Culture

No One Has The Chaos Energy Of Elmo Getting Pissed Off By A Pet Rock

Elmo has finally reached breaking point.

by Joseph Earp  6 January 2022
Elmo versus Rocco has become a massive meme

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Towards the beginning of Paddy Chayefsky’s extraordinary film Network, an over-the-hill television reporter has a breakdown. On live television, the cameras pointed at him, the man goes apoplectic, screaming at the audience, his hands held up to his head. “I’m mad as hell,” he says, “and I’m not going to take this anymore.”

It is one of the best depictions of hysteria ever committed to film, a portrait of a man losing his mind. In the years since the film was released, its depiction of anger has rarely been topped. Rarely, but not never — as it turns out, everyone’s favourite Sesame Street character Elmo has had a slow-burning breakdown of his own, one to equal Network‘s astonishing freakout.

See, Elmo is mostly a friendly, fuzzy little guy who takes life as it comes. He likes his friends. He likes playing games. He treats the world with kindness and curiosity. What he doesn’t like, is his friend Zoe’s pet rock, Rocco.

Over numerous years and episodes of Sesame Street, Elmo has been harbouring a low-level resentment of the rock, one that explodes at unexpected times. He is mad as hell, and he’s not going to take Rocco encroaching on his free time anymore.

I mean, just watch this clip, a masterclass in how our anger can sometimes be surprising even to us, our unchecked emotions catching us off guard:

The clip has quickly become a meme, spreading across the internet like wildfire. I mean, just look at this piece of art:

That’s not an isolated incident, either. It turns out that Elmo has been struggling with Rocco for many years, his resentment popping up in innumerable ways.

I mean, just listen to his resigned “of course” at the end of this clip, a weary resignation to the power a rock has over his life.

And it’s not just Rocco that Elmo loses his temper at. That anger also spreads to Zoe, Rocco’s owner.

Truly, there is nothing more relatable than watching a puppet struggle to maintain dominion over his life, upset and unbalanced by the smallest of impositions, growing gradually more disconnected from the world around him. If that’s not 2022 energy, I don’t know what is.