If you’ve visited certain corners of the internet this week, you’ve probably stumbled on reports that Donna Kelce, the matriarch of a family of football stars, is renovating her home in Florida.
It’s not the juiciest revelation. But it was billed that way in a tabloid report from TMZ, which announced dramatically, in an “exclusive” report, that Ms. Kelce would be making some small changes to her house.
The serious tone of the article — which ultimately said very little — was immediately mocked by readers.
Perhaps you saw the Empire State Building congratulating Ms. Kelce on X for the domestic improvements. Or maybe you saw other social media users joking that Travis Kelce’s recent announcement that he will play another season with the Kansas City Chiefs was actually to help his mother pay for this revamp.
Here’s how Ms. Kelce became a meme.
First of all, who is Donna Kelce?
Donna Kelce is the mother of the football players Jason and Travis Kelce, and she appeared on the most recent season of “The Traitors,” a murder-mystery reality TV show hosted by Alan Cumming. She was, however, eliminated fairly early in the season.
And what about her house?
This month, the tabloid TMZ published a short item about Ms. Kelce renovating her home in Orlando, Fla. According to TMZ, the two-bedroom, two-bathroom house is getting nine windows and six doors replaced. “Travis & Jason Kelce’s Mom Donna Remodeling Her Modest Florida Home,” the outlet’s headline read.
OK, and this is now a meme?
Indeed. Maybe it was the way TMZ treated this piece of non-news with the utmost seriousness. Perhaps there was something about the juxtaposition of this mundane, inconsequential report with the daily deluge of dark world news that made the item ripe for memeing. Online, jokes about Ms. Kelce’s home proliferated, with one user quipping about Meryl Streep winning an Oscar for playing Ms. Kelce in a biopic about the renovations. “Congrats to Donna Kelce on remodeling her modest Florida home!” wrote the X account for the Empire State Building, an account known to traffic in the meme du jour.
Wait, really? That’s it?
Yes. Ms. Kelce is “remodeling her modest Florida home.” That’s it. That’s the whole joke.
Seriously?
It’s a modest home, OK?
Anything else I should know?
Her son Jason reposted the TMZ story this week. “BREAKING!!” he wrote on X. “Sources confirm Donna Kelce’s eldest son watched 2 hours of Bluey yesterday.” In a teaser for a new episode of “New Heights,” the podcast he hosts with his brother, Travis, the duo poked fun at their mother becoming an internet bit. “I told her if she needed me to screw some door hinges in, I could have done it for her,” Travis said, using an expletive.
Madison Malone Kircher is a Times reporter covering internet culture.
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