Chewbacca Mom Is Pissing Me Off
Enough already.
You remember Chewbacca Mom, right? The woman who put on a Chewbacca mask, laughed and then became the most popular woman in America? Everyone loved her! You couldn't turn around without seeing her somewhere. Mom appeared on "The Late Late Show With James Corden," visited Lucasfilm and went to the CMT Awards. Well, she's been around for a couple weeks now and I'm totally over it.
Let's review. Chewbacca Mom (Candace Payne) is famous because she put on a mask of Chewbacca and laughed. That's all.
Seriously, she found this mask at a Kohl's and thought it was fun because it makes the Chewbacca noise when you open your mouth. She felt the need to tell the world several times in her live Facebook video. Don't worry, Candace, no one thought you were making the Chewbacca noise yourself—because you are a human woman, not Chewbacca.
So, when the video first came out, everyone LOVED HER SO MUCH because, "Aww, this is pure joy!" Ugh, stop. Both mom and the rest of the world need to calm down. But no. She went on to become one of the most popular people in the world with a record-breaking live Facebook video. Fine, everyone gets their 15 minutes, and most people get it for something stupid, so here we are.
At this point, you're probably saying "But Dominic, look how happy she is! Can't you just let her have her fun?" No, no I cannot.
Do you know how much money Chewbacca Mom has made in less than a month? Take a guess. Did you guess $400,000? No, of course you didn't, because that would be insane—except that's how much she's made! A whopping $400,000 for putting on a mask and laughing. People complain all the time about the Kardashians being famous for nothing...well that's exactly what is happening here.
That $400,000 includes full-ride scholarships to Southeastern University for her entire family. Think about that for a minute. This woman puts on a mask and laughs for a few minutes and HER KIDS get full ride scholarships. Meanwhile, I'll be paying off my student loans until I'm 55, but sure, let's give these kids totally free education for just being lucky enough to come out of the uterus of a crazy person.
She's also charging (and receiving) $20 for autographs. Think about that. This woman, who has LITERALLY DONE NOTHING is not only charging for autographs, she's charging as much as a Chili's 2 for $20—and there you get an appetizer and two meals! Here you get a piece of paper you'll probably throw out in a few months when you look at it and think, "Who the fuck is Candace Payne?"
But really, this one is on you, people of the world. Why the heck are you giving this woman $20 for her signature? I mean...seriously, what is wrong with you? Stop giving her money for something that is going to be useless in a few weeks! And no, I don't care that she gave part of the money from the autographs to charity. Maybe she could have just given some of the $2,500 Kohl's gift card to charity...
But, let's get real here for a second. Part of the reason that Chewbacca Mom is so terrible, is because this whole thing is white privilege at its peak.
This is Kayla Newman, or as she's known online, Peaches Monroee. If you watch the Vine, which was uploaded in 2014, you'll notice she talks about her eyebrows being on fleek. "Sure Dominic, a lot of people talk about their eyebrows being on fleek." You're absolutely right, but do you know why? It's because of Peaches Monroee. That's right, thanks to Olivia Muenter's deep investigative dive over at Bustle, we can trace the popularity of the phrase back to this Vine right here. But, unless you're an active member of Black Twitter, you've probably never heard of Peaches Monroee.
That seems odd, doesn't it? That someone who basically created a popular slang term that showed up all over the place has almost no name recognition? Unfortunately, it's not all that surprising. As Gillian Branstetter points out over at The Daily Dot, black social media users often get ignored, except in the world of Black Twitter.
Somehow, Peaches Monroee, who literally gave the world a word, as she so aptly points out in an interview with Fader Magazine, has seen nothing come from it. Yet Candace Payne, who literally just laughed, is somehow $400,000 richer.
Peaches Monroee is hardly the only example.
According to Pew, black people are more active on Twitter than white people—so then why is it that Black Twitter is so often thought as not the norm on Twitter, when in reality, it's the majority. There's been plenty written about Black Twitter by people much more qualified to speak on than this white dude, but take a chance to look at the subreddit /r/BlackPeopleTwitter sometime, because I'm sure there are some memes on there you've seen all over the place, but their originators get no credit.
Meanwhile, Candace Payne's kids are all set for college, because their white middle class mom found something funny. Seems fair.