Sul Guardian si riflette sulla (supposta) tendenza degli sceneggiatori contemporanei, in particolare quelli televisivi, di scrivere dialoghi e personaggi con l’intenzione di creare dei meme, cercando attivamente la viralità che potrebbe garantire il successo del programma. Ma è davvero così?

“I never jest about cake,” quips princess Rhaenyra Targaryen in the first episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones spin-off, House of the Dragon. It’s a seemingly charming line, delivered while her head lolls on her best friend’s lap, helping to build Rhaenyra’s character as someone who doesn’t take herself too seriously. It is also so instantly quotable, and therefore T-shirtable, that the line is already plastered on fan-made merch.

But to some viewers, it rang false. They had seen this pattern before: show writes meme-able scene; scene becomes meme; instant marketing; profit.

In piccola parte, il fenomeno è dato dalla proliferazione di account “Out of Context”, specie su Twitter, che condividono giornalmente immagini e gif delle serie più popolari, ma appunto “fuori contesto”. Il Guardian ha intervistato Anna, che gestisce il profilo No Context Succession, con circa 15k follower.

As someone who pays attention to every moment of the show, Anna agrees that shows such as Succession might write specifically to relate to their online audience, but only in the context of the characters and the way they relate to the online world. “While it seems like the writers of Succession are attuned to trends on places like Twitter, what they write doesn’t come across as pandering. Writing Kendall as being obsessed with validation on Twitter is both consistent with who he is as a character and a light jab at anybody who thinks too hard about what the Extremely Online thinks.”