Role Play
Daddy, Mother, Babygirl, and 30-Year-Old Teenage Girl constitute the Internets ideal nuclear unit.
First, the Internet made Daddy.
(She couldnt help it: She was born to slay.)
And finally, the 30-Year-Old Teenage Girl arrived, little bows already fastened to her hair.
She kept her distance from the others, awestruck and unbearably horny for them.
Although these archetypes emerged from varied subcultures largely queer spaces and fandoms theyve merged into the mainstream.
And while memes are generally transient, these boast unusual staying power.
But they live on, albeit in a more universally accepted form.
Parasocial, meet parafamilial.
But also it might be beautiful.
Youre like, This shouldnt work, and yet my heart is warm, she says.
Theyre both so f*cked up together.
People who are f*cked up together: Thats a family, Babygirl.
Daddy
A Daddy is chiseled.
Strong enough to crush you, but he would never well, maybe if you asked him to.
(See: Theraftofstoriesin which male celebrities were asked how they felt about being labeled as such.)
After all, isnt it a little creepy to label your celebrity crush Daddy?
Does everyone with a Twitter account have Daddy issues?
And in some ways, what were seeing is just like this; it just creeps back in.
Perhaps it was inevitable that Daddy would arrive, tearing through our psychic boundaries withTom of Finland-style biceps.
Daddy was the first to arrive, and is now the first to fade.
Even Pascal, once the preeminent Daddy, has recently been Babygirlified.
Mother
Mother is good at many things: slaying, smizing, quote-giving.
What Mother is not good at?
In a past life, Mother was the House Mother, a figure in the LGBTQ Ballroom community.
Shes since been transmuted, interwoven with diva worship and flattened by mainstream-ification and meme-ification.
Somewhere along the way, she shed her maternal instinct like a snake sheds its skin.
Again, thats also quite queer-coded.
As Daisy Alioto, writer and Dirt Media founder, says: Social media is a regression fantasy.
A lot of women have resonated with the Im just a girl mentality because it offers this escape route.
Young women staring down the barrel of adulthood are faced with a particularly grim image.
Marriage, were learning from our peers and elders, can also be a letdown.
Theres been this infantilization of celebrities online for a very long time, Cao says.
Zayn, dont smoke.
Theres also just something fun about Babygirling white adult men.
