The Death Of A Meme: How Baby Nut Ruined Baby Memes

Just three months ago, the internet seemed obsessed with Baby Yoda and couldn't get enough of his apparent out-of-this-world cuteness. But in February 2020, when Baby Nut, the "reborn" mascot of Planters, was revealed, Twitter and Instagram could barely contain their hate for the character, expressing their disdain in posts threatening to grind the animated infant into peanut butter. However, the obsession with bringing unholy vengeance upon cute baby characters started long before that.

Back in August 2018, and an unknown memer set the Nae Nae Baby loose upon the internet. If you aren't familiar, it's probably because the meme wasn't very widespread. Nae Nae Baby was mainly contained within ironic communities such as iFunny, /r/okbuddyretard and certain parts of Instagram. The meme started as a mostly innocuous, yet extremely ironic, trend, but by January 2019 the Nae Nae Baby had been spammed so much that many were exhausted with the infant's shenanigans. Within one month, the Nae Nae Baby was rebranded into Cringe Ass Nae Nae Baby. The extremely viral "Cringe Ass Nae Nae Baby (2002-2004, shot to death)" meme lent credence to the idea that the time for Dead Baby Jokes 2.0 was more ripe than ever.

This iconic Cringe Ass Nae Nae Baby post started the "baby hate" meme trend.

One shouldn't be too quick to connect these memes with communities like the childfree movement, as the Cringe Ass Nae Nae Baby was spawned by the ironic memer crowd, with the success of the "shot to death" post being one of the major catalysts giving rise to the baby-hating genre of memes.

Near the end of 2019, the first episode of The Mandalorian had just premiered, and immediately made meme history. Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, along with the rest of the entire internet, became obsessed with the green bundle of cuteness that is Baby Yoda. With this obsession came memes, fanart and merchandise, cementing the character at the biggest hit Disney+ could hope for.

But the sky was not totally clear, as something dark was looming on the horizon. Viral posts began popping up in which people stated they want to beat Baby Yoda. The pot slowly simmered until early December, when Twitter user @moretylenol made a historic post that changed how people treat baby meme characters forever.

me when i catch baby yoda pic.twitter.com/itJGE0xFQw

— Name (@moretylenol) December 4, 2019

The meme, which gained over three million views on Twitter alone, spreads like wildfire on Instagram, YouTube and everywhere else, with copycat variations coming shortly after. This time, the sentiment was contrarian (hating popular things can sometimes make you cool) and gave off a strong "I wanted to destroy something beautiful" vibe, as shocking boomers and Gen Xers with violent irony and cynicism has always been a favorite pastime among zoomers.

In January this year, the news site Mother Jones published an article titled "I Want to Punch Baby Yoda and Science Backs Me Up," which cited the phenomenon of "cute aggression" : a superficially aggressive behavior caused by seeing something cute such as a human baby or a young animal.

Not long after, ironic mememongers turned their attention to Ice Age Baby, a meme with much less mainstream appeal than Baby Yoda. Unlike the green infant from The Mandalorian, who merely adopted the hate, Ice Age Baby was born in it, molded by it. By that we mean that it was born from a viral tweet by @Kein68Mistker and molded by the Facebook group "I hate the baby from Ice Age."

Memes about hating the Ice Age Baby took off in January after a viral Twitter post

Then, in February, came the Superbowl, the grand finale. About one week prior, the American snack company Planters killed their iconic mascot, Mr. Peanut, in an unfortunate car crash. In a Superbowl commercial, they brought it back as a baby version of itself, which seemed clearly inspired by the overwhelming, yet already tainted, success of Baby Yoda.

In failing to notice the budding mainstream dislike for baby memes, by blatantly trying to replicate the success of Baby Yoda, and by literally trying to force a meme, Planters opened the floodgates they likely did not know existed. From the get-go, Twitter feeds were filled with posts in which people described inventive ways of hurting the Baby Nut as much as possible, from simply beating the crap out of it to crushing it into a very delicious baby peanut paste and consuming it with gusto.

The reveal of Baby Nut was met with a vocal dislike for the character

Baby Nut became a statement about what ultimately becomes of any meme format: while it may be popular and loved at the start, it becomes more and more disliked as people catch on and start exploiting it for internet points. Baby characters were ultimately the three-step illustration of that, with Baby Yoda being loved, Baby Sonic being tolerated and Baby Nut becoming the most hated thing on the internet for several days.

To say that the Baby Nut is solely responsible for ruining baby memes for everyone would be incorrect: the character was only the final nail in this coffin. If anything, the case serves as a reminder that neither those that are extremely online, nor mainstream audiences want their memes commercialized, fabricated and forced, be it babies or anything else.