Twitter Saved Us From A Deluge Of 'Baby Nut' Propaganda
First, there was a Baby Sonic who tried to take Baby Yoda's crown as the current reigning king of the infantilized version of a beloved pop-cultural animated character (Baby Yoda having usurped Baby Groot throne earlier this year). Now, it's the unsettlingly named Baby Nut, the baby version of the recently deceased and then he immediately reborn Mr. Peanut. Not only is (ugh) Baby Nut an obvious attempt at cashing in on Baby Yoda's wild success, but the meme bombardment that Planters was going to rain down upon Twitter through a series of Baby Nut-themed accounts to generate tons of homegrown Baby Nut propaganda have all been suspended for breaking Twitter's rules about spam.
Twitter says that accounts, even those promoting the miraculous resurrection of a beloved elitist legume, cannot "artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people's experience on Twitter". In other words, Twitter determined that Planters' planned all-out meme assault was corporate spam. The names of the three now suspended accounts were BabyNutLOL, BabyNutMemes, and BabyNutBaby. Oof. This news is starting to sound more and more like when the FBI arrests someone before they commit an act of terror.
The story of Mr. Peanut's "death" is a pitch-perfect corporate clusterfuck. An interview with a rep from the ad agency that came up with the idea to kill him revealed that they were inspired by the strong online emotional reactions people had to the death of Tony Stark in Avengers: Endgame. Which becomes even more ridiculous when you remember that Robert Downey Jr. used to voice Mr. Peanut.
They incorrectly assumed we would all be just as broken up by the untimely demise of the anthropomorphic cannibalistic peanut mascot who is always either going to or coming from the opera. But then the ad campaign about the fictional death that was based on another fictional death had to be temporarily suspended out of respect to Kobe Bryant's real death just a few days after the campaign launched. And now their big meme nut bust is dead, too.
The death and anticlimactic rebirth of Mr. Peanut was so poorly thought out, so driven by trends, and so spectacularly devoid of authenticity that the whole thing wound up killing itself. If they really wanted to make Mr. Peanut connect with today's audiences, they should have brought back the Mr. Peanut that fought Nazis.
Luis can be found on Twitter and Facebook. Check out his regular contributions to Macaulay Culkin's BunnyEars.com and his "Meditation Minute" segments on the Bunny Ears podcast. And now you can listen to the first episode on Youtube!
