my favorite meme: jiafei & cupcakke remixes
As the carnival host for this month, I thought it only appropriate to get my own submission out as soon as possible. I was procrastinating on doing so because I was dreading making the choice. There are just way too many great memes out there and so much depth to them that I’d like to discuss, but I’m a horrible writer when I get excited and would never bring myself to finish it within the month. Deadlines are my worst enemy and at the same time the only way I get anything done, just last minute.
In the end, I decided to pick something light hearted and really funny in my opinion: Cupcakke and Jiafei remixes. Cupcakke is an American rapper who makes very explicit music and she is popular among the LGBTQ+ community. She is basically an icon who actually supports the community and is not just idolized by it like Nicki Minaj. Someone in 2021 or so decided to remix her voice on popular songs and they were lowkey good. It sparked a whole movement of people turning any pop song into a Cupcakke remix which unfolded around the same time as a mythical Jiafei came to be. Jiafei remixes were a parallel phenomenon to Cupcakke phenomenon and they often complimented each other in TikTok’s meme culture.
This video by Joe Regrets and its sequel are good primers on who/what Jiafei is. To make a long story short, Jiafei wasn’t a real person and I still don’t think she exists despite an account on TikTok claiming to be her with video evidence of her existence. She was a mashup of two Douyin influencers and for the longest time all we had from her was the following image:
An alleged selfie of Jiafei
Jiafei made herself felt in videos through a scream taken out of a trashy Asian plastic utensils tech advert for protective gear against oil in a frying pan or something. Those edited ads in the style of YouTube Poop were the precursors to the Jiafei remixes. Another precursor that sort of got merged into the Jiafei lore was the skinny girl who would flex her skinny side profile by walking sideways in a slim opening or between people. She kind of became synonymous with Jiafei and the Jiafei Scream which were both incorporated into the Cupcakke remixes. When seemingly the flops of FlopTok (the side of TikTok that produced the Jiafei and Cupcakke remixes) ran out of pop music to remix, they began remixing memes and soundbites like the following one:
There is so much to the FlopTok lore that I couldn’t and probably shouldn’t include here as this post is already profane enough, but to make another story short and presentable: FlopTok created an alternate universe in which Floptropica was the homeland of Flops and Potaxie was the country that Floptropica was at war with in a series of Badussy Wars. A lot of (queer) influencers and queer icons were included in the cast of this fictional universe. The Haunted House and a random fiverr woman who took commissions for video messages were also featured in it. (If you don’t know what the Haunted House is, keep it at that. It’s horror of a different genre than the one you know from cinema.)
Anyway, that’s all from me. I hope this was an enjoyable read for you as it was for me to write!