Ivanka Trump Weighed In On The Yanny/Laurel Debate & It's Her Most Controversial Stance Yet
The first daughter and champion of women everywhere took to Twitter to weigh in on a pressing issue Thursday morning, May 17. LOL, just kidding, she stuck herself into the Laurel-Yanny drama and I'm dead inside. Ivanka Trump's "Laurel" tweet proves the meme is truly over, so can we stop talking about it now?
By the time any of the Trumps get to a meme, it's dead. It's over. There is no fun to be had. Remember when the literal president tweeted a meme of himself beating up CNN? Super-dead. Dead on arrival, that meme was. Now that Ivanka has revealed herself to be a Laurel, we can all pack it up. The jig is up.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about by this point, you probably haven't been on the Internet this week. An audio clip went viral on Twitter on Monday, May 14, inasmuch as the same way that blue/gold dress divided people into two different camps in 2015. According to The New York Times, the viral audio snippet originated in this Reddit thread. Depending on your aural sensibilities, you'll hear one or both of two possible words: Laurel or Yanny. Apparently, Ivanka is a Laurel.
Neuroscientist Tyler Perrachione explained to Wired on Wednesday, May 16, that the distorted quality of the recording can affect which version you hear, in one of the many theories about the recording. There are high and low frequency qualities to the recording, which can render it heard either way, or both — which, in psychology, he said is called a bistable illusion. Essentially, this Laurel-Yanny debate is the aural equivalent of an optical illusion.
At this point, there's no excuse for Ivanka deciding to weigh in. She is arriving at the Yanny-Laurel debate after the ladies on The View already picked it to pieces Wednesday. The meme had Whoopi Goldberg confused as hell. This is more painful than having to explain to your parents what "dabbing" is.
Ivanka is no stranger to memes, for sure, she's just not usually "in" on them. There was the photos of her visit to Iowa as part of the president's workplace initiative in March, which got meme'd to shreds. She posed for a photo-op with gloves and test tubes, and really put on a good face for the 'ole science, but Twitter was quick to mock.
Lest we not forget the Ivanka Trump/Justin Trudeau looks of 2017. Twitter went wild with photos of Ivanka looking at Trudeau at a February 2017 meeting at the White House — as well as that time that they sat next to each other at a Broadway show. The pair sat next to each other in March 2017 to watch Come From Away, a musical about a Canadian town's response to 9/11.
Honestly, you kind of have to admire her perseverance. She tries, and she gets meme'd regardless. There was also that time she announced in New York Magazine that she had a "punk phase," which subsequently got the meme treatment. Some were quick to call her "feminism" a phase, while others photoshopped some punk looks on innocuous photos of her, which still makes me laugh.
If Ivanka's meme-taste isn't convincing enough evidence that the Yanny-Laurel debate has long been over (or that it was over before it began), Greek composer Yanni has also weighed in on the debate. Yes, Yanni hears Yanny. The musician posted to Twitter a gif of himself to settle the score.
Points for trying, Ivanka, but maybe you should lay low for awhile. You've got to strike while the iron is hot with these memes, and you're just begging for people to reply to your "#Laurel" tweet with things like "#Stormy."
