Is the Frank Ocean meme too powerful to be destroyed?

Frank Ocean knows he's a year late. Early this morning, Complex originally reported, Ocean updated the website for his mystery album, Boys Don't Cry, which now shows a library due date card with a year of postponements. As The Fader noted, Frank Ocean's brother also shared the image on Instagram with the words "BOYS DON'T CRY #JULY2016." The only thing we know right now is that we are in July of 2016, the 12th consecutive month of Boys Don't Cry being unavailable. Anything more would simply be reckless speculation.

The only question is if a year of weaponized memes about Frank Ocean's album coming out can be overcome by the album itself, which, let's be clear, is not guaranteed to come out, ever. This could all be one big pyramid scheme of hype with everyone on Twitter asking "where's Frank Ocean?", like he's an airplane that disappeared, in Ocean's downline. (Everyone who has heard the album says it's amazing!) But it's time we talk about another possibility: Frank Ocean is being held hostage by his own meme, which has become too powerful to defeat. The Frank Ocean album not coming out has given Frank Ocean so much publicity that to release an album would be to kill a simulacrum who has slowly taken over aspects of Ocean's life like if a clone in The Prestige got loose.

And who's to say Frank Ocean, a man who has not released an album since July 10th, 2012 (or put differently, 1,453 days ago), is not really a person working on a medical degree? (Hmm, maybe not.) Okay, let's meet here again at the same time next year to discuss new theories.

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