I think we can all agree social media is a mind-killing hellscape, but on rare occasions, it also allows a bunch of weirdos to come together and produce something neat. Case in point: The semi-ironic fandom that’s recently sprung up around Miss Cigarettes, a fake Pokémon used as the punchline in a months-old joke.
The premise of the original Bluesky post is simple. Michael Lutz, a podcaster and narrative designer, describes a scenario wherein he’s defending a group of Pokémon from the villainous Team Rocket. His best Pokémon is a fully evolved Miss Cigarettes. Like most Pokémon, Miss Cigarettes can talk, but its vocabulary is restricted to its own name. And that’s pretty much it. I feel like I’ve spent way too much time dissecting this already, so if you don’t get it, go ask your mom.
“She’s always been here in some form, I think,” Lutz said while discussing Miss Cigarettes’ charm with me via email. “Doesn’t the very idea of a Pokémon, or ‘pocket monster’ evoke the idea of a cigarette, alluring yet toxic, hidden away in one’s pocket for that blessed moment alone after a stressful business meeting or small claims court hearing?”
The post got as much attention as you’d expect for a good joke from a social media account with almost 8,000 followers when Lutz first wrote it last September, but it wasn’t until he reshared it in December that it really began to gain traction.
“I think Miss Cigarettes took time to catch on because the world wasn’t ready for her,” Lutz said. “When I made the post on Bluesky in September, it was more or less me stating the obvious. But people can be slow on the uptake, so just a few weeks ago, in December, I reshared the post because I thought it was meaningful. Thankfully, this time, people listened. Maybe the world was finally ready, or maybe this time it was shared by one of my more popular friends who was asleep when I originally posted it. Who can say?”
As of this writing, the joke has been shared 943 times and liked by 3,578 people. But the real indication of its success is the small fandom Miss Cigarettes has spawned. Some folks drew fan art of just Miss Cigarettes. Others imagined its evolutionary line. One fan started a new playthrough of Pokémon Ruby and named a Skitty after Miss Cigarettes, while another cosplayed the original Pokémon. Lutz himself got in on the fun as well by recording a short video acting out his previous post.
Of course, nothing gold can stay. Miss Cigarettes mania slowed in the following days, but every now and then, someone will rediscover the joke or chime in with a new meme and we all get to feel good remembering Miss Cigarettes is out there, somewhere, blasting Team Rocket with second-hand smoke.
“As long as folks are having the conversation, I think that’s half the battle,” Lutz said of his creation’s legacy. “I think it is very beautiful to see people drawing Miss Cigarettes, and hypothesizing about her greater and smaller selves, her mother and her children.”
Image credit: lilartsy
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