MEMES, Bonus: Overly Attached Girlfriend

Endless Thread

WBUR

Reddit, Technology

4.2 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2021

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Unlike some of the other everyday-people-turned-memes featured in this series, Laina Morris leaned in big-time when her parody entry in a Justin Bieber fan contest turned into the epic meme Overly Attached Girlfriend in 2012. The screenshot from the video that launched Laina’s face into online ubiquity featured an intentionally off-putting open-mouthed, wide-eyed stare. She continued making YouTube videos until 2019 when she announced that she was ending her online career to address her mental health. We hear more about Laina’s decision to open up publicly about her depression and anxiety and why she’s not tempted to get back in front of a camera.

Transcript

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0:00.0	WBUR's last scene is back with surprising news stories about people, places, and things
0:06.1	that have gone missing, all told by tenacious public radio storytellers who refuse to
0:11.4	let mysteries go unsolved.
0:13.7	Don't miss season 3, out now.
0:16.2	Follow last scene wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:20.2	Produced by the iLab at WBUR Boston.
0:35.2	A few months ago, as we were learning everything we could about memes, Ben and I sat down with
0:58.7	Lena, who has a particular take on them.
1:11.0	My name is Lena Morris.
1:13.5	I am better known as the overly attached girlfriend, which is a meme on the internet.
1:20.3	I did YouTube full time for like seven to eight years and now I'm just hanging out in Arizona
1:28.5	with my dogs, you know, quarantining still and that's my life.
1:37.4	I'm Ben Brock Johnson.
1:38.7	I'm Amary Seavrinson and today we're bringing you another bonus endless thread meme series
1:43.4	episode, a conversation with the person behind one of the most famous memes, overly attached
1:49.3	girlfriend.
1:50.4	Which if you haven't seen or can't remember is a classic, it's an image macro with impact
1:56.2	font, that style of meme and the images of Lena posing as well and overly attached girlfriend.
2:03.9	So picture a wide eyed woman in her early 20s, an odd forced smile headcocked to the
2:10.1	side as if she's kind of interrogating you.
2:13.2	Or like maybe you're a pet and she's about to like hug you to death.
2:19.9	Exactly.
	...

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