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Elmo, the fuzzy little red muppet from Sesame Street who refers to himself in the third person, posted on X last week. “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”
Many of the 20,000 responses (!) were, uh, revealing!
“Not good, Elmo, not good,” went one of the standard replies. Others worried about climate anxiety, about getting laid off. Malaise. Angst. “Every morning, I cannot wait to go back to sleep. Every Monday, I cannot wait for Friday to come. Every single day and every single week for life,” someone else wrote. Woof, that is bleak.
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Clearly, people needed someone to heap their trauma on, and that someone was, strangely, a social media account operated on behalf of a puppet from many of our childhoods.
Or perhaps not so strangely.
Quoting Jess Maddox, an assistant professor of digital media at the University of Alabama, Callie Holtermann of the New York Times writes: “Elmo is a ‘beloved childhood character that we associate with a simpler time in our lives,’ (Maddox) said. When Elmo pops back into the social-media feeds of adults facing burnout, inflation and a complex geopolitical situation, she said, many may find it hard not to vent about how their lives have changed.”
Elmo’s current viral moment reminded me of another meme-spawning puppet who has blown up big on social media: Mona, the green, beady-eyed pigtailed toddler from Nanalan’, a fairly obscure Canadian children’s show that aired in the late ‘90s-early 2000s.
The premise: Mona spends her days at her Nana’s house, and the show chronicles her adventures in Nanaland, or “Nanalan’”, as Mona calls it in her sweet little mispronunciations. (She also calls Nana’s dog Russell “Russer.”)
Mona and Russer on the set of Nanalan’. (Instagram)
Mona’s had viral moments before, when the teens of the Internet periodically rediscovered her. But over the last few months, she’s been all over TikTok, particularly for a clip from a song that Nana sings to her: “Who’s that wonderful girl? Could she be any cuter?” (If you know, you know.)
“The world is so traumatizing right now … I think it’s such a comforting show and kind of escapist and it’s safe and wholesome and I just think people really are desiring it,” Nanalan’ puppeteer Jamie Shannon told CBC.
I’m not nostalgic for Nanalan’ as it aired when I was in high school. And yet, I have been absolutely living for Mona content right now, probably for all of those reasons. I follow @nanalanofficial on Instagram and everytime I encounter a new clip from the show, I’m filled with delight. Who doesn’t want to see cute, small characters do cute, small things? It’s a little bright spot on the feed.
And its creators know precisely who their current audience is. “Heal your inner child,” the Instagram bio reads.
Tell me: what are your little escapist delights?
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