About

Grimes' Pregnancy Announcement refers to edited topless photos of Canadian musician Grimes with an image of a fetus on her stomach which was posted to her Twitter and Instagram account in January 2020. The photos were quickly confirmed to be a pregnancy announcement by Grimes in an Instagram comment. Twitter users responded by comparing her baby to an alien.

Origin

On January 8th, 2020, Grimes^[1] tweeted photos of herself captioned with a Saturn emoji and a sword emoji (shown below). The tweet gained over 9,400 likes within an hour. The photo was also posted to Instagram^[2] and gained over 113,000 likes in an hour.

Spread

On January 8th, 2020, Grimes commented on her Instagram post saying "being knocked up is a very feral & war-like state of being" (shown below, left). Twitter user @JakeLindner^[3] tweeted, "Imagine your dad is multi billionaire smartest man alive Elon Musk and your mom is time traveling from-the-future influential artist Grimes.. can’t believe she’s pregnant😭 The POWER!!!!" (shown below, right). The tweet garnered over 60 likes in an hour.

That day, Twitter user @stone1492^[4] tweeted, "Elon Musk and Grimes' gender reveal party is definitely gonna involve them blowing up the moon" and received over 480 likes in an hour (shown below).

Baby Parodies

Following the announcement, social media users joked about the pregnancy by posting humorous parodies imagining what the baby might look like. For example, Twitter user @MYSTIC7^[5] posted an image of the Pokémon Mewtwo in a test tube, gaining over 130 retweets and 1,600 likes (shown below, left). User @WinEdwards^[6] joked that the couple would give the baby acid when it asked for a snap, gaining over 490 retweets and 3,300 likes (shown below, right).

On Reddit, user Raliadose posted a Baby Name Chalkboard List parody on /r/Grimes (shown below, left), as did user detrituz (shown below, right).

Others posted video parodies of the announcement. Twitter user @praisejeebus posted a clip from Toy Story parodying the baby, gaining over 300 retweets and 2,500 likes (shown below, top). User @furbclit posted a video of a woman screaming at a giant fish, gaining over 720 retweets and 3,600 likes (shown below, right).

Influenza Musk

Influenza Musk is the rumored name given to Grimes and Elon Musk's child in April 2020. Following a joke tweet implying that Grimes could be in labor on April 20th, a fake news headline was created a few days later claiming that the baby's birth certificate was leaked. "Influenza Musk" began to trend on Twitter and generate more memes akin to the ones made during Grimes' pregnancy announcement.

Birth

On May 4th, 2020 Grimes gave birth to a boy. Elon Musk updated fans on Twitter in a thread regarding Tesla. Twitter user @neilson_gaelic commented, "News on baby 👶🏻?" to which Musk^[6] replied "A few hours away!" and then "Mom & baby all good" which gained over 34,100 likes and 2,600 retweets in a day (shown below, left). Twitter user @priscillabanana^[7] asked for the baby's name to which Musk replied: "X Æ A-12 Musk" which received over 39,500 likes and 4,00 retweets in a day.

Early the next morning Elon Musk^[8][9] posted two photos of the baby (shown below). The tweet garnered over 35,500 likes and 42,200 likes respectively that day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

^[1] Twitter – Grimezsz

^[2] Instagram – Grimes

^[3] Twitter – JakeLindner

^[4] Twitter – stone1492

^[5] Twitter – MYSTIC7

^[6] Twitter – elonmusk

^[7] Twitter – Elonmusk

^[8] Twitter – elonMusk

^[9] Twitter – elonmusk