The cover of ‘The New Yorker ', meme 10 years later

On June 9, 2008, 'The New Yorker' published, as with each print run, a scathing cover .In it you can see a bookseller opening her shop while the neighbor next door receives an Amazon package.With it, illustrator Adrian Tomine wanted to denounce the unstoppable progress of the company founded by Jeff Bezos and the destruction of jobs.

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Nearly 10 years later , Jose Rosales rescued the cover in a tweet."Brutal cover", commented briefly.In a few hours, the tweet went viral, and cover memes appeared as mushrooms.Who subscribes to these lines He also made one, of course.We live in times of meme.

The cover and structure of the meme

The jokes, the covers and the memes have structure, although when we see it maybe the grace is diluted.Tomine has been working for years so that her critics of humoracido leave as thrown in the'The New Yorker 'and other means.And it is a genius.He can explain with an image what he considers a social problem.

At that time in 2008, Amazon was beginning to be seen as a problem for small businesses.To do this, it was necessary to go back a few years, when the giant was called Cadabra and began selling books.Bezos chose this product over CDs, computers, programs and videos.Books are affordable and there is a huge variety.

In addition, they can be cataloged by many parameters (target age, length, author, publisher, theme...) This is a perfect product to set up an online store worldwide in which the frontpage is an ad with personalized content.As I showed later with Goodreads, it is possible to use data mining to make recommendations.

Now Amazon sells everything, and many readers would not be able to understand the 2008 critique.But it was clear: Amazon ruins the neighborhood bookstore.Remember that in November 2007 Amazon had launched a revolutionary product.It was called Kindle was going to erase books from the face of the earth.

If the cover of Adrian Tomine is even more violent, it is because the bookseller and the Amazon client look at each other.Meanwhile, the deliveryman remains impassive."The thing does not go with me." And that is precisely the structure of the meme:

There is a desirable product (package and delivery).

A person who wants it (client).

There is another agent that falls behind (bookseller).

Indeed, it is the same construction of the meme'distracted boyfriend.Maybe that's why we also find crossovers interesting like the one below:

cover new yorker pic.twitter.com/sAsZ3xyapU

-nabysa (@nabysa) May 13, 2018

The important thing is to criticize the cover

Perhaps the Spanish-speaking culture and the love of constructive criticism, but the answers were swift.And there has been everything: defenders of the internet-based business model, booksellers criminalizing Bezos' company, those who place it on a pedestal...and who does not leave puppet with a head.

They highlight the answers of those who absolutely tip everything.For example, there were many comments (and memes) on the size of the pants of the dealer .In most cases, they placed him as a victim more of the system.One to laugh at, of course.

cover new yorker pic.twitter.com/MSNyku52S2

-nabysa (@nabysa) May 13, 2018

Nor did the criticisms at the time the store opened the store ., the distribution of Amazon to individuals (she lives in a portal) takes place at the last hour.First, the shops, which close to eat, and then the private deliveries when returning from work.Some jokes commented that the fault of sinking was of the bookseller.Madruga, man!

pic.twitter.com/oVONRIDIFQ

-Mr.Jimvill (@SrJimvill) May 14, 2018

The content of the box was another of the great targets.Why does everyone think it is a book? Weapons, stuffed animals or sex toys were some of the bets.Even Pepe Colubi I contribute to criticism of the way we understand the cover.Curiously, without saying any obscenity.

My interpretation: the girl has asked for a gun by Amazon to end the gathering of hipsters who stay every night drinking until so many in the warehouse from the library.pic.twitter.com/2elR5DZXEn

-Pepe Colubi (@pepecolubi) May 13, 2018

Twisting the meme to the limit

As with the meme'Distracted boyfriend ', which we had the opportunity to comment long ago, we also found metachistes or jokes at various levels, for example, changing the story or giving it an extra twist .The meme below explains with a rather gross humor the cover itself by speaking to its protagonists:

pic.twitter.com/mP9uqBfFHK

-Al Pacino (@ElPatochadas) May 12, 2018

In a comment to Colubi's tweet, another tweeter proposed an alternative by modifying Tomine's work.In this new scene, the dealer will deliver a package to the bookstore but it is closed .Go to the neighbor and at that moment the customer appears (which in turn is the bookseller).It makes sense if we consider that a good part of booksellers has a seller account on Amazon.

Well I imagined something else like that...pic.twitter.com/KlUcZ19I6A

-Chema Garcia (@ugh_fm) May 13, 2018

A lot of the jokes are too rude and we have preferred to leave them on Twitter.Others turn showcase books into objects that directly We can't put here.Fortunately, there are those that maintain a relatively acceptable level for PEGI 13:

pic.twitter.com/vBiTzbUm2m

-That Car (@Aquel_Carche) May 13, 2018

The meme based on the cover of Adrian Tomine has taken 10 years to appear.This makes it more difficult to determine where the next joke will appear .As Antonio Guillem, author of the photograph that gave rise to the meme'Distracted boyfriend 'said, "the merit is not even mine, it is the type that created the metaphor." Tomine nailed the expansion of Amazon, but the meme is not yours.

Images | The New Yorker

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