From Monster Energy to Qanon in under 3 minutes
From Monster Energy to Qanon in under 3 minutes
How a 2014 video about energy drinks foretold the delusions of today's right-wing boomers
It’s a fitting moment for Christine Weick to be making the rounds on Twitter, as she did once again last week in a post that’s been retweeted 12,000 times so far. Call it a victory lap, or cosmic irony. Whatever you call it, there’s a certain poetry to the fact that a woman who went viral on social media nearly a decade ago with the satanic prophesy she envisaged on an energy drink label would go viral again in the final Elon Musk-free days of a platform broadly and semi-affectionately known as “the hellsite.” What would end times in a “digital town square” even be without an end-times sybil on hand to brandish a Monster tallboy and prattle zealously into the middle distance about numerology and witchcraft?
For the uninitiated, Weick is a middle-aged white woman known in some online circles simply as “The Monster Lady.” It’s an informal title she’s held since 2014, when someone filmed her giving a passionate presentation about the occult symbolism she detected in the label, slogan, and general trade dress of Monster Energy’s flagship beverage. If you don’t want to watch the video — which, I don’t blame you — here’s a taste of Weick’s electrifying, beverage-based paranoia: