Monica Lewinsky wins Taylor Swift ‘Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me’ meme with jab at Bill Clinton

Monica Lewinsky has officially been declared winner of the Taylor Swift meme challenge taking over social media.

For those who are unaware, a new meme has been circulating online following the release of Swift’s 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department. The album features the track “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” which includes a lyric that has since gone viral. In the song, the 14-time Grammy winner sings: “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.”

The lyric seemed innocuous enough, but the internet did as the internet always does by turning the line into the latest meme. As a result, people have been posting the lyric on X (formerly Twitter) alongside an image of the places that raised them. The more chronically online the photo is, the funnier the meme.

For example, one user posted the lyric, “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me,” with a screenshot of the fictional choir room from Glee. Meanwhile, one Sex and the City fan shared a blueprint layout of Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment with the caption: “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.”

That’s why it didn’t take long for none other than Monica Lewinsky to join in on the trend. Taking to X, the 50-year-old social activist shared a photo of the White House, the official residence of the US president, and fittingly wrote in the caption: “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.”

The post was a reference to the infamous Clinton-Lewinsky scandal of the late 1990s, when former US President Bill Clinton admitted having an affair with Lewinsky while she was working as a White House intern between 1995 and 1997. Lewinsky, who was just 22 years old when she engaged in an affair with the then-50-year-old president, soon became a victim of slut-shaming amid a media firestorm following the affair.

“You win this trend,” one X user replied to Lewinsky’s post.

“Ok everyone else can stop trying,” another person said.

“We have our winner,” a third user wrote.

Swift released her highly-anticipated album, The Tortured Poets Department, on Friday 19 April. The 31-track album came on the heels of her breakup with British actor Joe Alwyn after six years of dating, and a brief but rollercoaster fling with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy. Throughout the album, the “Fortnight” singer makes subtle references to her love affair with Healy, while “So Long, London” (on which the singer is “pissed off you let me give you all that youth”) seems to recall the ending of things with Alwyn.

Meanwhile, Swift appears to make reference to her years-long feud with Kim Kardashian in the track “thanK you aIMee” - namely, the capitalisation of the letters K, I, and M to spell out the reality TV star’s first name.

Just one week after the album’s release, The Tortured Poet’s Department became the first album to reach one billion Spotify streams in seven days. It also became Spotify’s most streamed album in a single day after its release on 19 April. The record was previously held by Swift’s 2022 album Midnights, which hit 184.7 million daily streams.

Read The Independent’s five-star review of The Tortured Poet’s Department here.