There have been countless renditions of Madonna's 1989 hit single “Like a Prayer.”
But if you open TikTok right now, chances are the one that will come up fastest is a choral version recorded for Marvel's recent film Deadpool & Wolverine. And the Muppet that pops up with it? Well, he's more than an integral part of TikTok's latest meme. He's evidence that even TikTok jokes can't escape the internet's ongoing discussion around healthcare in the US
While Tik Tok's latest meme doesn't have an official name, it's highly recognizable on for-you-pages by the appearance of Pepe the King Prawn, the wild-haired Spanish Muppet character first introduced in the 1990s as part of Muppets Tonight. The format is concise: soundtracked by the sweet choral tones of “Like A Prayer,” TikTok creators use a frazzled photo of Pepe to post their wildest and most embarrassing stories. The reigning champ at the moment is a story from creator Megan Chacalos (@meganchacalos), who has been dubbed the Olive Oil Girl online after regaling her followers with a story of accidentally knocking herself out on a slick trail of olive oil. The attempt to get silky smooth hair ended with her dad being woken up twice because he was convinced the house was being broken into, and Chacalos going to school the next day with an olive oil and saran-wrapped head.
While Chacalos' story wasn't the first using the Pepe / “Like A Prayer” format, her video has over 56 million views and 7.3 million likes and has influenced a wave of similar confessions. Other popular additions include a girl mistaking a bloody cast of her uterus for a miscarriage, a girl accidentally eating bad molé and giving herself catastrophic food poisoning, and a college student wiping out on her longboard and having a murder of crows descend on the wreckage of her lunch — and herself. There are over 150,000 TikToks posted with the 58-second sound clip, which doesn't include the other thousands of users ranking, commenting, and generally guffawing over some of the videos.
On its own, its is a pretty blatant example of how TikTok's popular meme formats allow creators to connect over moments that only become funny with time. (I doubt Olive Oil Girl was laughing on her way to her locker that first morning.) But take a look at the wider discussions of the past week, and it's clear that another reason why the meme has gotten so big is because it's a humorous avenue for people to discuss, and joke, about their discontent and problems with the US healthcare system.
Last week, a gunman shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a midtown Manhattan hotel, killing Thompson and sparking a massive manhunt from New York police. But online, the murder was met with callousness and jokes that many people said came directly from their frustrations and uneasiness with the US's current for-profit healthcare system. This system often disenfranchises clients and can leave families crippled with mountains of debt, and people responded in kind to news of Thompson's death. “Sending prior authorization, denied claims, collections & prayers to his family,” one “As someone covered under UnitedHealthcare I can completely understand the actions taken,” tweeted another. In the New Yorkerauthor Jia Tolentino noted that UnitedHealthcare has the highest claim-denial rate among any private insurance in her article “A Man Was Murdered in Cold Blood and You're Laughing?” A suspect, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, has since been taken into custody and charged with second-degree murder. But that hasn't stopped people on the internet from thirsting over his mugshots, life tidbits, and continuing to joke about his alleged actions. And while the jokes continue, the focus remains fixed away from the shooter and on the industry that Thompson represented.
That's why it's no surprise that some of the biggest, and most memorable Pepe The King Prawn memes revolve around users experiencing health crises and humiliations, specifically. In fact, many of the humorous stories seem to be exacerbated by people's worries over healthcare costs — like one college student who flew home while feeling deathly ill to visit a doctor covered by her insurance and ended up vomiting into her sock on her Uber ride, or a Target worker who required emergency gallbladder removal surgery because her pain was dismissed by an ER doctor and follow up appointments were too expensive.
Posting a photo of a Muppet and a healthcare scare obviously isn't something that will single-handedly change America's for-profit healthcare system. But for a social-media generation raised on the idea of posting through it — posting memes and jokes even in dire circumstances — there's a clear commiseration that comes with the Pepe the King Prawn meme, proving to people that even in their most devistating moments, they aren't alone. And in the meantime, let the choir sing, I guess.
