Doctor's Orders is a weekly satirical column in which two unprofessional, definitely fake doctors offer up prescriptions for their phoenix patients.
Be proud, Elon. One of our own has officially made it and was seen on hundreds of thousands of screens across the United States on one of the biggest nights of the year. No, we’re not talking about Lowell Oakley. Or Grant Gustin. Or that freshman who fell out of the tree (Does anyone know if he’s okay?).
It’s 2015. No one cares if you’re on national television. The people want memes. (If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of memes, there’s nothing we can do — seek professional help.)
We’re talking about Little Red Riding Hood, forever immortalized during the Oscars. At this point, she’s more culturally relevant than the original fairy tale.
Little Red Riding Hood, this column is for you. We called you into this appointment because we want to make sure that moving forward, you take care of yourself. Fame can be stressful, and your fans are going to ask a lot of you because you really set the bar high with that Oscar trick, you stinker. Luckily for you, we have some high-brow connections at the Meme Actors Guild of America, and we can provide you, Miss Fame Seeker, with some advice from your fellow memes.
You’re going to need to get an agent because memes like Ridiculously Photogenic guy and Grumpy Cat actually have real live agents. We’re not even making this up for the sake of humor — that’s a real thing. There are agents for people like you. Or are you even people anymore? You’ve transcended mortality after all, and reached the higher plane of existence as Little Red Riding Meme.
You are going to make so much money, probably more than Elon’s endowment — which, granted, isn’t hard, since Elon’s construction bill is bigger than its endowment any day. But still, it’s impressive to us lowly plebeians.
To snag the best agent, you’re going to need a new trick to garner some buzz. Only the strongest memes survive, so you must follow in the footsteps of the great memes of our time and evolve. Oh, and this time, you have to hit multiple social media platforms.
See, your caper was big on the Twittersphere, but it needs to crossover to other platforms, like Tumblr. White-Gold-Black-Blue Dress started on Tumblr, and that’s changed the face of science as we know it. It spread to Facebook, to major news publications, started a few wars and destroyed friendships. It also was dead in the dirt less than 12 hours later, so you need to aim for having the punch of White-Gold-Black-Blue Dress and the staying power of a more traditional meme, like Grumpy Cat, who got her very own Christmas Special. She’s also voiced by Aubrey Plaza, which might just be too much power for one cat to have over the world.
After they’ve Tumbled you, you’ll need to leech your way to Facebook. Here you can capitalize on the older, less hip websurfers and maybe book some daytime television appearances. Then you might want to set your sights on traveling the world, meme-ing all over the planet. People want to hear about how you strategically placed yourself in the background of photos with the Great Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty or the Alamance Fountain. You might want to buy as many of those red jackets as you can. It’s kind of your thing now.