In the digital space, corporations and companies are faced with the dilemma of creating a social media presence that people actually engage with. Recently, Duolingo has emerged as a success story of how to wrap the entirety of social media around its finger, but a recent tweet may be a sign that the brand needs to peel back on the edgelord meme humour.
The tweet in question features a clip from the 2010 Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Awards, which shows popstar Katy Perry getting a face full of green slime. The moment has widely been memed since the award show aired over a decade ago, and the clip gets resurfaced and passed around social media every few months. This time, however, Duolingo got the chance to inject itself into the conversation.
“hold up is that my — ” the company tweeted. “we’re all thinking it, i just said it,” they said in a follow up.
In case the joke flew over your head, the Duolingo owl is suggesting that the green slime that covers Katy Perry in the clip is it’s own ejaculate. Because the owl is green. Haha.
hold up is that my — https://t.co/PtWeGXulJ7
— Duolingo (@duolingo) October 12, 2022
Edgy brand Twitter is nothing new — fast food franchise Wendy’s is widely credited with breaking the facade of corporate social media beginning in 2017 by tweeting like a human instead of a brand. As more brands began to realise the possibilities of approaching Twitter in a more casual light, the rise of TikTok saw brands approach this digital frontier in much the same way — and that includes Duolingo.
Duolingo’s TikTok account is absolutely massive, with the company currently racking up 4.9 million followers and over 97 million likes across its posts. Duolingo began posting in February 2021, with TikToks focusing on how to say different words and phrases in different languages, which is the entire purpose of Duolingo. But around October 2021, the company began to experiment more with TikTok — opting to post more content featuring its office, its mascot, a parasocial relationship with Dua Lipa, and timely memes and trends — and its viewership only grew. Most of Duolingo’s most successful TikToks don’t even feature the actual Duolingo product, and some barely even mention the company or app.
An increasingly edgy brand presence is a slippery slope. During the widely covered domestic abuse trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard this past summer, the Internet openly sided with Depp while mocking Heard. After NBC News uploaded a clip of the trial where Heard refers to the online hate she had been receiving. “Y’all think amber watches tiktok?” the Duolingo official account commented under the TikTok, which sparked backlash against the company for making an off-colour comment in the wake of a then-ongoing trial covering claims of physical abuse and sexual assault. The woman behind the account at the time, 24 year old Zaria Parvez, quickly apologised.
Parvez is Duolingo’s Global Social Media Manager, which means she could be the mastermind behind the previously mentioned Katy Perry tweet. The tweet got people talking, even if some of the users that replied fell in the camp that the joke went a little too far. It’s not that jokes about sex and memes aren’t funny, but edgy content from brands tends to feel hollow when you think about it for more than two seconds.
Duolingo’s presence on social media, and specifically TikTok, speaks to a growing trend of brand friend-ification. Brands across the world are quickly learning that the best way to advertise is to go viral, and TikTok comment sections and Twitter timelines are the best billboards. The strategy is simple: Stop making yourself look like a brand. The problem is that in the effort to make the biggest impression with the cooliest/most risque/funniest tweet you can think of, you’re bound to eventually come across as trying too hard while alienating potential users in the interim.
Duolingo did not immediately return Gizmodo’s request for comment.