Is Memorial Day Weekend the Most Obnoxious Holiday on Instagram?
It requires great personal courage to voice heretofore unuttered opinions, the kind that reveal deep, inner truths about human nature as never before. One such truth is this: Memorial Day weekend, hashtag #MDW, is the most obnoxious holiday on Instagram. Even more than Cinco de Mayo, Memorial Day weekend on social media is the single most annoying day to watch other people live their lives (let me emphasize that again so it sinks in slowly: even. more. than. Cinco. de. Mayo!) I say this to you only as a public service, to remember to use that brand new Instagram mute button on this most insufferable of nebulously American high holy days of rest and rosé.
What exactly is it about #MDW that makes you want to knock yourself out with a box of wine? Please find below an exhaustive accounting of why that gut feeling telling you that, yes, Memorial Day weekend is the worst and you should let your phone sink to the bottom of the pool, is very right.
Who let #MDW happen?
Do you remember when #MDW became a thing? I don’t, but it is; and if before, we used to only have to contend with #HappyFourth and #LaborDay, #MDW snuck into the mix to preempt those classic summer ’gram-a-thons. #MDW popped up in the last few years, and it has only stuck since; search the hashtag in your Instagram app and you’ll find a panoply of posts celebrating . . . god knows what under those three letters (which brings me to my next point).
No one actually celebrates the real Memorial Day.
Memorial Day is ostensibly when we celebrate those who have died in our country’s wars, but you wouldn’t know that from looking at #MDW on social media. People aren’t often memorializing the fallen with their beer pong games. At least on the Fourth of July, there are a few American flag bikinis in the mix and an abundance of fireworks. And by the time we’ve hit Labor Day, we’re all just too depressed about the end of summer to remember what it’s all about (or maybe, you really are out there celebrating working people, which is great!).
#MDW is not creative.
The hashtag seems divorced from nearly all of its American cultural relevance at this point, leaving only its Instagram relevance, which is . . . selfies? It’s like every other thinly veiled corporate marketing ploy like #IcedCoffeeDay and #NationalToothpasteDay and whatever other ways companies have figured out to get us to both buy and sell their products for them, but with even less of a specific theme.
We are not ready for #MDW when it comes around.
Another thing that heightens Memorial Day weekend’s grating nature is that it’s the first time our feeds are inundated with people trying their absolute hardest to show how much fun they’re having, in weather that is usually not that perfect yet. We’re simply not ready for large amounts of swimwear, drinkware, and inflatable pool toys. (If you’re looking for an alternate vibe, check out our guide to goth beach looks, which I will certainly be channeling.) And given #MDW’s lack of actual holiday acknowledgment, the typical captioning leaves much to be desired and gets very repetitive, very quickly.
#MDW is too long.
Not the weekend itself, of course—weekends should be longer and more frequent throughout the year. But because #MDW is an entire weekend, and not a day (maybe I will start campaigning for #MD . . . that’s it), the #MDW pics start and they don’t stop until the last drink-holding, sunglasses-wearing boomerang has boomeranged, long into Monday evening, by which time you yearn for the subway, the office, the DMV, anything to take you away from this nonsense.
In conclusion, be careful out there.
#MDW will sneak up on you as you’re casually checking out Instagram, and before you know it, you won’t understand why you suddenly can’t take one more second on this doomed planet. If this semi-deranged screed has done any good for you, it will at least have helped you through it.
