If you’ve opened Twitter today, you’ll likely have been inundated with a single theme: feral hogs.
Yep, when I stirred, and flipped open my phone this morning, my feed was filled with memes about garden-roaming, kid-attacking wild swine. I was utterly confuddled.
After a bit of digging, I found the tweet that started it all:
Legit question for rural Americans – How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?
— William McNabb (@WillieMcNabb) August 4, 2019
Now, anyone who spends any sort of time online knows memes aren’t newsworthy by themselves. Yes, they’re an integral and longstanding part of internet culture, but are generally fast moving and light by nature.
But the feral hog meme is different. It stood out in a way that’s representative of a very online way of dealing with tragedy.
Of course, things on the internet spread quickly, but the feral hog appeared faster than most. When I went to sleep, it was nowhere. When I woke up, it was unavoidable. This graph from Jason Baumgartner highlights its sheer scale:
How a #meme gets born and raised on Twitter. Number of tweets mentioning “feral hogs” (five minute windows).#feralhogs #dataviz #datascience pic.twitter.com/pc6x1SYaVU
— Jason Baumgartner (@jasonbaumgartne) August 6, 2019
But the real meat of the meme is its context. You don’t need reminding about the two horrendous mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton over the weekend.
The origin of the meme (the aforementioned tweet) is a ridiculous response to a post condemning the ownership of “assault weapons.”
Whenever a mass shooting occurs, the issue of gun regulation rears its head, yet nothing ever changes. Hell, I don’t even live in the US and I find the discussion demoralizing and exhausting. No other country in the developed world has the same lack of gun regulation and the same sort of murders. I mean, as of October 2018, 61 percent of Americans wanted stricter gun control.
But everything stays the same.
The feral hog meme isn’t just about making fun of someone who believes they need a machine gun to protect their children from a swarm of swine — although that is definitely part of the joy. No, it’s something more than that. It’s a way of taking control of the uncontrollable.
There’s a powerlessness in watching the same awful, preventable thing happen time and time again, and no one in power lifting a finger. It’s a dreadful, crushing feeling, but humour gives people an escape, a way of finding some connection and humanity in a monstrous situation.
The feral hog meme is a mass in-joke, a reversion of order, a serious point swaddled in mirth. In other words, it’s seriously online.
It’s the way we make sense of tragedy today. It encapsulates the best side of the internet.
In my mind, there’s only one way to conclude this. So, please, sit back, and enjoy some of my favorite feral hog memes:
stages of Feral Hog Twitter
1. confusion seeing everyone tweet “30 to 50 feral hogs”
2. find the tweet & assume it’s satire
3. read the tweet again & realize it’s for real
4. like and RT only feral hog tweets for 12 hrs straight
5. become 30 to 50 feral hogs— Jess Dweck (@TheDweck) August 6, 2019
my neck
my back
my 30-50 feral hog attack— Dan Douglas (@dandouglas) August 5, 2019
bröther may i run into the yärd pic.twitter.com/T0ygzrE91m
— david hasselhogg (@jamesak9182) August 5, 2019
ME, SEEING 29 FERAL HOGS RUNNING INTO MY YARD: Careful now, kids.
ME, SEEING EXACTLY ONE ADDITIONAL HOG RUNNING INTO MY YARD: pic.twitter.com/6MTXSDK8qb
— Grant Brisbee (@GrantBrisbee) August 5, 2019
In ~72 hours this will be completely incomprehensible pic.twitter.com/QljE5XSWHM
— Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) August 5, 2019
I am a:
⚪️ male
⚪️ female
? 30-50 feral hogsSeeking:
⚪️ male
⚪️ female
? a yard with unsupervised small children to run in to within 3-5 minutes— AshPop (@BarbiturateCat) August 5, 2019
take me down to the paradise city
where the hogs are feral and there’s 30-50— fuck the sun #jft96 (@thedanstringer) August 5, 2019
AITA: Me and 29-49 of my friends rush this guy’s garden every morning trying to eat his kids
— Edcrab (@Edcrab_) August 5, 2019
30-50 feral hogs? At this time of year? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your yard? pic.twitter.com/h1qtP2IFbq
— Lil’ Kim Jong-un (@James__Nesbitt) August 5, 2019
This is Just to Say
I have eaten
the kids
that were in
the backyardWho you
probably left for
three to
five minutesForgive me
I am thirty to
fifty
feral hogs— Leigh “Birch” Harlen? (@LeighHarlen) August 6, 2019
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.