Grimes Reading The Communist Manifesto

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Part of a series on Grimes. [View Related Entries]

About

Grimes Reading The Communist Manifesto refers to multiple images of musician Grimes reading The Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx while sitting up against a fence. The images of her were posted to Twitter in early October 2021 and quickly became an exploitable image macro across Twitter and Instagram in the days following where it was photoshopped to change the book or add humorous captions.

Origin

On October 2nd, 2021, paparazzi agency BACKGRID^[1] released photos and a video showing Grimes walking around downtown Los Angeles reading Karl Marx's The Communist Manisto. The images and video (shown below) come after her recent break-up with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who is a proponent of capitalism, and sparked controversy during their relationship regarding speculations of his political leanings. This paparazzi stunt was a way for Grimes to allegedly counteract attacks on her own political leanings.

Grimes Responds

On October 3rd, 2021, Grimes tweeted^[5] about the images, giving her reasoning for their absurdity. In her tweet, she explained that "paparazzi followed me 2 a shoot so I tried 2 think what I could do that would yield the most onion-ish possible headline and it worked haha." The tweet received roughly 110,300 likes and 8,200 retweets in less than 24 hours. She also posted a longer explanation to her Instagram^[11] on October 3rd (shown below) and received roughly 503,300 likes in less than 24 hours.

Spread

On October 2nd, 2021, Twitter^[2] account @GrimezszCharts tweeted three of the images of Grimes, giving credit to BACKGRID photographer Jvshvisions. The tweet (shown below) received roughly 108,300 likes and 35,600 quotes tweets over the course of two days.

The popularity of the tweet became the main inspiration for Twitter users making memes going forward. Twitter user @wateringaplant replied to @GrimezszCharts' tweet on October 2nd, 2021, putting the photo of Grimes in conversation with AOC's Tax The Rich Dress, as well as Hasan Piker's Make The Rich Pay Tax T-Shirt. The reply^[3] (shown below) received roughly 28,600 likes over the course of two days.

Twitter user @CaseyHo also replied to the @GrimezszCharts' tweet on October 2nd, 2021, photoshopping The Communist Manifesto into the hands of Scott Pilgrim character Ramona Flowers, who drew comparisons to Grimes when her and Elon Musk appeared at the 2019 Met Gala. The image^[4] (shown below) received roughly 9,400 likes on Twitter over the course of two days.

More Twitter users began posting memes in the quote tweets and replies to her tweet. Most memes using the images photoshopped in different books that Grimes could be reading instead. On October 2nd, 2021, Twitter user @DrakeGatsby tweeted an image of Grimes reading a book titled "How to make people like you again." The tweet^[6] (shown below, left) received roughly 8,500 likes over the course of two days. On October 3rd, Twitter user @elfnymph photoshopped Diary of a Whimpy Kid into being the book that she's reading. The image^[7] (shown below, right) received roughly 650 likes over the course of one day.

Exploitable remixes of the image spread to Instagram^[8]^[9] as well where accounts continued photoshopping other books into Grimes' hands. Internet users also used the catchphrase "Her ass is not reading" to poke fun at the image macros.^[10]