@PLANTMlLK on X
Kirke’s Instagram AMAs
Jemima Kirke’s role as “Jessa” on HBO’s Girls was and continues to be impactful on all who have watched the program, especially those who watched it when it aired in the early 2010s. Kirke’s character is a free-spirited hipster with ardor for life who, oxymoronically, never fails to offer a slightly nihilistic anecdote for the viewers to ruminate on. Based on Kirke’s Instagram story Q&As, it seems she embodies a bit of what her character is all about, but in real life.
Kirke just calls it how it is. The Girls actress started hosting Instagram Q&As or “Ask Me Anything” sessions as a way to give free, unofficial therapy to her fans and followers, and she did not disappoint. It’s important to note Kirke is not a certified medical professional and her advice is not professional, but it’s definitely something to think about. Instead of coddling her followers with recycled, tiresome mantras you’d read in a self-help book, she gets down to the nitty-gritty.
jemima_jo_kirke via u/leodicaprioho*
Instead of focusing on the (still) very real issues young people face, she decides to offer advice on looking outside of oneself or simply not looking for anything at all. As humans, we are here on this planet for a limited amount of time and our places in life do not matter nearly as much as we think they do—and this is okay. Kirke’s blunt, comedic way of spreading optimism through nihilistic values mixed with a general disregard for indulging one’s negative thought processes has skyrocketed into a meme that basically sums up 2024 for internet users.
jemima_jo_kirke via u/leodicaprioho*
“What the [heck], sure.” and What It Really Means
In January 2024, a follower asked Jemima Kirke if she identified as queer. Kirke flexed on her phone camera in a dashing selfie with the response, “What the [heck], sure.” In June 2024, an X user tweeted about the absurdity of the first debate in the 2024 Presidential race when former President Joe Biden struggled to speak clearly and coherently. Attached was the image of Kirke, giving her haughty smile, with the words, “What the [heck], sure” plastered across every user’s phone screen. This tweet was only the first of many to use Kirke’s Q&A-turned-meme as a reaction image to current events, political and nonpolitical alike.
Kirke’s cavalier disposition, paired with her free unofficial therapy broadcasts available for the world to see, allows folks to stop asking the big questions, the small questions, or any questions at all for that matter. Kirke urges people, particularly young women, to stop “thinking about” themselves “too much”. In an age where we’re constantly aware of the way we convey ourselves to others and equally, the way they perceive us, Kirke implies that she does not want to indulge the miniscule worries of everyday life, and neither should you. We constantly surrender agency to the things that negatively impact our lives, which in turn stops us from enjoying the things that truly matter.
Based on Kirke’s nihilistic tone in her Q&As, she says it all: Reject vanity if it means negativity. Refuse labels if it makes you feel caught up in the semantics. That is the DNA of “What the [heck], sure.”
Who cares? I don’t. Do you? You shouldn’t. Why are we even talking about this anyway? Anyway…
The Reaction Image of 2024
Jemima Kirke’s impact on internet discourse, though unintentional, has sparked a new age of nihilism in young and older audiences alike. If you scroll through any comment section or search the sea of X replies, this reaction image or phrase lives there, in someone’s internet vocabulary. Most, if not all internet buzzwords are undeniably annoying once they run the risk of overuse, and if called a buzzword, are likely already overused. Something feels a bit different about this one, though.
The phrase has brought about a certain self-awareness and level of mental literacy within the groups of people who grew up in the digital age and were basically taught, since birth, to be hyper-aware of themselves, what they represent, and how they represent themselves to everyone else online. The phrase urges one to feel unapologetically indifferent, to lack interest not only because you must do so to mentally survive these trying times, but also because you should want to. Some users have even felt like the meme “got them through” 2024. Evidently, 2024 was the year of accepting things we cannot change. And with acceptance comes a wee bit of nihilism to help us stay sane. Why give the things that try their hardest to divide us the deeply thought-out discourse it definitely doesn’t deserve? Can we continue to focus our attention on current events, negative rhetoric, and parasitical thoughts that are out of our control?
In 2025, we’ll likely see values similar to what Kirke’s 2024 meme stint gave us, but with a bit more hedonism. As we’re possibly on the brink of economic collapse and the negativity in the media continues to run rampant, living in excess and indulging our hedonistic pleasures seems like a good place to start—thus, Kirke’s life slogan lives on!