If you’re unfamiliar with it, Morbius is the latest not-Marvel-studios, non-MCU Marvel film from Sony. Following the trend of Venom, it takes a traditional Spider-Man villain, in this case Dr. Michael Morbius, vampire at large, and gives him a movie to star in. It is universally agreed to be not particularly good, but it has, for some reason, become a ridiculous internet meme. This is in large part thanks to made-up catchphrases like “It’s morbin time”, terrible image macros, and general tomfoolery.
This has peaked in the past 24 hours as the memes spread to Twitch, where various accounts have been streaming the movie 24/7 until the channels are shut down. As Dave Oshry, CEO of publisher New Blood put it on Twitter…
Like I have zero interest in seeing Morbius in a theater or paying for it on digital.
I 100% want to watch it via illegal Twitch stream with 1800 people typing "IM GONNA MORBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB" all at once.
As Morb intended.
— Morbin Dave (@DaveOshry) May 26, 2022
Fair enough. A few of the streams have been taken offline, but several still remain. The chats are spammed with nonsensical Morbius memes and often ASCII pictures of penises. They’re streaming to often-memed games like Artifact. Everyone’s having a wonderful time, to no end whatsoever.
There’s something indefensibly beautiful about the absolute embrace the movie is receiving without any love for what it actually is. Some are debating if it’s all an incredibly cunning marketing ploy from those behind the movie who, knowing they had a stinker on their hands, went a bit weird with it. It has certainly had more cultural staying power than various blockbuster releases because, well, it can’t be spoiled, nobody cares what actually happens, and nobody wants to actually watch it in a legal capacity whatsoever.
Fascinating. Weird. That’s Twitch.
Written by Ben Barrett on behalf of GLHF.
