Moral of the story: don’t mess with the French.
For the last few days, a tongue-in-cheek anti-French trend originating in the US has been flourishing on social networks, especially on TikTok.
It began – like a lot of good things – with a Lady Gaga song.
Her 2009 hit ‘Bad Romance’ features the lyrics: “I want your love, and I want your revenge / I want your love, I don’t wanna be friends.”
Some bright sparks recognised the remix potential in that last word and transformed “friends” to “French”, thereby creating the ideal musical vehicle to diss the French, their culture and their way of life.
It was all fairly harmless and a bit of good fun, especially when taking into consideration that Americans need a way of distracting themselves at the moment, what with… well, pretty much everything from the defunding cultural institutions to third term threats and everything in between that makes it abundantly clear they are living under a kakistocracy.
However, France’s European neighbours soon got involved, with Spain, Italy and Belgium jumping on the bashing bandwagon and taking some shots in videos hashtagged ‘#IDontWantToBeFrench’ – clips which racked up millions of views.
Everything was fair game in the effort to assert France paled compared to their respective countries.
From culinary rivalries to Zidane’s infamous headbutt on Materazzi, the jibes were flying thick and fast, and it was at this point that French internet users said “Hold my rather delicious glass of red wine” and went to work on a rebuttal. And the responses – specifically those aimed at the US – quickly saw les français gain the upper hand.
“You want to attack us over food… We sure have a lot to envy from a country that makes Sprite pies,” commented one TikTok user, who took aim at the worst thing to happen to taste buds since the US thought Mountain Dew was a good idea and not the carbonated equivalent of a diabetes-inducing hate crime.
Then came the videos claiming ‘I wanna be French’ and ‘We don’t want you to be French’, all leading up to the knockout blow… Healthcare.
“In France we say: nous au moins on a la carte vitale,” (“at least we have the carte vitale”) said one user, referring to the card that contains the administrative information the patient’s health insurance fund needs in order to reimburse their healthcare expenses. A simple but effective bit of plastic that reminds the US they have the worst-performing health system among all high-income countries.
This carte vitale trend spread like wildfire and seemed to unite even the grumpiest of Frenchies, with one commenting “I’ve never been so French in my life” while another concluded: “Thank you Americans for launching this trend on TikTok. You’re rekindling our collective pride in being French.”
As if that wasn’t enough, things got political, with Emmanuel Macron’s former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal posting a video explaining that he ‘wants to be French’, with a disparate but effective montage featuring World Cup finals, Simone Veil and raclette, the cheesy dish that makes bottom lips quiver with firey abandon and heals even the deepest of traumas.
So, what have we learned?
Well, the French know how to defend themselves… and maybe get a smidge over zealous. More than that, however, this TikTok trend was the death of irony in many ways, as anyone patient enough to listen to the whole of Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’ would quickly realise that Mother Monster herself sings in French straight after the lines “I want your love, and I want your revenge / I want your love, I don’t wanna be friends”, and that the choice of song was a backfiring self-own:
“J’veux ton amour, et je veux ta revanche / J’veux ton amour, I don’t wanna be friends…”
Oh dear… Maybe Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle the US Department of Education was a tad premature.
