Jeff Bezos post-launch brief

This video features in a responsive display in the museum that presents the moments, stories and memes capturing the zeitgeist by going viral on the internet.

Following Jeff Bezos’ launch into space on the New Shephard rocket ship, the billionaire took a moment to thank those who had made it possible. The ten-minute, $5.5 billion trip was essentially bankrolled by Amazon customers and employees – the latter of whom are renowned for being criminally overworked and underpaid. During a period of historic inequality, a billionaire blasting off a planet ravaged by the climate crisis and a pandemic seemed tone-deaf at best, villainous at worst.

It also wasn’t lost on many social media users how phallic the New Shephard’s shape seemed to be, generating an avalanche of quips suggesting Bezos was overcompensating for… something. Naturally, the internet didn’t take long to compare the New Shephard to the rocket launched by Dr Evil in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. While these jokes may seem throw-away moments of internet culture, they, like others referencing his recent divorce, use humour and absurdity to bring Bezos back down to earth.

And the backlash isn’t only against the Amazon founder, but also Richard Branson and Elon Musk, billionaires jostling to beat each other into the stratosphere in a space race that exposes how massive corporations and individuals now possess the resources to do what was once reserved for Cold War superpowers. While Bezos timed the launch on the anniversary of the 1969 Moon landing, many Twitter users noted the disparity between that globally unifying moment and the disillusionment of watching a billionaire take an intergalactic joyride.