LEAVE KIMIKIN / ALONE
A leave britney alone post.
Your phone is on 4% and a group chat has turned on someone for choosing the wrong restaurant. You type "leave her alone" with the urgency of a hostage negotiator. The restaurant was fine. It was never about the restaurant. Your flatmate eats the last yoghurt, and you say nothing. Then the group chat starts on him for something else entirely, and you are suddenly his fiercest defender. You've still got the yoghurt grudge. Just not tonight. Someone at work is being torn apart in a meeting for a typo in a slide. You haven't said a word all week. Now you unmute, voice shaking, and beg everyone to move on to the next agenda item. A celebrity gets slated online for a bad haircut, a bad song or a bad Tuesday. You have no connection to them and no strong feelings. You write a paragraph in their defence anyway, mostly in capitals. **Why it caught on:** in September 2007 the American YouTuber Chris Crocker posted a tearful video begging the public to "leave Britney alone" after the singer's much-mocked performance at the MTV Video Music Awards. The video was widely watched and widely parodied, and the plea itself, sobbing, sparkly and sincere, became a handy template for pleading on behalf of anyone or anything, from politicians to the meme's own captions.