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cliffwife.jpg

YouTube Vlogger's 'Cliff Wife' Was Nearly Meme'd To Death

By Mieka Strawhorn | Social Media | May 29, 2019 |

By Mieka Strawhorn | Social Media | May 29, 2019 |


cliffwife.jpg

Any philosopher (or biologist for that matter) worth their salt will tell you that life is fleeting. The world is chaos and we’re all just a hair’s breadth from ceasing to exist. Our existence is harrowing and while some choose to live in fear, others simply choose to live. Jenny McBride heeded Wham!’s eternal directive and chose life.

Yes, Jenny chose to live (a well sponsored and curated life). Over the weekend her husband, family Vlogger Shaun McBride, better known on YouTube as Shonduras (1.6 million subscribers and counting), tweeted a short video clip with the caption:

“i watched my wife fall off a cliff … you’re whole world can change in a matter of seconds. mine almost did. a good reminder to be grateful for every moment of it. the good and the bad. the happy and the sad. because you’re here.”

The accompanying image was of his wife Jenny, captured from above, alarmingly sprawled on a rocky beach, her pale limbs akimbo and tender back exposed to the elements (much as we see her in the header picture above). It was a sobering sight and Jenny’s well-being seemed anything but guaranteed. One thing was for sure though, Shaun had our attention.

For reasons that will later become clear, the original tweet has since been deleted. But you can see the dramatic, life-altering, near-death plummet Jenny took starting at 8:10.

It being Wednesday and all, Memorial Day weekend is the equivalent past of the Bronze Age in internet time. But even though the Bronze Age is ancient history now, we still benefit from its gifts of forks and fireplace pokers. As such, this practically paleolithic blip in internet history produced one of the most enduring troves of dunks, owns, memes, and general freestyle fuckery the world has ever known. Curvy Wife guy who? Cliff Wife springs eternal.

Jenny’s fateful fall inspired poets.

Jenny’s tearful tumble rewrote the songs that make the whole world sing.

Philosophers pondered Jenny’s free-fall flounce.

Visual artists of every ilk consulted her cliff-side careen for cliff-wife clout (I apologize for nothing).

Even old memes, long since forgotten, were resurrected from the dead having received the life-giving kiss of Jenny’s tortured topple.

Sadly, all the memeing seemed to come as a surprise to Shaun McBride. According to The Cut, Shaun “expressed dismay at the overall Twitter reaction,” and reported that he “deleted the tweet to avoid further misconceptions or hurtful content to be generated around the topic.” I get that it was a scary moment for Shaun and Jenny. And lord knows people can be cruel and thoughtless about the human lives behind every viral sensation. Yet the over-dramatized incident lives on on Shaun’s YouTube channel (albeit with the comments disabled), garnering views and generating money with every passing moment of Cliff Wife’s dwindling internet life. So, really, there are no losers here. Only this fleeting moment in time when, against the odds, we all agreed on something — She didn’t really fall that far.