The annual trends from Google, YouTube, and even adult sites, are generally gold mines over the past year. The opportunity to relive some of the events and trends that have marked the world, while retracing the thread of current events. Still, the retrospective is also an opportunity to discover some strangeness. In France for example, the year 2023 was dominated by a curious question: How did Mickey Mouse die?
The far right wants the skin of Mickey Mouse
Taken out of context, the query doesn’t make much sense. However, it promises to resonate in the memories of many young Internet users. In reality, everything starts from an article published on April 26, 2022 in the columns of Washington Times. At the time, conservative journalist Tim Constantine delivered his vision of “Tragic Suicide of Mickey Mouse“, detailing how the big-eared company and a number of other historic companies in the American landscape ended up giving in to the sirens of progressivism and woke lobbies.
The author takes up several themes dear to the heart of the American extreme right, in particular accusing Disney of having publicly took sides with certain LGBTQIA+ causes, by taking a stand. A position which could be fatal to the entertainment giant, assures the editorialist, who goes so far as to qualify the company’s recent decisions as “suicide”.
TikTok, the troll machine
The article quickly gained momentum. On TikTok in particular, the phenomenon is becoming a trend, and Internet users film themselves typing the query “How did Mickey Mouse die?” on Google, and film their reaction. Of the million likes and shares later, France is not immune to the phenomenon. To the point of raising the question to the top of searches for the year 2023. To further fuel the buzz, certain sites are starting to write articles, detailing in a funny or more sordid way the circumstances of the death of the little bipedal mouse. The character thus finds himself the victim of an explosion, or wildly murdered by Wednesday Addams.
As with many forgotten music or improbable trends, TikTok acted as a sounding board to an epiphenomenon which should never have become so widespread, especially as far as France. Fortunately, this time it was mainly trolls who mocked the virulence of the accusations made by the Washington Times.
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