” she told me.įacebook has scores of Bluey groups. By August, Speiller felt that she’d seen enough. One post from April shows Bluey at the park with Bandit, who is pointing out of frame and saying, “Look at these butthurt groomers.” Another meme from May had a friend of Bluey’s thinking, “It’s okay to be white.” By then, the drift had become a rush: Fat-shaming Bluey memes had appeared, alongside anti-nose-ring memes, homophobic memes, Roe-reversal memes, and many more. At first the change was subtle-a slow drift into the culture wars. Speiller was not herself an active poster in the group, and saw only the memes from other people that happened to pop up in her News Feed.īut at some point this past spring, Speiller noticed that the Facebook group, called “Bluey Memes□,” had taken on a different character. Here was Bluey, the six-year-old dog and title character, looking exasperated and saying, “But I don’t want a life lesson! I just want an ice cream!” And there was Bandit, her beleaguered father-dog, drinking coffee at a table with a sign that reads, Bluey is a show for adults, disguised as a kid’s show. Two years later, by then a dedicated fan of the wise and beloved Australian cartoon, she joined a Facebook group for Bluey memes. Samantha Speiller, of Round Rock, Texas, started watching Bluey with her young daughter in the early months of the pandemic. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Produced by ElevenLabs and NOA, News Over Audio, using AI narration.
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