2025 has, without a doubt, been one of the bleakest years in a decade made up entirely of bleak years. Wars, tariffs, and celebrity deaths — in this social media climate, it’s one flavor-of-the-month tragedy or social cause after another. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to know which of your family and peers are sincere in their fervor, no matter how proactive they may appear. And yet, while some people continue to make political crises or global disasters their identity, the biggest victim in all of this is Moo Deng, the baby pygmy hippo. In 2025, I don’t see anyone making Moo Deng their thing, and it makes me fucking sick.
You fake fucks were all “Moo Deng this” and “Moo Deng that.” Not a sentence was spoken without at least some faint Moo Deng innuendo sprinkled in. Everyone from basic-ass influencers to the Brooklyn intelligentsia was united in their love for the scrappy (and sassy!) baby hippo. Even Jake Paul almost challenged Moo Deng to a fight after Mike Tyson. It truly felt like the culture war was coming to an end.
I remember in September 2024, I could go on a Feeld date with a woman and she’d cheekily reference her semi-ironic love of Moo Deng in between buzzwords like “ethical non-monogamy” and “self-described size queen mommy switch.” Now? I go on a Feeld date and any reference I make to Moo Deng is met with blank stares — as if hippo adulthood is me getting a tattoo of Netanyahu on my forehead.
I had to start going to therapy twice a week (which my insurance doesn’t cover) because I don’t know who to trust anymore. Even my therapist remembered my childhood trauma, but when I brought up Moo Deng, she gave me a confused and patronizing nod. She then had the audacity to ask me if my need to remind the world about Moo Deng was just a guise to hide from my own abandonment issues. Thank God ChatGPT is cheaper and remembers Moo Deng.
The one creature that united us across irony, sincerity, and platform algorithms is now treated like a passing fad, discarded the second she grew an inch too big to be “cute.” Next time a viral animal mascot takes the internet by storm, I will make it my duty to call as many people out both online and IRL in the moment. If they can’t stand by the internet’s critters, they deserve shame. Fuck you posers, Moo Deng fandom is for LIFE!
