Boaty McBoatface is back in the news, this time for looking like Hulk Hogan
Back in 2016, the Internet collectively ratcheted up its Lulz Meter to 11 when it commandeered Britain’s Natural Environment Research Council contest to name their new $300 million research vessel. After flooding the polls,“Boaty McBoatface” handily won, but the Council decided in an act of mercy to take a stand for sanity’s sake by overriding the results and naming the ship the RRS Sir David Attenborough, with the added compromise of preserving the McBoatface lineage via an unmanned submarine kept on board.
“Fine. Good. Time to put this behind us,” we thought. We were, of course, wrong, as news later came out that RRS Attenborough was part of a major research project analyzing climate change’s effects on sea levels, meaning that Boaty McBoatface was both a hero and, technically, a literal harbinger of our doom.
Now, Boaty is back on our collective radars, this time for something not nearly so noble. Folks, Boaty—a.k.a. the RRS Attenborough, which everybody continues to refer to as Boaty McBoatface—looks like Hulk Hogan.
We see it. The mustache, the eyebrows, the pervasive red so identifiable with the wrestler’s signature Hulkamania. More than Hogan, though, Boaty’s face just looks dead—as dead, perhaps, as the media entities Hogan helped kill.
We’d rather not be reminded of that, nor of the fact that God’s children once came together to name a boat Boaty McBoatface. Come back when you’ve got more climate news, though that’ll probably be just as depressing.