Daniel Craig’s The Weekend Meme Hits Twitter Early for Thanksgiving

A popular Twitter meme featuring James Bond actor, Daniel Craig, introducing The Weeknd, on SNL, has been released ahead of its usual weekly repost for Thanksgiving weekend. A Twitter account with the handle @CraigWeekend has reposted the clip weekly since the account was set up in July 2020, usually uploading it late on Friday or very early on a Saturday within a few minutes of midnight. Intended to welcome in the weekend break, the clip is regularly shared to a follower base of over 500,000 and receives a steady flow of likes and retweets with every upload as the footage has become a beloved meme across the internet.

The meme is a short, 4-second clip that sees Craig on the SNL stage, addressing the live-studio audience, as well as viewers at home. Craig introduces the show’s musical act with a casual shrug and tone of almost satisfied relief by reciting the customary line, “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Weeknd.” Of course, while the original transmission of that week’s episode was then followed by a stunning performance of The Weeknd’s popular single “Blinded by the Light,” just this short clip had proven to be enough to satisfy Twitter users on a large scale every week. The clip has been so enduringly popular, it was even incorporated into the final marketing for Craig’s last Bond outing, No Time to Die. Craig was promoting No Time to Die in the March 2020 episode, but the 007 movie wasn’t released until September 2021 due to multiple delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

@CraigWeekend recently posted the clip, as it does every week, with the major difference that the clip was uploaded early in order to accommodate the American holiday of the Thanksgiving weekend. The clip was uploaded to the account at 6:29 pm on Thursday 25^th November as opposed to its usual late-Friday/early-Saturday slot. This was acknowledged by the account which Tweeted a clarification a few minutes later as a reply to the original video, which can be seen below.

Several followers of the account were quick to acknowledge the advanced upload, with most presumably based internationally and were thus unaware of the US holiday. Of course, even without Thanksgiving, the account has never been able to accommodate the different time zones across the globe, with there being a clear bias towards an American audience. The reaction however, speaks to the dedicated nature of worldwide followers of the account, who were no doubt pleasantly surprised, although a little curious, to see the early appearance of a simple, heart-warming weekly occurrence.

Indeed, the fact that so many people appear to enjoy the meme’s regular deployment, and were somewhat thrown off by a change in schedule, seems to fly in the face of the streaming culture that has become the norm. In the last decade, scheduled television has become less of an event due to the rise of popularity in streaming services, allowing audiences to consume a wide breadth of content that fits into their schedule. While people may not be eagerly awaiting the publication of a tweet as they used to regarding a new episode of a show, meme accounts such as this, whose punchline runs on a timed gimmick, may be the enduring spirit of scheduled entertainment. Regardless, even though Craig is charmingly unaware of SNL meme’s impact, the former James Bond is clearly still able to bring a bright start to an American tradition with only 5 simple words.

Source: @CraigWeekend

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