It has been a month since Capcom unleashed Cammy on to Street Fighter 6 and our otherwise unsuspecting world: clad head to toe in an all-new outfit, Cammy stormed into the arena, cracked her knuckles, and… stretched.
To say we weren’t ready for it would be an understatement. Cammy’s stretch hit us harder than a special attack unblocked. Even some of the world’s most seasoned Street Fighter fanatics were taken aback wide-eyed by the sheer force and finesse of the moment.
Over the next few days — no, scratch that, the next few hours following Cammy’s seismic self-extension, the internet churned out a deluge of fan art, cosplay, and, of course, memes. Over on TikTok, a stretch challenge was speedily inaugurated, with cosplayers and Street Fighter fans alike attempting to do some Cammy-stretching themselves. The dissemination of Cammy’s stretch was sudden, rampant, and it seemed, unstoppable.
But it also seemed very familiar, as if we’d somehow been here before.
Within days, the collective internet was convinced: 2023 had found its Jack-O’ pose.
In case you don’t remember, or somehow managed to miss it, there was a point partway through 2021 when Arc System Works revealed a character trailer for Jack-O’ Valentine, who would soon be joining the roster of fighting game Guilty Gear -Strive- as DLC. Guilty Gear fans were excited to see Jack-O’ make her Strive debut, but the internet as a whole was latching on to a certain pose she liked to pull: a low half-split, arms folded before her, haunches high in the air.
This ‘Jack-O’ pose’, as it soon became known, captured the collective imagination of the internet with all the strength of a headlock. The pose had made some waves in previous years, but never to such a degree as this. Fan art and cosplay erupted emphatically. A dedicated Jack-O’ Challenge broke out on TikTok (because of course it did), and Jack-O’ posing persisted with ferocity, for months upon months on end. In some circles, it lives on today: at this time of writing, you can purchase a Thanos figure, which bends even the world-ender into the now-iconic Jack-O’ pose.
Meanwhile, it has been one (1) month since the advent of Cammystretching, and already the buzz surrounding it seems to have fizzled out. Any suggestions that Cammystretching might be the Jack-O’ pose of 2023 can no longer be made.
This unexpected dip in popularity does raise an important question, though. How is it that Cammystretching pulled a muscle just one month in, while Jack-O’ posing maintained its position for several months, if not years, after the fact? Is it a lightning-doesn’t-strike-twice kind of thing? Or is there something more scientific to it — something Jack-O’ posing had, perhaps, that Cammystretching could never hope to?
Both are, fundamentally, poses – thirst-quenching poses. Both were revealed through trailers for triple-A fighting games. Both characters doing the poses are fan favorite characters from fighting games — although, of course, Cammy herself is a little bit more than that. With Street Fighter’s thirty-plus-years of worldwide success on her belt, Cammy has long since been established as not only one of the most recognizable characters in the fighting game genre, but one of the most iconic characters in video games period.
You couldn’t say the same about Jack-O,’ however, or Guilty Gear, for that matter, since neither have ever achieved the same cultural status that Cammy and Street Fighter. And yet it is specifically Jack-O’ posing that ended up having the longer-lasting effect on modern internet culture. How can this be, when Jack-O’ herself is lesser known than Cammy?
Well, unlike Jack-O’, Cammy brings thirty-plus-years of established character along with her. Jack-O’s emergence into the mainstream was not underpinned by any years of cultural renown, however, because to the collective public, Guilty Gear has never been a household name. As far as genpop is concerned, Jack-O’ appeared out of seemingly nowhere.
If the otherwise inexplicable popularity of such characters as Aurra Sing, Ankha, and Geiru Toneido has taught us anything, it is that characters who appear out of seemingly nowhere — with only the most tangential context attached to them — somehow end up giving our imaginations more blanks to fill than, say, Darth Vader, Isabelle, or Phoenix Wright, who we already know too well and as such probably won’t go as creatively wild with.
These more iconic characters do tend to be more popular in general, of course — just as Cammy is more generally popular than Jack-O’ — but as a result of having already established themselves in the eye of the mainstream, these characters just don’t inspire the same degree of unbridled creativity that their dark horse counterparts do. Consequently, Cammy can’t be memed to infinity with the same freedom as Jack-O.’ The internet has already moved on from her stretch — Jack-O’ posing, meanwhile, continues to kick on unhindered out there.
In short, no, Cammy’s stretch is not the Jack-O’ pose of 2023. In reality, Cammy’s stretch is just Cammy’s stretch, and for a few weeks there, the internet just wanted to see Cammy stretch.
